Posts Tagged ‘trade show’

This guest blog comes to us from one of the most popular members of the SoftLayer trade show team: The SoftLayer + Supermicro Server Challenge II. You’ve seen our coverage of conference attendees competing to win a MacBook Air, but you’ve never gotten the story from the Server Challenge’s perspective … until now. We secretly recorded the Server Challenge’s introspective reflections on the competition at GDC 2013 to share with the world.

To compete, or not to compete, that is the question … Or at least the question I see most conference attendees struggle with when they see me. Some people light up with excitement at the sight of me while others turn away in fear, and I’ve even noticed a few of them start shaking uncontrollably as they recount the years of toil they survived in data centers when they managed server hardware for a living. I don’t take it personally, though … which is fitting because I’m not a person.

I am just a simple server rack with an ambitious purpose. I was made to give conference attendees a tangible, server-related experience when they visit SoftLayer’s booth, and I can humbly say that I’ve served that role faithfully and successfully. As attendees step up before me, they may have never touched a server in their lives, but by the time they finish their first attempt at the competition, that naivete is completely vanquished … Some even spend hours asking questions and studying strategy about how to most effectively install drive trays and plug in network cables. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if a few of the people reading this post are doing so in preparation for their next attempt.

When I was chosen as one of only a few server racks to don the Server Challenge II moniker, I knew my life would be difficult and dangerous. Luckily, I’ve been equipped with Supermicro servers that have proven to be even more resilient and durable than my creators would have hoped. While hard drive bays are designed to be hot-swappable, no one could have ever expected those bays would be swapped thousands of times by (often careless) conference attendees, but I haven’t needed a single server to be replaced, and my hard drive trays have also held up remarkably well. As I was sleeping last night, I had a flashback to GDC in San Francisco:

It’s dizzying to have flashbacks of time-lapse pictures, but those pictures painted a pretty accurate picture of what a single day of competition looks like for me. It’s clear that I’m serving my purpose when I see crowds of attendees looking on as competitors set amazingly fast times. As I hear the conversations about strategies and techniques that might shave tenths or hundredths of seconds off the next attempt, I stand a little taller and play my 8-bit music a little louder.

I am the Server Challenge II … Who’s next?

-The Server Challenge II

I can’t begin to tell you how much fun I have when I get to represent SoftLayer at conferences. The days may be long, and my feet may go numb by the end of the day from so much standing, but the time seems to fly as I get to meet new people, give out SoftLayer swag and introduce/explain the (in)famous SoftLayer Server Challenge.

I’ve observed that at most tech conferences, attendees will wander up and down the aisles, avoiding eye contact and looking preoccupied with emails or Angry Birds on their phones. When they walk by the SoftLayer booth, something changes. They stop. They pay attention. They get engaged. It’s hard to passively navigate around a crowd of people cheering on a Server Challenge competitor, and if you see another attendee your peripheral vision “wowing” us with his/her three-switch-ball juggling skills, you’re going to get distracted from your Angry Birds game. The SoftLayer booth is a snapshot of SoftLayer’s culture, and SoftLayer’s culture is magnetic.

When we catch the eye of that previously disinterested attendee, we get to tell the SoftLayer story: “Oh this? It’s a small version of a SoftLayer server rack with five SuperMicro servers in it. We’ve got more than 100,000 servers like these in 13 data centers around the world. Want to try and race to put it back together?” “This is called a switch-ball … SoftLayer is an infrastructure as a service provider, so it doesn’t really have a direct tie-in with SoftLayer’s business, but it’s the coolest giveaway you’ll see at the conference.” Whether the attendee is interested in the competition, hosting, servers or cool swag, we’ve started a conversation that we might not have had if we were just shaking hands and passing out brochures.

