May 25 – 27, 2027 | University of Virginia
About the Cloud Forum and Cloud Community
For Higher Ed,
By Higher Ed
History
In 2015 Sarah Christen, director of IT Infrastructure at Cornell University, recognized the need to bring together those who were tasked with investigating hyper-scale computing for their respective higher ed institutions. As many schools were starting down this road, too many were traveling alone. Sarah pulled together colleagues from the Cloud Computing Community Group, the Common Solutions Group and elsewhere to develop and implement the idea.
The first Cloud Forum took place in November 2015 in the auditorium of the Statler Hotel on the Cornell campus with representatives of 45 institutions gathered in a single room for a day and half. In that intimate setting the conversations were candid, the lessons shared valuable and the community built lasting. This was higher ed IT at its most collaborative.
The organizers knew there would be interest from vendors to attend. They agreed to invite representatives of the top platforms in use but with strict rules of engagement. They were invited to come listen and learn. No presentations. No participation in discussions. It is a unique opportunity for deeper understanding.
Each year the attendees express a desire to expand the event’s reach to more topics and more institutions while maintaining its character. In order to keep the conversation in one track, and one room, attendance is capped at roughly 100 attendees. Schools are limited to three attendees, the vendors to two.
In 2020 the COVID-19 Pandemic forced the Cloud Forum online, stretching it from one week to an entire school year, via monthly online sessions. The event maintained its mix of presentations, panels, lightning talks and research presentations. It even had an Unconference, a discussion format added in 2019, and greatly valued.
In 2021 the Cloud Forum returned to Cornell and the Statler for the last time. In-person attendance was close to pre-pandemic levels, and through the very capable efforts of the Cornell AV team, much of the event was made available to remote participants and presenters.
At the end of the 2021 Cloud Forum, organizers announced that Internet2 would take the Cloud Forum into its care and facilitate its movement to other institutions. Washington University in St. Louis bravely raised its hand to volunteer to be the first institution to carry on the impressive legacy created by Sarah Christen in 2015.
Responding to community concerns about an overloaded fall conference schedule, the Cloud Forum shifted to a spring event. An abbreviated, but highly successful Cloud Forum was held at Emory University in 2023. In 2024 the event returned to a full multi-day Cloud Forum hosted by Stanford University. NYU followed in 2025, University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2026, and in 2027 the event will be held at the University of Virginia. We hope you will join us as the Cloud Forum tours many of the beautiful campuses around the country.
Hosting the Cloud Forum
The Cloud Forum visits a different institution each year, giving you, the community, an opportunity to showcase your campus and share some hospitality with your peers. If your institution would like to know more about hosting a future Cloud Forum, read Hosting the Cloud Forum to learn what is involved in hosting, and reach out to Bob Flynn (bflynn@internet2.edu) to discuss.
The 2027 Cloud Forum Organizing Committee
The Cloud Forum relies on significant volunteer effort. Here is your hard-working 2027 Organizing Committee:
| Name | Organization |
|---|
| Cornelia Bailey | University of Chicago |
| John Bailey | Washington University in St. Louis |
| James Bennett | Indiana University |
| Jared Bulosan | University of Notre Dame |
| Tim Champ | University of Maryland – Baltimore County |
| Josh Clark | Colorado State University |
| Seth Clark | University of Iowa |
| Damian Doyle | University of Virginia (host) |
| Simon Fairey | Princeton University |
| Phil Fenstermacher | William & Mary University |
| Bob Flynn | Internet2 (chair) |
| Todd Haddaway | University of Maryland – Baltimore County |
| Valerie Johnson | Internet2 (staff support) |
| Lucrecia Kim-Boswell | Stanford University |
| David Lacey | J Paul Getty Trust |
| Chris Manly | Internet2 (staff support) |
| Andrew Marcontell | Texas A&M University |
| Jomes Monek | Lehigh University |
| Sean O’Brien | Internet2 (sponsor) |
| Brian Pasquini | University of Pittsburgh |
| Joseph Rafferty | Texas A&M University |
| Rick Rhoades | The Pennsylvania State University |
| Matthew Rich | Northwestern University |
| Nidhi Yadav | Internet2 (staff support) |
2027 Higher Education Cloud Forum Organizing CommitteeGetting Involved with the Cloud Forum
If you would like to join the committee planning a future Cloud Forum, please contact Bob Flynn (bflynn@internet2.edu)
The CCCG is a community-run, Internet2-supported group devoted to sharing knowledge and exploring solutions to their cloud computing questions. They run monthly community calls with presentations by community peers, sharing their work. Join this and other community efforts, including regular monthly calls and conversations on the Cloud Computing Community Group (CCCG) email list (join) and Slack workspace (join).
Internet2’s CICP compliments the work of CCCG by providing structured community engagement around the technology stacks of the Cloud Service Providers. Longtime engagements with AWS and GCP feature regular structured and unstructured community calls on a variety of community-drivern topics as well as discounted CLASS training, cloud consulting, as well exclusive access to community-negotiated contracts and technical resources. For more information, write help@internet2.edu.