I recently attended Phorum 2012, a Cloud Conference located at World Live Cafe in Philadelphia, PA. It was an all day event and featured keynotes, presentations, and panel discussions with some the nation’s deepest thinkers and greatest innovators utilizing cloud technology.
Phorum Philly is a technology conference for business and IT professionals. The goal of the annual conference is to explore emerging technologies as they transition to mainstream adoption and to educate IT professionals on the practical application of these technologies in business.
The event featured a keynote addressed by Nick Carr, Pulitzer Prize nominated author of The Big Switch and The Shallows: What The Internet Is Doing To Our Brains. Nick explored an innovative angle towards technology and how it relates to the enterprise. His perspective was unique and inspiring, especially if you’re a forward thinker. He referenced technology and inventions during the early 20th century, and paralleled it to modern technology, as it relates to the cloud.
During that era, companies were expected to provide their own power, something that we don’t even think about today. Why provide your own proprietary, non-scalable environment, with no automation and a considerable amount of administrative overhead? The solution is remedied by cloud technologies. Cloud is already adopted by the top 6 banks in Canada, Merrill Lynch, Department of Defense, US Navy, and a couple of companies you may have heard of: Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. Unless your company is larger and more successful, it’s safe to say cloud computing is good enough for you.
The morning was jump started by John Treadway, VP of Cloud Technology Partners. Right outside of the conference, there were companies demoing cloud services and you were given a chance to vote for your favorite company. The top 3 winners were featured at the end of the conference, and the presented awards. There was a raffle for free iPads, and the event ended with free beer, and live music.
In all, the event was highly informative and inspirational. There were many innovators, technology leaders, and forward thinkers that opened my mind, and got me thinking outside of the box. I'll be looking forward to all future Phorum Philly events.
