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Each month, C2C shares the latest news from the team and the best highlights from all of you here in the community. Read on for the most essential C2C updates from February 2023. C2C’s in-person events returned with plenty of energy and excitement in February of 2023. Our 2Gather events in Sunnyvale, Munich, Zurich, and New York City brought together dozens of Google Cloud customers for the kinds of unique networking and collaboration opportunities that only a community like C2C can offer. Read on below to hear stories from each of these events. SunnyvaleFor our first in-person event of the year, we returned to Silicon Valley, where Google was born, for another event in Sunnyvale, California. The event included a fireside chat with C2C partner NetApp and a customer panel featuring speakers from NetApp, Lytics (another partner), Exabeam, and Cisco Systems. Bruno Aziza, Senior Director, Outbound Product Management, Google Cloud, introduced and hosted the event––one of many events Bruno will be joining in the coming months. According to Dylan Steeg (@Dylan_Steeg), Vice President of Business Development at Aible, “The event had extremely thought-provoking insights stemming from the issues of modern-day data analytics and how it impacts a customer base, as well as a panel that discussed their personal experiences with data.” Read more about the event here:  Munich2Gather: Munich was a customer-led event featuring sessions with Volkswagon, Soravia, and Nagarro. First, Kiran Francis (@kiranfrancis), Google Cloud Foundation Services Product Owner at Volkswagon, led a session about the company’s Group-wide Google Cloud Landing Zone. Then Hannes Gutemeier of Soravia and Jörg Weis of Nagarro sat down for a fireside chat about VDI modernization. Andy Hardy (@Andy Hardy) of Workspot, a regular at C2C events in the EMEA region, was particularly pleased. “Brilliant event!” he said. “Thanks for great organization, and a fascinating ‘Customer 2 Customer’ agenda!" Zurich2Gather: Zurich was the second of three events C2C hosted in February featuring guests from our partners at NetApp. At this event, NetApp chatted with Dentsply Sirona about using Cloud Volumes ONTAP to manage a hybrid deployment. The event also included a conversation with ParaShift AG about using Google Vision AI for intelligent document recognition. Oliver Ruf, Head of Middleware at Coop, Switzerland, told C2C afterward, “The community meetup was an incredibly insightful and inspiring experience that also allowed me to meet new people. The diverse range of perspectives and ideas shared by attendees, combined with the opportunity to make new connections, left me feeling energized and motivated to continue exploring new ideas and expanding my network.” New YorkOur most recent 2Gather event in New York City doubled as a formal launch party for the C2C Financial Services community. Michael Beal (@MikeBeal), CEO of Data Capital Management, who hosts the group on our platform, appeared alongside speakers from OpCo and PaerPay and partners Publicis Sapient and NetApp. The sessions and the networking at the event continued conversations that began the night before at an executive dinner for companies in and adjacent to the financial services industry, where customers like Deutsche Bank and Vimeo made valuable connections and explored new opportunities to collaborate and build on existing relationships. “Being able to see the community, it’s a lot of fun,” said Derek Canton, CEO of PaerPay. “I see the people in the space more than all the cool tech. There’s tons of cool tech and things that we’re talking about, but there’s so much depth behind that that I think is really important.” Read our report from the scene here:  Are you looking for more, including recordings from virtual events? Browse All Articles  We are excited to feature some special guest speakers from Google Cloud at our in-person events in March. Bruno Aziza in Paris and LondonTuesday, March 14 and Thursday, March 16Bruno Aziza, Head of Data and Analytics, specializes in high-growth SaaS, enterprise software, and everything data, analytics, data science, and artificial intelligence. Bruno, alongside customer speakers at both events, will host panel discussions about overcoming data challenges. Each event will also explore other unique challenges cited by speakers from the consumer packaged goods, retail, and financial services industries.Sign up for Paris.Sign up for London. Kelsey Hightower at the Cloud Adoption Summit TorontoThursday, March 23Kelsey Hightower, Principal Developer Advocate, has helped develop and refine many Google Cloud products, including Google’s Kubernetes Engine, Cloud Functions, and Apigees’s API Gateway. Kelsey will be joining us for our first event in Canada where the agenda includes various perspectives on optimizing cloud adoption plans. Topics include a shift from “cloud first” to “cloud also,” data center migration, cloud transformation, and cybersecurity. Sign up for this event. You can also find Kelsey speaking in upcoming Let’s Talk Tech events this April in Chicago and Atlanta. Find those and more by browsing our full events calendar. Sign Up for an Event   ConversationsWhether C2C members are sharing their opinions, trying to troubleshoot—or help others troubleshoot—Google Cloud tech, or having casual career conversations, we love to see excellent threads like these. Our online communities are a great way to find new connections with fellow Google Cloud users. Want to start connecting with the community? Start a Conversation   Want to make sure you’re in the loop? Don’t want to wait for these posts each month? Stay up-to-date on everything C2C by updating your profile and notification preferences so we can deliver you the most relevant news in real time.

