Virtual FOSE to include cloud camp this year

You’ve probably heard of FOSE, right? Well, Virtual FOSE is coming later this month. On July 21, the virtual conference will bring together experts and IT...

You’ve probably heard of FOSE, right? Well, Virtual FOSE is coming later this month.

On July 21, the virtual conference will bring together experts and IT professionals to discuss a variety of topics, including cloud computing.

Christina Condos is vice president of events for 1105 Government Information Group and tells us more about what you can expect.

“What virtual FOSE does for us is get us out of the Beltway area. It lets people who probably would not ordinarily attend the event, especially in these days of cut budgets, to be able to access some of the content and also to see some of the vendors. On the vendors’ side, it gives them access to people that generally would not [be] at an event in D.C.”

This is the second year of the virtual conference, and she explains that the idea of them is certainly not new, but they’ve become a lot easier and more manageable over the years.

“Most [virtual meetings] were very clunky and just not user-friendly and there was a fear in the beginning of — ‘there go live events! The Internet is going to take their place!’ But, in the last few years, the technology has gotten so much better, and we’ve also gotten the demand from our customers, meaning the vendors, that they would like to do things virtually.”

Because it is virtual, she added, there is also more flexibility.

“We do archive it. For three months, you can continue going back there. You can still see the content, you can contact the exhibitors; however, you might not get a live response. The advantage to going on the actual day is that, if someone is exhibiting, it’s almost like an instant message conversation. So, there are advantages to attending, but if you can’t attend, you can still go after the fact.”

Virtual FOSE will have Craig Newmark as a keynote, as well as a variety of sessions about existing and emerging technologies. Condos adds that this year there will also be a cloud camp.

“[It’s] in an unconference format, which means that people that attend the event kind of create the agenda. It’s moderated . . . by Dave Nielsen and we promote it to people who are interested in cloud, which, it seems, everybody is, so we get a pretty good turnout. We do have sponsors. What Dave does is, he’ll poll the audience on four, five, six different topics that they would like to cover. They crowdsource it . . . and then they break into groups and have some informal sessions on cloud. Then they get back together after the fact to share what they’ve learned and what they’ve found out.”

Virtual FOSE is free and will take place from 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. on July 21.

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