TechEX 24 Cloud Curious

[Bob Flynn <>]

Colleagues!

 

TechEX is well underway and boy did we start in style. For the first time I am going multimedia with the newsletter. Thanks to the wonderful Gynnel Fernandez, we captured some Cloudies in the wild. I don’t know if I’ll keep it up, but let me know if it’s too much.

Day Zero Heroes

In yesterday’s update I mentioned a few of the winners from the AWS GameDay, but this photo captures a good portion of the participants and the AWS support team that put on the event. If you see any of them in the hall or in a session, ask them about it. Congratulations to all who participated. GameDays are always a challenge and always a lot of fun.

Day One Recap

The Presentations

Yesterday I mentioned that migration seemed to be today’s theme. Well, the VMs may have left the building (headed for the cloud) by the ROCKERS were in the house! A trio of sessions today (Rocking the Cloud Migration to AWS (LMU), Migrating Cloud-resistant workloads (Harvard), and Navigating the Cloud: Aligning Essential Roles for Successful Data Center Exit at UCOP) provided detailed studies into data center exits for reasons ranging from reclaiming precious campus real-estate to cost reduction in the face of pending large-scale equipment refresh projects. The lessons they learned, the surprises they found, and the benefits the reaped will be food for thoughtful discussion far beyond this conference.

No, the Boston gig did not get cancelled, even if it’s not a big college town. These are the LMU Lions – Jeff Solomon and Rob Larmon. I have to ask though, shouldn’t they be Rastafarians? They were playing Exodus, after all. 

 

Tuesday wasn’t all hard rockin’ and smooth talkin’ in the Cloud track. This is TechEX after all. Where’s the code?? William & Mary’s Phil Fenstermacher fearlessly took us deep into the the techsand during his Rapid and Automated Application Deployment session showing their process for prepping and vetting applications for deployment at scale. 

 

Todd Haddaway and Damian Doyle (UMBC/Virginia/It’s complicated) regaled us of tales of the quest they took their unsuspecting IT team on to mold them into a seasoned cloud force. We laughed, we cried, and we saw a whole lot of AI-generated images on our way to workforce development enlightenment. It was…epic.

 

To close out the day we shuffled down the hall to join the Advanced Networking track for Joseph Rafferty’s Scalable Management of AWS VPCs session. He was so at home with the networking folks I’m afraid we might lose him. Then again, I heard he went all cloud native in Scott Taylor’s Cloud Networking 101 tutorial on Monday, so maybe we will name him ambassador. 

Wednesday in the Cloud Track

CloudGPT?

Yes, you knew it was coming. The irresistible force that is GenAI has found a home in the Cloud Track. (We’ll see where we are next year.) We start the day with a block of five AI sessions, each 25 minutes long. They are each good on their own, but together they provide a nice variety of topics from campus-wide facilitation to specific application. The GenAI block starts at 8:30am, a little earlier than we start the other days.

 

After the GenAI block we move back to more traditional Cloud fare. I am going to call out two sessions in particular, but they all look wonderful. 

 

During virtually every Cloud Track session on Tuesday, questions of cost, cost-savings and FinOps came up. On Wednesday Jenn Wheeler (also William & Mary…Who are these guys??) will talk about Scaling the Cloud for Savings, and theme near and dear to all of us, whether we like it or not.

 

I get the great pleasure of welcoming to the stage the Cloud Track program committee for a panel called Where in the Cloud Are We? A facilitated discussion about the state of Cloud in research and education. The panelists will do a brief round-robin presentation on a variety of topics then will entertain your questions and mine. (I don’t know if they will answer the questions, but they will entertain them, and us, and that’ll be worth something.) It should be both informative and thought-provoking. 

Full Wednesday Schedule

 All Wednesday sessions are held in Salon E (4th Fl).

 

8:30-8:55	Artificial Intelligence as a Service (NOTE EARLIER START TIME)
9:00-9:25	Generative AI for all: an Open Source GenAI platform for your campus community
9:25-9:50	Bridging the Gap: Open-Source AI vs. SaaS Solutions - Architecting for Interoperability
9:50-10:20	REFRESHMENT BREAK
10:20-10:45	Creating AI-Powered Chatbots and Research Concierge Services
10:45-11:10	Building an AI Chatbot: Leveraging RAG for Enhanced Conversational Experiences
11:20-12:10	Lessons Learned from Architecting, Deploying, and Managing a Secure Research Cloud
12:10-1:40	LUNCH
1:40-2:05	Cloud Data Benchmarking - Mining Actionable Intel from Granular Data
2:05-2:30	Scaling the Cloud for Savings
2:40-3:30	Where in the Cloud Are We? A facilitated discussion about the state of Cloud in research and education
3:30-4:00	REFRESHMENT BREAK
4:00-4:50	Serving Up TPAS: A Flavorful Take on Stanford's Technology Platform Assessment & Strategy Effort

 

Ready Player Won

After the success of Game Night at TX23, we are raising the bar (a bar?) to have a formal Game Night this year. Not only does this include a variety of games, accessible to all, even the mere game-curious among you, but thanks to our sponsors there will be a adult beverages. If I’m not mistaken, the first one is on the house. Game Night takes place at 7-10pm Wednesday evening in Gloucester (3rd Floor). You can see a list of the games your colleagues are bringing. I always bring games that are quick to learn and scale well. I hope you’ll join us.

Did You Know?

Rating

All of our presenters are professionals putting themselves and their ideas out there. Being professionals, they value and appreciate feedback. Please take a moment to rate your sessions. In the mobile app you can give star ratings to the presentations. Sadly, there does not appear to be a way to include comments. If you have additional constructive feedback, you can email the speaker directly, talk in the hall, or send it to me to pass on.

Slides & Recordings

I’m told the session slides will be posted after the conference is over, which is a good thing because I know for a fact some of the presenters are still finishing theirs. Come back to the TechEX24 website next week for the goods. (If they I hear otherwise, I will let you know.)

 

All of the Cloud Track sessions today and tomorrow are being recorded, though I’m not sure Rob Larmon will want his parents to see that haircut. Those take a little time to process. I understand the recordings will not be posted until January.

Mark Your Calendars

A group of community members are organizing a virtual FinOps conference focused on the research and education community. It will take place on Thursday, January 23 from 10am-2pm PST/1-5pm EST. While I don’t have the registration page all gussied up, I don’t want to miss this opportunity to spread the word about it. You can register now and I will send out updates, including the full agenda of speakers, when it has been finalized.

Lost and Found

I don’t like to end a communication on a somber note, but this hat has lost its way. It was found in the Cloud Track room today in search of its owner. If you know it’s owner or if you hadn’t realized where that breeze on your head was coming from, find me in the Cloud Track tomorrow and give us all a happy ending. If no one claims it by the end of sessions tomorrow, I’ll take it to the registration desk.

 

Final Words

 

Bob Flynn (he/him/his)

Program Manager

Cloud Infrastructure & Platform Services

Internet2 NET+ Services

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