Each month, C2C shares the latest news from the team and the best highlights from all of you here in the community. Read on for the most essential C2C updates from January 2023. We stayed inside this month as the C2C team emerged from a short, wintery hibernation. But as many of us have learned over the past few years, “inside” doesn't mean “inactive.” Our virtual connections are here to stay—January was full of them, and we have some of our partners to thank for that! Partners Coming TogetherFour of our partners—all fast-growing startups with a goal of enabling companies with data-driven software options—took turns sharing their success stories using Google Cloud’s BigQuery. Here’s what they shared:Tinyclues discussed reliance on implicit versus explicit signals as a measure for predicting consumer behavior, using AirFrance’s first-party data as an example. Aible’s case study with Overstock.com demonstrated how AI-first approaches accelerate time-to-value. Connected-Stories and its latest platform launch, NEXT, rely on BigQuery to deliver personalized ads and creative intelligence. Snorkel AI focused on high-quality training of datasets and ML models for document intelligence, conversational analytics, and more.The full recording from their session is available to watch now. Cloud VolumesThat's the name of NetApp's proprietary solution for data storage on Google Cloud. Brian Wink, Director of Google Cloud Architects at NetApp, gave us some background on this tool ahead of the Google Cloud partner joining C2C at 2Gather events in Sunnyvale, New York City, Zurich, and Paris.In this interview with C2C’s @Content Stephen, Wink explains how Cloud Volumes brings NetApp's network-attached storage to the cloud using container technology. Wink also discussed access management and encryption considerations for the solution's security model, a necessary part of the foundation for building storage solutions in cloud environments.You can find the full interview here and read on in this recap to find some of the C2C events he’ll be joining. Are you looking for more, including recordings from virtual events? Browse All Articles  Alongside many more virtual chats and learning sessions, we're looking forward to meeting up again in person in February. Here’s where we’re going: Sunnyvale, CaliforniaThursday, February 2Discover how to use your data and storage options to optimize operations at scale at this 2Gather event. Take advantage of the experience of our speakers to learn best practices around platform development, scaling data processing pipelines, and more.Sign up for this event. MunichTuesday, February 7These days, whether you've decided to move to the cloud and are wondering "what's next?" or you're still debating your future, cloud adoption is likely on your mind. At 2Gather: Munich, we'll be hearing from Volkswagen, Soravia, and one of our newest C2C partners, Workspot, who will provide valuable input into your cloud adoption journey decisions.Sign up for this event. New York CityThursday, February 9At this event, we’ll explore industry solutions with speakers from top financial services organizations. Come to hear how they use Google Cloud to monetize data in new and innovative ways, develop a plan to create value from customer data, and much more.Sign up for this event. ZurichThursday, February 9This event features a mix of Google Cloud strategies from across industries. Parashift, a Swiss software company, uses cutting-edge technologies to extract valuable metadata from documents and vastly reduce processing time and effort. NetApp will be joined by Dentsply Sinora, a dental supply manufacturing companywhich uses Cloud Volumes as part of their hybrid deployment to streamline their data management on Google Cloud.Sign up for this event. Plus, you can find regional events hosted in a local language by browsing our full event calendar. Sign Up for an Event   ConversationsWhether C2C members are sharing their opinions, trying to troubleshoot—or help others troubleshoot—Google Cloud tech, or having casual career conversations, we love to see excellent threads like these. Our online communities are a great way to find new connections with fellow Google Cloud users. Want to start connecting with the community? Start a Conversation   Of course, the beauty of everything we do is having one central place for all Google Cloud users to come together to solve problems, connect and re-connect, and get access to everything from C2C. We strive to continually improve the experience of our online community, so here's the latest on what we've delivered. New Group: Financial ServicesThe C2C Financial Services group is a space for C2C members working in the financial services industry to explore challenges and brainstorm solutions, whether they’re looking to migrate legacy systems to the cloud, innovate in the world of decentralized finance, or generate the ideas that will lead to the next major development in this rapidly evolving field. Members who belong to this group are invited and encouraged to participate in specialized networking opportunities, including face-to-face events and virtual conversations. These opportunities are designed to unite participants with contacts across our extensive ecosystem of Googlers, partners, and customers. To get involved and meet your other industry colleagues, join the Financial Services group today. Want to make sure you’re in the loop and don’t want to wait for these posts each month? Stay up-to-date on everything C2C by updating your profile and notification preferences so we can deliver you the most relevant news in real time.

