Global Nutanix .NEXT Digital Experience 2021
Registration is open for the annual Nutanix .NEXT conference or actually “Global Nutanix .NEXT Digital Experience”. It will be held from September 20th to 23rd and, like last year, the event is online. This year’s catchy slogan “Cloud on your terms“. All attendees benefit from .NEXT by inspiring keynotes, training courses & exams, product test drives and of course professional networking.
Why Attend?
Well, I could just state the following taken from the Nutanix .NEXT website:
“This global multi-day conference showcases what’s new in enterprise datacenter and cloud technologies – including hyperconvergence, hybrid clouds, DevOps, automation, security, and more. Join other IT professionals as you immerse yourself in powerful keynote presentations, access to 100+ technical breakout sessions, and interactive digital networking sessions. Come experience what’s NEXT!”
But that’s too easy and therefore, I want to take this opportunity by sharing my experience from last year’s .NEXT Digital Experience.
To be honest, I had my doubts with that first online version of the .NEXT event. I had experienced the pre-COVID .NEXT conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. It was truly amazing with a beautiful conference hall containing multiple areas, stages and bars. Lots of effort and care was put into the event ensuring that everyone had a great experience. It’s quite difficult to put everything in words. If you are interested, do check out my video impression from that event: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLrTHFjMjWw.
So, I was a bit sceptic of the online version of the .NEXT conference. Of course, it was exceptional from Nutanix that they did decide to continue with .NEXT whilst we were in the midst of a global pandemic and more or less bound to our homes. They could easily have cancelled the whole thing but that would like giving up and that’s not something Nutanix does.
On the first day I logged on the .NEXT event portal and the keynote was about to start. I was at home and sitting at my desk drinking my favorite coffee from a Nutanix coffee mug (thanks again, Bart Groot Zevert). No travels of sorts needed apart from walking up some stairs. Still sceptic and unsure how the event would feel compared to Copenhagen. I did quickly record a video capturing those moments before the start and providing some insights on the .NEXT event portal. You can have a look at that video via: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9X3dX3SdWQ.
People were already chatting with each other in the keynote chat area and the excitement began to grow… The keynote started with the intro movie focused on the pandemic and how we adapt to continue moving forwards. My favorite quote from that intro: “While we are physically apart, we are virtually together”. Dheeray started his speech and, yes, the feeling from 2019 was back! Somehow Nutanix succeeded in capturing that feeling of togetherness. Incredible! During that keynote session but also all other sessions, you are able to chat with others or even the speakers to maintain that important connection with everyone else. And with “everyone”, I refer to lots of people: last year’s event counted 41,000 registrants! As far as I know, .NEXT Copenhagen was attended by 4,000 persons.
Time flew by with the many interesting sessions. I could not attend all of them but that was not a problem as sessions became available on-demand. This allowed me to easily check the missed ones at my own pace and chosen time.
When the digital event ended, I was left with more knowledge, increased motivation and inspiration as well as new connections. Quite funny as those were the same key takeaways from Copenhagen.
I hope that I have gotten you more interested in this event. See below for more information and registration. And yes, it’s a FREE event.
More Information & Registration
For more information and registration, go to: https://www.nutanix.com/next. On that website you can also view the sessions from last year’s event. How convenient! 🙂
I am looking forward to September 20th to 23rd and hope to meet you at the .NEXT Digital Experience 2021!