As the conference goes on, most booths see traffic decline. That’s when the Server Challenge is usually getting the most competitive. Several of our competitions have been decided by tenths or even hundredths of seconds, and a few have been won by the last competitor on the last day as the PA announcement notifies attendees that the expo hall is closing. At Cloud Connect Chicago, I recorded three competitors who each had the potential to walk away victorious:

All three of those competitors had fun in the SoftLayer booth. The other attendees who stepped up to the Server Challenge enjoyed themselves, too. That’s huge. That’s extremely rare. That’s why I love being a part of the rag-tag group SLayers who have the opportunity to spread the word about SoftLayer.

As I put together the quick video to show the competition from Cloud Connect Chicago, I wondered how the times compared with the other shows that have featured the Server Challenge this year. My “wondering” wound up becoming “researching,” and this is what I found:

Every conference seems to be competitive, and it’s amazing to see how close the times are between all of the conference winners in 2012. Server Challenge World Championship? While I start drawing up plans to try and make that a reality, I recommend you all print out blueprints and start training for the next time you come across a SoftLayer booth at an event.

-@khazard

If 80′s movies have taught me anything, it’s that any good story needs to have a video montage with Journey playing in the background. With that in mind, I’ll start this blog post with a glimpse of HostingCon 2012:

HostingCon brings the hosting industry together every year, and the conference winds up being surprisingly similar to classic 80′s “coming of age” movies:

• “Geeks” are among the main characters.
• There’s always a “funny guy.”
• At some point, the geeks attend a party.
• The characters learn more about themselves and others over the course of the movie.
• As the credits roll, everyone is inspired … Ready to take on the world.

With that in mind, HostingCon 2012 in Boston was a veritable John Hughes flick. There was no shortage of geeks, we hung out with one of the funniest people in the country, we threw a massive party, and we learned a ton. Without a doubt, attendees returned home with their intensity and enthusiasm cranked up to eleven (another 80′s reference).

The expo hall was abuzz with activity — albeit after a lull in the morning following the aptly named “Host Me All Night Long” party — and we enjoyed the opportunity to catch up with current partners and customers while meeting and speaking with soon-to-be partners and customers. While running a highly competitive Server Challenge, we were still able to dive deeper into partnerships, the build v. buy decision, branding, and launching a product when attendees visited our booth after hearing from our team in conference sessions and panels, and those conversations are what keep us coming back to HostingCon every year.

As a “veteran” of the hosting industry (assuming seven years of experience qualifies me), I’ve learned a great deal about the dynamics of the hosting industry from events like HostingCon over the years. On one hand, many of the attendees are “competitors,” and on the other hand, we’re all trying to make the industry better (since “a rising tide lifts all boats”). As a great example, look at the Internet Infrastructure Coalition (i2C), a trade association of companies with the shared goal and purpose of representing the industry in Washington, D.C., and beyond.

As it turns out, that unity flew out the door when attendees stood face-to-rack with the Server Challenge, though. Unlike our experiences at more general “technology” conferences, the components in our competition needed no introduction, and participants were particularly driven to best their peers … not only for the iPad, but for the pride of owning the Server Challenge title at HostingCon:

1. Darin Goldman – 0:59.28
2. Devon Hillard – 1:01.58
3. Ijan Kruizinga – 1:01.83
4. Jon Basha – 1:03.02
5. Sean Whitley – 1:03.06

As you saw in the video, Darin Goldman had the luxury of not needing his second attempt on the final day of the conference to secure a victory, but we were glad he let us record his “Breakfast Club” fist-pump to share with the world.

Don’t stop believing (in hosting).

-@khazard

P.S. I recorded the first few minutes of Ralphie May‘s set, but the adult language-ness of the content makes it a little more difficult to share with the world.

It’s that time of year again … HostingCon is upon us, and we’re faced with an interesting challenge: Go even bigger and badder in Boston than we did at HostingCon 2011 in San Diego. And that’s a tall order.

Given the fact that we’ve already sponsored and participated in dozens of conferences around the world this year, you might be surprised to learn that we’ve still got a surprises in our bag of tricks. Without giving too much away, I thought I’d share a few of the SoftLayer-specific highlights you make note of if you’re planning your HostingCon itinerary.

