Transcript: EXO Cloud Summit

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Daniel: Okay, guys. This is Daniel, and I’m here with Pete Erickson. Pete is the creator of these EXO conferences, and we’re actually in beautiful Aspen, Colorado right now. We’re at a software engineering leadership conference, which we’re going to talk about. But you’re doing another conference soon, which is Cloud next week. So tell us a bit about that because I’ve got a couple of people that might be interested in learning more. First of all, what do these conferences about and why do you do them?
Pete Erickson: The EXO series really started out of I felt a need to bring people together that are building some of the best products in the world, where they can share information in a trusted setting away from kind of the din and noise of a typical conference event where it’s really hard to tell fact from fiction and also really hard to meet with people and not be distracted. So we come to the Aspen Meadows Resort, which is home of the Aspen Institute. It’s a really, really beautiful place. It’s away from everything that we typically know, the places we work, the commutes that we have. We’re at 8000 feet in these beautiful meeting rooms. And it really allows people to just let their shoulders drop and really share what it is they want to share and learn what it is they want to learn or need to know from one another.
Daniel: And when we talk about conferences, we usually think of these kind of large, Vegas-style conferences. But this is very different. It’s a max of 50 people with Chatham House Rules. Can you just talk a bit about what the environment is like?
Pete Erickson: As you said, it’s a small environment. The events range in size, anywhere from 30 to 50 people. And we really focus on who’s coming. They’re invitation and referral-only. And we want to make sure these are people that are actual, hands-on product leaders, engineers, people that can contribute a lot to the discussion, and also that have a lot to learn, people that are moving fast. We like to say those who learn the fastest are the ones that are getting ahead. And those are the types of people we bring together. So small environment, the meeting rooms, everybody is face-to-face. We try to avoid too many one-to-many conversations where there are presentations. We do have those, but really, those are intended to kick off a better dialog.
Daniel: Cool, all right. You have a couple of spots left for this next cloud conference in 2016. And then you’ll be doing both these again in 2017. Is that right?
Pete Erickson: That’s right. We have about 10 spots left for next week’s event. People who are flying in on Sunday, the 25th and leave on Tuesday, the 27th for the Cloud Summit, you can find that at [modev.com – 02:40] on our events page. And then next year we’ve booked the Software Leadership Summit and the Cloud Summit back to back. They’re going to be starting on the 17th of September and going through the 22nd. So they will follow each other and people can stay for both events. But we’re definitely looking forward to next year as well.
Daniel: I can’t wait to kick this week off, and we’ll be here next week. Armory is sponsoring these events. We really believe in you. It’s been just amazing to know you over the past decade and [unintelligible – 03:09] these events together.
Pete Erickson: Hey, we just don’t let anybody sponsor either. So it’s great to have Armory here.
Daniel: Thanks.