Google Cloud Next London ’18, one of the biggest Cloud events of the year, is coming to London within only a few weeks. This summer I went to its even bigger brother, Google Cloud Next ’18 in San Francisco. It was a fantastic experience, and not only because of the tons of exciting announcements about Google Cloud technology. As a woman working in tech, I recognised other remarkable figures and facts that I would love to share with you.
Note: If you are hoping to learn about the newest tools and features that were announced at Next, you won’t find them here. Have a look at the other blog posts on this website, for example this one.
First of all, I’ve never seen so many people and brands at a conference before. Luckily, our Marketing brains at Fourcast did a great job making it easy for our team at Next to stand oud in the crowd of more than 20.000 participants. For example, we all were wearing our own lanyards (orange ones!) which seemed to be very effective already on day 1, as we felt being looked at the whole time.
Red Devils
The second day it got even better. We all received a wonderful Belgian Red Devils Fourcast branded shirt to support the Belgian football team and we were proudly wearing this shirt at Next. As you can imagine, the combination of football and a + 20.000 mainly male crowd was a great success.
50/50
About this male crowd, you obviously couldn’t have not seen the difference in amount of male and female participants. Which made it even more easy for myself to stand out in this crowd. However, when looking at the presenters of all the sessions I would say there was almost a 50/50 presence in the Google crowd.
I’m not complaining at all, because this was one of the few events where I didn’t need to stand in the line for the bathrooms, while the guys often had a huge line.
Local Guides
Because of this enormous amount of participants the Moscone building alone wasn’t sufficient for all the different sessions. Therefore multiple locations were added, such as a theater, hotel and others; and they all were given a Google look and feel. In order to find your way back easily in this city, Google counted on very welcoming SF inhabitants with signs to guide us. And yes, they also do know the local spots you should visit in your spare time.
Healthy Food
As Google makes sure their employees eat healthy food, have the ability to exercise at work and have access to other health initiatives, they as well made sure the participants to Google Next ‘18 enjoyed lovely meals. From breakfast to snacks and lunch, I loved the food!
Besides the fact that Next is one of the biggest tech events, which still is linked with mainly male people working in IT, Google lets you experience the event as a real Googler. I was overwhelmed with tons of new upcoming functionalities, but being there for 4 days was an experience itself. Google’s innovation and efficiency is not only implemented in the tools but in everything they do.
If I get the chance, I’ll definitely be attending again next year.
Part of our Fourcast team at Next ’18 San Francisco in July 2018
Do you want to experience Google Cloud Next ’18 yourself? You still can! Next is coming to London, 10-11th of October 2018. Contact us if you’re interested in attending.