Conference Sessions

Want some hosting insight from the executive management team of one of the largest privately held hosting providers in the world? You might want to add these sessions to your calendar:

As more “non-traditional” hosters (telcos, cable companies & VARs) enter the cloud services market finding the right partner is a must. The opportunity is huge but this isn’t a situation where a rising tide will float all boats. Lance Crosby, CEO of SoftLayer will explain how, in order to be successful, you’ll need to understand the following: 1) Building for Internet Scale, 2) Think platform first, and 3) How to automate. The session will include discussion of how SoftLayer leverages partners to drive business growth.

The finance, operations and administrative back office of a hosting company can be a complex animal. Some hosts have dedicated software development teams to build in-house solutions, others opt to buy as much as they can from 3rd party vendors. Hear three different approaches to tackling the problem, and learn how your product line can determine the optimal mix of open source, home grown and off-the-shelf solutions.

In a crowded marketplace it’s critical to establish a clear position and identity in the minds of your customers and prospects. SoftLayer CMO Simon West will discuss best practices for defining and articulating your brand position, illustrating with specific examples drawn from his experience in building some of the industry’s most notable brands.

Introducing value-added services around basic hosting can be the strategy that turns a hosting business into a winning venture for the host, and a truly valuable service for the customer. In this interactive session, a panel of product management experts from the hosting business will cover best practices for building (or integrating), launching and selling a new product to your customers, helping you to develop processes, procedures and strategies for seeing a new product launch through from start to finish.

The SoftLayer Booth: #413

When you step into the expo hall at the John B. Hynes Convention Center, you’re going to see SoftLayer. In our 20′ x 30′ space at booth 413, we’ll have a few of your favorite SLayers available to answer any and all of your questions about what’s new and what’s next for SoftLayer … And to pass out some always-popular SoftLayer swag.

By popular demand, the Server Challenge will be making its return to HostingCon, and if last year is any indication, the competition will be fierce. The pride of besting all HostingCon attendees in reassembling a server rack is arguably as valuable as the New iPad the winner receives. Though your pride doesn’t have a Retina Display.

Host Me All Night Long

Following the phenomenal success of “Geeks Gone Wild” last year (headlined by The Dan Band), we knew we had our work cut out for us when it came to planning a party for HostingCon in Boston. We’ve teamed up with cPanel and comcure to put together “Host Me All Night Long” at Royale Boston on Monday, July 16.

One of my favorite comedians, Ralphie May, is going hit the stage at 8pm, and you won’t want to miss a second of his set. Following Ralphie, Yellow Brick Road is bringing their award-winning Classic Rock tribute skills from Las Vegas to keep the night going. Given the name of the party, you shouldn’t be surprised when a little AC/DC “You Shook Me All Night Long” is played.

Like last year, the attendance is strictly limited, and when the number of tickets available at http://hostingconparty.com/ reaches zero, you’re out of luck. Even if you’re our best customer ever, you need a ticket to get in the door, so register while you can! If you show a little extra SoftLayer love on Twitter or Facebook, send me a link to it (khazard@softlayer.com), and I might be able to hook you up with a VIP code to get you priority access and into the VIP section at the venue.

Like the Dropkick Murphys, we’re “shipping up to Boston,” and we hope to see you there!

-@khazard

When a SLayers pack their bags and heads to the ‘Big Apple,’ we go BIG. Our most recent trip to NYC for Cloud Expo East proved that statement over and over again. When I heard I’d be one of the employees representing SoftLayer at the Javits Convention Center, I did a little dance … Cloud Expo is one of my favorite conferences, and New York City is one of my favorite cities, so I had a lot to be excited about.

