Among the myriad of various vendor and technology focused conferences, a few really set themselves apart for their dedication to thought leadership and exploration of today’s answers to tomorrow’s problems. One of them is run by a consulting firm named AHEAD, located in the iconic Chicago Loop, a place that I was fortunate enough to be part of for many years as a solutions architect and engineer. The Looking AHEAD Tech Summit, held on 23rd June of 2016, is a different sort of gathering of the minds because it blends folks from successful large enterprises like Amazon and Nutanix with its own mixture of extremely skilled and seasoned architects and principal consultants.

I thought it’d be handy to highlight my top three reasons to attend this year’s Looking AHEAD Tech Summit from my own perspective. Without any further ado, here they are:

Top 3 Reasons to Attend Looking AHEAD Tech Summit

  1. Dan Lyons, Writer and Producer of Silicon Valley
    For those whom are fans of the hit show Silicon Valley, the morning keynote should be especially noteworthy. Dan Lyons, who is a writer and producer for the show, is presenting a talk entitled How to Completely, Totally, Absolutely Screw Up Your Company’s Corporate Culture. Since culture is absolutely at the heart of any successful organization, the content that Dan is going to share should be top of mind to anyone regardless of their position within a company.
  2. Introduction to Containers and How They Impact Enterprise
    In addition, the savvy team at Mesosphere are going to square their shoulders towards the topic of containers in the Container This! session. After producing a show on the Datanauts Podcast with their evangelist, Michael Hausenblas, I’m sure that the Looking AHEAD speaker, Ken Sipe, will do a bang-up job warming up the audience to alternatives and cooperative methods to using virtual machines for delivering applications.
  3. Silicon Valley Venture Capitalists on the Future of Infrastructure
    Last, but not least, I’m looking forward to the panel session featuring Tom Frangione, Greylock Partners; Krish Parikh, Lightspeed Venture Partners; and our own Bipul Sinha, CEO of Rubrik. Titled Where Infrastructure is Heading: Outlooks from Silicon Valley Venture Capitalists, the content is sure to steer into all sorts of interesting places that are near-term or long-reaching in their maturity lifecycle. I find that it’s always good to pay attention to the long running trends to keep skills, solutions, and companies in the proper line of sight.

To learn from industry experts in cloud and automation, virtualization, enterprise service management, and more, register here for the Looking AHEAD Tech Summit.