Insights from NetApp at.. NetApp INSIGHT Meetups

When I joined NetApp, INSIGHT was a week-long event that gathered people together to hear about NetApp innovation, the future of technology, and inspirational speakers. It was a chance to hear from customers, partners, and employees of NetApp on their most important topics. For me, coming from Australia, it was a chance to connect with people around the world in person.

Then the Fire Nation attacked… or at least, COVID struck and we have been flipped upside down into the world of hybrid and virtual conferences. Since 2020 vendors have been trying to figure out the balance - how much content is too much? How do you make people feel included when they're watching most of your content from their home-office-slash-kitchen?

I think 2022 was the year we all felt a little tired of the various ways that conferences tried to get us to feel engaged.

And knowing this - and being towards the end of the year, but not quite ready to go entirely back to in-person - the NetApp INSIGHT conference at the beginning of November was, well, a little different. There were some familiar segments: an inspirational keynote from NetApp CEO George Kurian , “main stage” sessions with our hyperscaler friends, technical breakouts between 20 and 60 minutes long.

But INSIGHT took place in a single day (depending where you were in the world) for anyone with an internet connection to watch! The rewatchability of the keynotes on NetApp TV and not having to stay glued to my monitor for several days was definitely appreciated.

But the world moves on really quickly from virtual keynotes, and NetApp INSIGHT evolved too. Recently I was also excited to join an INSIGHT Meetup: a local, intimate event held just for customers. Where not only the past of INSIGHT as a face to face event was captured but the future of NetApp could be discussed and demonstrated in person by experts.

The agenda was like attending a mini-INSIGHT. A high level discussion of the industry, then breakouts depending on what attendees were interested in. Lots of demos from technical experts, who were able to answer questions more directly in person rather than over a chat service.

And then there was the networking: not only seeing customers face to face but also one another, too. I think that community connections are one of the core parts of any event whether online or face-to-face. This is honestly what's going to get me back out there going to conferences, not necessarily the breadth or depth of the content.

Just like INSIGHT, content was wide ranging, from Richard Hardy and I setting the stage of evolved cloud, to amazing presenters ( ?? Cecile Kellam ? , ??Justin Parisi , Bala Murugesan and many more who took attendees deep in breakouts on StorageGRID, Kubernetes, ONTAP and of course the star of this year’s show BlueXP.

While it may not have the glitz and glamour of a show conference, there's something really personal about these events (shoutout to all the customers who spent time with us!) and I got to scratch that itch of connecting with others in our fast-paced industry. Hope to see you at the next event!

More great NetApp content: https://ntap.com/3Donojv