Cloud Expo East and Cloud Expo West are two of the biggest shows SoftLayer sponsors every year. Attendees come from various industries — from digital marketing agencies to software as a service providers to hosting resellers — with their own needs and questions about what’s happening “in the cloud.” Because our Cloud Expo presences usually get a ton of traffic, we decided to unveil our brand new 20′ by 20′ booth in New York:

For the last few months, we’ve been sketching, editing and tweaking our vision of the booth. Naturally, our new “Build the Future” branding was present, and you could see the simple “Our Platform. Your Vision.” statement from wherever you were. By the time the design was finalized, we were on pins and needles in anticipation, waiting for the booth leap off the paper. We weren’t disappointed, and conference attendees weren’t either.

In addition to the hundreds of conversations we had with attendees about SoftLayer’s cloud computing capabilities, it was pretty amazing to me that so many people commented on our booth design. Many attendees noticed that our booth gets bigger and bigger every year, and the fact that our booth towered over most of the other booths in the area made that a pretty easy observation. As attendees were moving down the escalators into the exhibition hall, they were greeted by the SoftLayer. Because the booth was designed with an open-concept in mind, we never felt too claustrophobic … Even when a flood of people would come hunting for the new SoftLayer flexi-frisbees we were giving out after they heard Duke or Marc present.

Despite the “openness” of the booth design, many attendees were able to gather what SoftLayer is all about from the graphic side panels … and the Server Challenge:

That’s right. The infamous Server Challenge continued to draw crowds and spark conversations in the new booth. And it was the perfect “finishing touch” to put the new conference presence over the top. While some attendees were hesitant to step up to try their hands at the competition, others were eager to accept the challenge. And as usual, the leader board was impossibly close:

1. Dejian Fang – 0:59.08
2. Corjan Bast – 0:59.59
3. Logan Best – 1:00.49
4. Jeffrey Abatayo – 1:01.00
5. Bryan Wong – 1:01.84

The top time of 59.08 seconds was a mere 2.76 seconds faster than the fifth place time!

When conference attendees weren’t watching the Server Challenge craziness or ducking to avoid an errant SoftLayer frisbee, we had a few more “oohs” and “ahhs” to share. In the new booth design, we incorporated four iMacs, one in each corner. If an attendee had a question about our portal, our pricing or our API, we could fire up a browser and use the SoftLayer-sponsored conference wifi to take them where they needed to go. If no one was using the computers, the screens would show a flashy video that included some interesting SoftLayer facts and a look at a SoftLayer Truck Day.

Off the expo floor, SoftLayer CTO Duke Skarda and Vice President of Product Innovation Marc Jones announced our new product, Private Clouds. No big deal. If you didn’t see that announcement or you want to learn more, Nathan Day (SoftLayer’s Chief Scientist) posted a fantastic blog coinciding with SoftLayer’s private clouds release, and Duke followed up with an in depth look at how and why we chose to build private clouds the way we did.

Sad that you missed your chance to see the new 20′ x 20′ booth in person? Don’t cry… If you’re in the Silicon Valley for Cloud Expo West (November 5-8), we won’t be hard to spot.

-Natalie

I’ve been working at SoftLayer for almost ten months now, in my relatively short tenure, I’ve written hundreds (if not thousands) of tweets covering a broad range of topics and events … As a Social Media Coordinator, it’s an integral part of my job. Given what I’ve learned about hosting in the past year, I’m constantly surprised by how second-nature this intimidatingly technical industry has become. I guess that’s what happens when you’re immersed in a technology-focused company like SoftLayer.

Beyond sharing technical news and content about what’s happening in the world of cloud computing, I’m also responsible for keeping our customers in the loop about all of our trade shows, conferences and events. If you’ve been to a technology trade show in the past year, you probably saw SoftLayer. We sponsor, attend or exhibit at more than sixty events every year, and it feels like I have been to them all. I know the ins and outs of every event on our schedule well before it begins, regardless of whether that event’s down the street or in an exotic location like Hong Kong, Tokyo, Singapore, Amsterdam or London (Interesting fact: In the past week, we had events in all of those locations).

Social media is one of the ways our customers and followers can keep a pulse on SoftLayer’s activity and growth. We travel the world to share how we help customers Build the Future, and as a part of the social media team, I get to help introduce that conversation. Let’s use Internet World as an example.

