By Bob Flynn, Internet2 Program Manager
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes
Since 2015, the Cornell Cloud Forum has been the place where higher education cloud leadership meets to share their successes and failures, ask tough questions, and seek consensus on best practices. The event is put on by higher education for higher education and generously hosted by Cornell University.
Join Us on November 16-18
While this year’s Cornell Cloud Forum has returned to an in-person event, the organizers are making several sessions available virtually in partnership with the Internet2 TechEXtra21 series. Check out the schedule and register to join us! |
The brainchild of Sarah Christen, Cornell’s director of infrastructure services, the Cloud Forum is a uniquely frank and intimate gathering of cloud professionals. Registration is strictly capped because attendees gather in one auditorium, providing an environment for candid discussions of the challenges and benefits of guiding higher education’s accelerating adoption of public cloud technologies.
Cloud Forum content follows one of several formats:
- Lightning talks – Five-minute, rapid-fire presentations with no Q&A. These range from stories of recent successes, provocative ideas, or strategy quandaries.
- Presentations – Thirty-minute windows to tell a more complete story with room for discussion.
- Panels – Moderated nuanced discussions exploring inflection points in higher ed’s cloud journey.
- Research presentations – Researchers whose work is powered by the public cloud. They are asked to present solely on their research, not on the underlying technology. These talks serve as an inspiration and reminder of the importance of the work we do.
- Unconference – Crowd-sourced topics leading to a series of breakout sessions, which may include spontaneous presentations or simply discussion. An unconference culminates in a report back on all sessions and often results in conversations or working groups that continue well beyond the Cloud Forum.
In 2020, the Cloud Forum, like most events, was unable to be held in person. The organizers pivoted to an online format, which very successfully maintained all of these formats in an agenda that spanned the academic year.
The 2021 Cloud Forum will once again be held in-person, but it also will include a sampling of lightning talks, presentations, and researcher presentations for remote audiences. Internet2’s TechEXtra21 is including these virtual sessions in its Cloud Infrastructure and Services track.
Please register and join us this year for any or all of these exceptional virtual sessions.