TechWag

: Image via CrunchBase

Sometimes it is just best to go to camp, and Seattle is having Cloud Camp, or an “Unmeeting” of people to discuss the problems and issues in cloud computing. We will be posting gallery pictures, but you can also follow us on FriendFeed/techwag tonight if you want near real time information on the event.

5:58 PM Seattle – some initial pictures up on friendfeed as the room is filling and people are starting to be seated. The screen has gone that wonderful microsoft blue screen for standby and people are starting to get jazzed – free drink cards have been passed out.

6:31 PM The meet and greet is going pretty good – lots of interesting people here from many different companies. What makes this very cool is that there are this many (about 150 people) at the event right now – the speaker is coming up on stage and we are getting read to get this going.

6:39 PM The concept of an unconference – open spaces instead of all topics pre determined by the event organizers – we get to go learn stuff we want to learn. What is cool is that AWS, Azure and Rackspace Cloud are heavily sponsoring the event. It is great when a companies step up to inform rather than try to sell more stuff.

6:44 PM – Open group cloud computing working group – why are you doing cloud computing and what are the use cases for cloud computing. What is your use case, or reason for doing this, business use cases might mean SaaS, and how do we deal with Security, Interoperability, community, private clouds, along with the financial model and the overall plan for using the system. You should also have an architectural overview of what you are trying to build.

6:55 PM – Microsoft Azure is speaking now and drawing out how the Azure fabric is going to work – stick drawing to come as soon as I get the pictures up.

7:12 PM – Hey free drinks – from Josh of Dyn company and the VP of Project Management Cory Von Wallenstein. What is interesting is how they are using DYN DNS to help manage the way that traffic is routed on the internet from a local user to the closest cloud computing environment. They simply route closest to closest when you are provisioning world wide. They do this to ensure that the systems are scaled better by using the little pieces better. Their tag is corny though – follow us on twitter, were a hoot.

Cloud Camp Seattle

7:21 PM – The unconference begins – what is the cloud going to look like in 5 to 10 years, how do we manage security, how do we build services and models around the cloud, what do we really have for real today. What apps should go on the cloud, and which ones should not. Really good questions coming in from the audience. What issues are customers running into and what is the guidance is being given to companies. How can a service provider ensure that the customer does not make a stupid mistake – let alone ensure that the customer is listening to the vendor?

7:25 PM – What is the work load, and how can the cloud enable the customer to drop their work load, or distribute their work load across many systems. There are some challenges when taking on the cloud – there are too many interactions and how many of those components can you put on the cloud are issues that companies should be looking at, as well as the capability of the organization to support the cloud, the distribution of services and providers.

Cloud Camp Seattle

7:30 PM – there are a lot of new Cloud Computing startups in Seattle – which makes sense because Amazon and Microsoft are here. It almost feels like Rack Space is odd man out here tonight because they are down in Texas. But with the two major infrastructures being built out – it is going to make a confusing market place for managers and business developers who want to use the cloud, and are getting hit up by many sellers who want to have the manager buy. In all cases, it is really going to be important for technologists and managers to understand what they are doing (Ref Microsoft and Amazon speakers on this) and how they want to do it. It almost seems like it would be a good idea to ensure that companies get good services, remember a vendor is a vendor, you either trust them or you do not. If you do not, don not ask them to build your cloud for you.

7:36 PM – The amazon guy just recommended that globally telecommunication companies should be privatized because of the huge cost in third world countries for bandwidth. Interesting idea, is this even worth debating or can large companies do anything about this? It does put a different spin on cloud computing – with hardware costs decreasing – third world telecommunications and their costs will hold them back or keep regional data centers from being built to service the local economy. This is going to be a big challenge for governments and companies to find common ground here.

7:41 PM – remember that scaling the cloud is the reason for going there, there is a role in disaster recovery for this, and you can test disaster recovery scenarios without having to really shut down the data center. You just provision what you need to provision in the cloud and run the disaster recovery scenario from there. Also an interesting concept in case you are wanting to test your disaster recovery plan.

Cloud Camp Seattle Amazon Guy

7:45 PM – right now people are working with a least risk or an easy to implement process to see if there really is a value to being in the cloud. What message we are missing is that there are company roles for when to use the cloud and when not to use the cloud. It all depends on the companies ability to manage risk, legal regulation, and the ability of the company to have access to trained people who can implement this. If you are in cloud computing and are trained and able to do cloud to local architecture – you win. There are a ton of well paid consulting gigs right now ready for people with these skills.

7:49 PM – the twitter traffic right now is interesting – people are getting sales pitches, but the biggest twitter beef right now is that there are no stories from the trenches. No one is saying “here was my problem and here is how I solved it using cloud computing” or what issues real users ran into and how those problems were solved. This is going to go back to the idea of being well skilled in Cloud Computing. The skills just do not exist universally right now, but that is exactly what the audience is looking for.

08:00 PM – and we are breaking off into the break off groups. So the show is starting to wind down as individual sessions happen. The general meeting is over. I have questions so I am going to go hunt down the Amazon guy – this could be interesting.