Last week, a group of SLayers traveled to London to attend Internet World. To prepare for Internet World, I tried to schedule and share as much relevant content about SoftLayer with the #iwexpo audience to generate awareness and drive traffic to our booth. At larger shows like Internet World, we typically have a conference session or speaking engagement, and on the expo hall floor, you’ll usually see a crowd like this one milling around our booth:

The Server Challenge generates its own social media — from word-of-mouth “you’ve gotta try this” conversations at the show to the typical “social media” channels like Twitter and Facebook. The gamifiction of rebuilding a miniature SoftLayer server rack is one of those interesting, entertaining and innovative ideas that seems to be unique to the mad scientists at SoftLayer. Invariably, the competition “ain’t over ’til the fat lady sings,” and at Internet World, we had the most dramatic competition conclusion ever … But we’ll get back to that in a minute.

From a social media perspective, the folks who stop by SoftLayer’s booth want to watch the leader board as the show progresses. The expo hall may be open for several days, so it might be tough to keep an eye on the Server Challenge leader board … Attendees then trust us to keep them informed via social media. Every day, we post the latest times to beat, and when we look at our analytics, it’s wild to see the number of people clicking through to see the current top ten times. It doesn’t seem like much, but a few hundred people at Internet World wanted to know what this table looked like throughout the whole show:

The top two times you see on the final leader board caused the late-show dramatics. Joseph Waite clocked a fantastic 1:03.68 to secure the top spot on the board in the middle of Day 3 at the show, and Rob McEwen stepped up to the challenge for his Day 3 attempts about 10 minutes prior to the scheduled close of the expo hall. With about 25 onlookers, Rob stopped the clock on his second attempt with a time of 1:02.14 … Good enough for first place.

The problem: One of the drive trays was not installed all the way.

Because we want to make sure the winner has everything installed correctly in the fastest time, we had to add 5 seconds to his time for the mistake, and we gave him one more chance to complete the challenge to be fair to him. Unfortunately, the final attempt didn’t beat Joseph’s 1:03.68, so the new iPad was destined for Joseph. While Rob was a little bummed, he understood the reasoning for the decision, and he committed to stopping by our booth next year to win his iPad outright.

I was a few thousand miles away from all of this activity, but I felt like a major part of it given my social media involvement in tracking and sharing the latest updates. The best part of my job is when I get to interact with our customers, whether it be face to face or virtually. I want the messages you see on @SoftLayer and facebook.com/SoftLayer to be entertaining, interesting and helpful. We want you to feel connected to what’s happening at SoftLayer and what we’re all about.

Speaking of giving you insight into “what we’re all about,” I can’t wrap up this blog about Internet World without sharing a little “insider” information about the SLayers at the booth: They’re pretty competitive. They ran their own internal Server Challenge:

And if anyone is curious about the fastest time we’ve ever had in the Server Challenge, you can see it right there at the top of the list. Though to be fair, Kevin’s probably done it a few thousand times.

-Rachel

Last week, the SoftLayer team attended ad:tech San Francisco. It’s pretty unbelievable to think that it’s only April, and this show was the seventh I’ve attended this year. 2012 has already been a HUGE year for SoftLayer in terms of growth, and our trade show and conference schedule has provided a fantastic outlet to share some of the good news. In addition to the seven shows I’ve attended, SoftLayer has exhibited at six more, and each has it’s own unique focus and audience — ad:tech in particular.

At most shows, the conversations I have can be best described as “technical.” I’ll field questions about our network capacity, hybrid environments, API functionality and data center pod architecture. The attendees that stop by and talk to us are typically technical members of IT teams familiar with their hosting needs and interested in learning about our cloud and dedicated environments. At ad:tech, the attendees that I talked to were more interested in “big picture” differentiators and the non-technical value that SoftLayer provides, so I got to tell the SoftLayer story in a fresh way.

