When you get asked to attend a retreat day, the first thing that you think of is a day out full of relaxing activities. Then the following words are… it’s going to be held at The Crypt. For people that don’t know a crypt is a stone chamber beneath the floor of a church or other building. It typically contains coffins, sarcophagi, or religious relics. This is not quite the ideal retreat I was thinking of!
Attending the event, I managed to find Kyle Jenner (@kylejenneruk) and Alan Burns (@alburns73) looking about as lost I was trying to find the venue. Fortunately, it wasn’t in The Crypt, it was held in st James Church. The venue had some great art work and décor!
Start of the day was coffee and networking with an introduction to the event and its purpose, followed by a session by Zerto. Please find my post on the zerto content here. The event is aimed at a small group of community bloggers keeping it personal and open forum-based discussions on what we are seeing, they are seeing whilst updating us on their products and services. I find this type of event extremely useful, especially to hear what customers and other partners may or may not be doing and why!
Within the industry there is a bit of a taboo on people talking about what they do and why, due to the competitiveness in the industry. Personally, I don’t think this should be the case and discussing what everyone is seeing from a technical perspective allows us to become much more aware of the vendor marketing FUD. And you never know you may learn something!
After the zerto session and networking opportunity, lunch was provided @barsmith with a return to session with Cohesity. See blog on Cohesity here.
The sessions and discussions during the day were enlightening and opened my eyes to some of the thought processes people take in making decisions with their replication and recovery services. Once the sponsored sessions were finished, an open forum was started where any topics could be brought to the table for discussion and review. This for me was the best part of the day to understand how the industry has been changing.
This was the official ending of the event, which we all then had an hour at The Crystal Maze LIVE experience. Zerto vs Cohesity teams. The competitiveness was back, and it was every man & woman for themselves.
Overall this was a great event and I have to thank Patrick Redknapp (@patrickredknap) for organising this with his busy schedule. Also, a big thank you to Zerto and Cohesity for making the event possible and keeping it free for the attendees! Look forward to the next one!