Conference News: Multi-Cloud in Multi-Cities; Event with an Edge; Chat with Makers Conf.

Exploring Multi-Cloud around the World: VMware announced last week that it was renaming and evolving its VMworld gatherings. Henceforth known as VMworld Explore, they plan to become the industry’s go-to events for all things multi-cloud. VMware Explore US will take place in San Francisco at the Moscone Center from 29 August –1 September 2022, and VMware Explore Europe will take place in Barcelona at the Fira Gran Via, 7 – 10 November 2022. VMware Explore will also be hosted in Brazil (19 – 20 October), Singapore (15 – 16 November), Japan (15 – 16 November), and China (17 – 18 November). As part of the announcement, VMware CEO Raghu Raghuram noted that he “can’t wait to welcome all the innovators who are leading the way in defining the multi-cloud era, including our customers, our ecosystem partners and influencers from around the world.”

Livin’ on the Edge: The NCI Agency has fostered two successful events over the past 15 years, the NATO Information Assurance Symposium (NIAS) and NITEC (the Agency’s flagship industry conference). In 2022, to celebrate the agency’s 10th anniversary, they are combing the two to create the NATO Edge. This new flagship technology event will be held from 25 to 27 October, in-person at the Lotto Expo in Mons, Belgium. It will bring together start-ups, academia, as well as national and NATO representatives under the theme “Technology in Focus.” NATO Edge will feature discussions on the Agency’s work on emerging and disruptive technologies (EDTs), which include artificial intelligence (AI) and data.

Speaking Opportunity: KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America will gather the open source and cloud native communities in Detroit, Michigan from 24 – 28 October 2022 to further the education and advancement of cloud native computing. The Cloud Native Computing Foundation is now seeking speakers to share their knowledge with the adopters, developers, and practitioners who attend this event. If you have a session idea related to content and projects that fall within the many focus areas the event covers (Reliability + Operational Continuity, CI/CD, Application + Development + Delivery, Security + Identity + Policy, ML & Data, and many more), submit your speaker/topic proposal via their online form before the 27 May deadline.

Conference Manager Q&A: MAKERS, a media and community-focused brand that exists to accelerate equity in the workplace, is planning its return to an in-person conference 24-26 October in Dana Point, CA. We recently spoke with Ja’Nay Hawkins, Chief Partnerships Officer for MAKERS, who gave us a glimpse into the qualities of a memorable speaker and also what makes MAKERS’ mission so critical for leaders, executives, and community influencers.

Speaker Strategies: What is the most important trait of a good speaker?

Confidence. When you believe in what you are saying, that belief permeates to your audience too.

Speaker Strategies: What is the most important piece of a successful presentation abstract/topic description?

Storytelling. It matters most when you connect with people, and they can see an experience they are familiar with through you.

Speaker Strategies: A lot of people know of the MAKERS Conference, but what else does the organization do throughout the year to keep the audience engaged/connected to your mission?

We have a year-long partnership program that connects executives from companies all over the country, in different industries. The access our companies have to best practices in our network is key. This year, my biggest goal is to connect our community to action. Our annual conference serves as a meeting place for leaders to reflect, feel inspired, celebrate, and make connections — the remainder of the year, MAKERS serves as the connective tissue to leaders making an impact every day.

Coming Up Next Week: Miami will transform into a global tech hub when eMerge Americas gets underway 18 April at the Miami Beach Convention Center, drawing over 16,000 investors, entrepreneurs, innovators, business executives, government leaders, and academia. At the Reuters Responsible Business USA (19-20 April; New York), business leaders will discuss how to remain competitive and sustain commercial success while also fighting climate change and social inequality. More than 400 CEOs and senior-level executives from business, finance and government will attend in NYC. Open Data Science Conference – otherwise known as ODSC – will convene in-person in Boston and online 19-21 April, offering an inclusive program that includes “digital experiences available for everyone, from anywhere” on machine learning, data engineering, and data visualization. First created to connect CIOs in an intimate, collaborative environment where the agenda was not influenced by vendor sponsorship, Spark Executive Forum (20-21 April; Napa Valley) remains an invitation-only program for senior executives to openly collaborate, weigh new technologies, and consider new business trends. Finally, Enterprise Data World will run 19-20 April as a virtual agenda covering topics like data governance, data architecture, metadata management, data quality, and enterprise information management.