Most of our ad:tech conversations were in a theme of managed hosting, flexibility, short-term resource availability and scalability. The attendees that stopped by our booth were no less qualified as customers than the IT administrators we might meet at other shows, but they couldn’t be won over with the industry-leading numbers we would normally share … They were more interested in hearing about the Super Bowl campaigns we’ve supported, the streaming media services we host and some of the high-profile clients that attest to platform’s ability to handle anything they can throw at us.

The messaging on our booth graphic set the stage perfectly:

Our Platform.
Your Vision.
Build on a global cloud infrastructure at Internet scale. Blur the lines between physical and virtual. Bend infrastructure to your imagination. We’ve created the platform on which you’ll create tomorrow.
Build the future.

The most surprising observation I made at ad:tech was that despite the “big picture” conversations I tended to have with attendees, they were all equally (if not MORE) interested in our Server Challenge:

During the two-day conference, these “non-technical” attendees completed the challenge with an average time of 1:37, and this show’s Server Challenge champion, Rany Grinberg, walked away with a “new iPad” after recording a blazingly fast 0:58.34 time. They might not have been able to tell you what all the pieces in our server rack did, but they could definitely put it back together quickly.

I had a blast meeting all the attendees who stopped by our booth. If you happen to be one of those people, thank you for visiting us … Now start studying and practicing to take on the Server Challenge again at our next show!

-Summer

A month ago, Summer talked about how SoftLayer defies the laws of physics by being in several different places at the same time. With a worldwide network and data center footprint, that’s always going to be the case, but when we have several events going on in a given week, we’re even more dispersed. As Summer mentioned in her Server Challenge blog this morning, she traveled east to New York City for ad:tech with a few SLayers, and I joined a team that headed west for Cloud Expo West in Santa Clara, California.

We set up shop on the expo floor and had the opportunity to meet with interesting and interested attendees between session. In addition to our exhibit hall presence, SoftLayer had three SLayers featured in presentations, and the response to each was phenomenal.

Our first presenter was none other than SoftLayer CTO Duke Skarda. His presentation, “Not Your Grandpa’s Cloud,” was about dedicated servers and whether cloud computing may be surpassing that “grandpa” of the hosting industry. Joined by RightScale CEO Michael Crandell, Duke also announced our SoftLayer’s new relationship with RightScale. If you didn’t have a chance to join us, we have a treat for you … You can download Duke’s presentation from Sys-con!

Five minutes after Duke left the stage, SoftLayer Director of Product Innovation Marc Jones spoke to Cloud Expo attendees about “Building at Internet Scale in a Hosted Environment.” His focus was how businesses could enable technologies, design and architecture of Internet scale solutions in a hosted environment. He shared trends from SoftLayer customers and partners, explained what SoftLayer believes Internet-scale is from a technology perspective, and the products and services in the market that create a scalable solution.

On Day 3, SoftLayer Director of Corporate Analytics Francisco Romero presented a question to attendees: “How Smart is it to Build Your Own Cloud?” With concerns around security, hardware, software and flexibility, is a business better off going with a hosted solution over building its own cloud infrastructure. Spoiler alert: He showed how the hosted environment was head-and-shoulders over the in-house environment in most cases.

All in all, Cloud Expo West was an exemplary tradeshow for SoftLayer … Three fantastic speakers in two days driving traffic to our booth where we could share how SoftLayer has built our cloud and how our approach is part of a bigger effort to drive innovation in the world of hosting.

As Summer mentioned in her post, we want to see your smiling faces at our booths and in our presentations in the future, so bookmark the SoftLayer Event Calendar and start planning your trips to meet us in 2012!

-Natalie

If you’ve visited SoftLayer at a large conference this year, you probably came face-to-rack with our Server Challenge. Your task: Reassemble our miniature rack of SuperMicro servers in the fastest time at the conference. To do this, you need to install twenty drive trays in five servers and connect network cables in the correct switches to mirror the server rack setup on our data centers. If you’re able to score the best time, you win an iPad 2!

