The Journey to Google Cloud Next ‘24

This edition is from Google Cloud CMO, Alison Wagonfeld .

As we prepare to host our flagship annual conference, Google Cloud Next ‘24, in Las Vegas this week, I’ve been thinking about how Next has evolved from a small event in San Francisco to a 30,000 attendee extravaganza in Vegas. In some ways this evolution has been an interesting reflection of the overall growth of Cloud, and I can even track my own 8 years at Google through the lens of Next.?

I first attended Google Cloud Next in 2016, shortly after I’d accepted my current role to head up marketing for the newly created Cloud division. It was a modest event at the time, but the opportunity ahead was palpable. I remember watching Jeff Dean share demos of Google’s Cloud Vision API, and my mind began racing with the possibilities for enterprise use cases. At the time, however, we had almost no customer stories to share, and our partner showcase had less than 20 companies in the mix.?

A year later in 2017, as we prepared for a bigger Next at San Francisco’s Moscone Center, we went to great lengths to get a few customers on stage and develop our partner network. Still, it was early days. Each subsequent year of Next, I’ve felt increasingly excited as the customer stories have grown and the partner ecosystem has expanded.?

Now, as I sit in Las Vegas and prepare for our opening day on Tuesday, it’s incredible to see how far we’ve come. We’ll be welcoming 30,000 attendees, nearly double the number from last year.? And there's nearly double the programming. We have three days of engaging sessions, product announcements, AI demos, networking, and fun. If you’re here in Vegas, I hope to see you at the Mandalay Bay and at The Kings of Leon and Anderson .Paak show! And if you can’t join us in-person, grab a digital pass to livestream the keynote and watch breakout sessions on-demand).?

We’ll be featuring stories from hundreds of Google Cloud customers across the event, including the keynotes, breakout sessions, even customer posters lining the walls.

It’s been great to see our Customer Showcase come together, featuring immersive AI activations from innovative companies like Bayer, UPS, McLaren and The Home Depot.?

With 300 partner sponsors joining us this year, the expo floor will be buzzing. As I walked through the half-built activations on Saturday evening, I took a moment to reflect on the importance of our Google Cloud ecosystem. Almost every customer story also includes a partner that helped them realize their vision.??

When I look back at the evolution of Next, I’m humbled by how integral Google Cloud products have become to our customers — whether that’s helping them provide better customer service, create highly personalized content at scale, automate repetitive tasks with AI, and so much more. Last year, we were just beginning to see the potential of generative AI; this year we’ll hear from hundreds of companies who are building with Google’s new, powerful Gemini models.??

Personally, I can’t wait to walk the show floor on Tuesday and hear firsthand about what everyone is working on. I’ve been building and marketing technology for more than two decades (gulp), and I’ve never been more excited about what’s possible. It’s an honor to host everyone this week — and I’m so appreciative of all who are on this journey with us.

Thank you for helping us build The New Way to Cloud.