In the sometimes-boring world of collateral and T-shirts at trade shows, the activity around this competition stands in stark contrast. It’s been huge hit everywhere we go, so if you haven’t had a chance to try your hand at the challenge, I’m sure we’ll bring it to several of our 2012 shows. As a way of rewarding those of you who loyally follow our blog, I thought I could give you an advantage by sharing some tips for when you’re in front of the Server Challenge rack … And to give you an idea of how important these tips can be, look at how close the top two times were at ad:tech NYC:

That’s right. 17 hundredths of a second between victory and defeat. Now are you ready to take some notes?

The Start
When you start the challenge, don’t look at the timer to see if your time started … If it doesn’t start, we’ll stop you. By focusing your attention on the network cables or drive trays (whichever you choose to start with), you can save yourself a half of a second.

Network Cables
You don’t have to connect the network cables first, but I have to choose something to complete first, so the network cables won the coin flip. When you’re connecting the network cables, it’s best to grab all three cables of the same color and try to snap them in together. Plugging in the cables one-by-one requires three times the work.

Hard Drives
When you’re tackling the hard drives, the key is to line up the drives and have them installed completely before moving on. My tip for installing the drives is to tilt them in on a sideways angle, not at an upwards angle. If you try and tilt the drives upwards, you’ll most likely get the drive tray stuck and have to remove it to try again. If you can do it precisely, picking up two drives at one time has worked well, and our all-time record of around 54 seconds took that approach.

One last pointer: Lock them in place immediately after installing them. If you leave the latch open, it makes it harder to get neighboring drives installed, and it’s such a small incremental effort to close the latch that even if you perfect a “close all the latches” technique at the end, you’d still end up spending more time.

The Finish
Don’t forget to put both hands back on the timer to stop your time.

Now that you’re equipped with some of the best Server Challenge tips and tricks, we want you to start training. In 2012, we expect to see someone complete it in under 50 seconds … And that person probably will carry the all-time record home – along with a new iPad 2!

Keep an eye on our Event Schedule for upcoming shows, and if there’s a conference where you really want to see the Server Challenge, let us know and we’ll see if we can set it up.

Good Luck!

-Summer

Is it possible to be in three places at once? For SoftLayer it is! Last week was an extremely busy one for the SoftLayer team. SLayers from the marketing and sales teams were dispersed to cover three different trade shows in two separate cities where we’d meet a few thousand soon-to-be SoftLayer customers.

I attended Web 2.0 Expo in NYC – a great event where I was able to once again demystify the SoftLayer Switch Ball and explain the awesomeness of SoftLayer. Nothing too crazy to report from the expo floor, but we did have one interesting experience outside of the event where we witnessed a man sleep while standing up. We don’t know how he was able to sleep for over two hours without falling over, but his execution was impressive:

While I was in New York City, cPanel Bootcamp was happening closer to home in Austin, Texas. From what I hear, a second annual rocket war broke out, and our booth was rushed by attendees looking to stock up on ammo.

Just down the street from the cPanel conference, GDC Online was up and running in the Austin Convention Center. This was another awesome event for SoftLayer and once again the Server Challenge was a huge hit:

Congrats to Anthony Pecorella for winning with a time of 1:00.84! We know you’ll enjoy your new iPad.

After both show floors closed, attendees from both cPanel Bootcamp and GDC Online joined us for some drinks, food and retro games at Maggie Mae’s on Sixth Street. Notable attendees included Mario, Princess Peach and our very own Jeff Reinis who happens to be a 1983 Pac-Man record holder!

If you didn’t have a chance to join SoftLayer, CoreSite and TeliaSonera at the Time Warp Retro Gaming Party, you can live vicariously via Flickr:

Thanks to everyone who worked so hard to make sure these three events went off without a hitch, and thanks to all of you who stopped by and said hi! We hope to see you all soon at one of our upcoming events: http://www.softlayer.com/Media/event-schedule

-Summer