The 2022 Cloud Adoption Summit at Google’s offices in London was the banner event of the year for the C2C community. The day-long conference featured over two dozen customer, partner, and Googler speakers and brought in well over a hundred guests. The networking at the event facilitated dozens of connections between organizations in attendance and sparked generative debate on topics ranging from sustainability in the cloud space to how employee upskilling impacts cloud adoption prospects. These connections were unique and irreproducible, but the content presented at the event spoke, and speaks, for itself.In December, we caught up with attendees to hear about their experiences at the event for an exclusive report from the scene. Now, full recordings of the sessions hosted at the event are available for viewing on YouTube. Check the embeds below to find the session you want to see––or see again! Welcome from C2C and Google and Opening Keynote  Industry Insights Panel and Discussion  Cybersecurity with GEMA and Palo Alto Networks  Industry Panel: Change Management with Deloitte  Infrastructure Modernization and Migrating VDI Workload to Google Cloud with Workspot  De-risking RAMP with Cloud IQ and Appsbroker  Customer Panel: What Do We Know Now That We Wish We'd Known When We Started  Extra Credit: Do you want to see more sessions like these and interact live with the speakers and other guests? Come the to the next Cloud Adoption Summit on March 23, in Toronto, Canada!

2022 was a year of continuing growth and change for the C2C community. New event formats, content campaigns, and community spaces allowed our team and our members to explore hot topics in the cloud ecosystem, from hybrid and multicloud strategies to sustainable cloud spend to intelligent automation. We relaunched our face-to-face events, created new communities for our global regions and industry verticals, and produced the first full-scale research study of our membership. Not to mention, we grew to over 30,000 members strong! 2023 is just beginning, and many more exciting developments are just around the corner, but for now, read on to take a look back at some of the biggest things we accomplished in 2022. Cloud Repatriation C2C’s first major event of 2022 was our executive panel on Cloud Repatriation, featuring Nick Tornow of Twitter, Keyur Govande of Etsy, and Rich Hoyer and Miles Ward (@MilesWard) of SADA. All of the guests left the conversation with new perspective on the concepts of repatriation and cloud strategy in general. As Keyur put it, “In the context of repatriation, especially for a product company, it is very important to think through the ramifications of doing the heavy infrastructural lift yourself. In my opinion, for most product companies, the answer would be to ‘keep moving up the stack,’ i.e. to be laser focused on your own customers' needs and demands, by leveraging the public cloud infrastructure.” Miles was also kind enough to finish off the discussion with a call to arms for solo Tuba:   Read our takeaway post to revisit the highlights:  Women In Cloud In March of 2022, for International Women’s Day, C2C Content Manager Alex Maksymec (@alex.maksymec) produced a five-part series of interviews with successful women in the cloud space. The interviews provided a necessary opportunity to explore the concepts of diversity, equity, and inclusion in depth. In the words of Lynn Comp, AMD, Corporate Vice President of Cloud Business Group, “When you look at environments that are more of a melting pot with greater diversity—points of view, origin, culture, or language—you end up having a lot more innovation. It’s challenging because it’s hard to understand others’ journeys, but once the team gels, it makes products and solutions better and more multi-purpose.” Read all of the interviews here below:  Clean Clouds, Green Earth C2C continued producing large-format virtual events with Clean Clouds, Green Earth, an Earth Day conference hosted entirely on the C2C platform, including Googler, partner, and customer-led sessions on hot topics in sustainability. The highlight was a panel discussion with AMD, HCL, and L’Oreal, hosted by Ian Pattison, EMEA Head of Sustainability Practice at Google Cloud. The most vital takeaway from the discussion was the notion of a holistic approach to cloud sustainability, reaching beyond specific technological fixes to a new perspective on energy consumption overall, which, according to Antoine Castex (@antoine.castex), L’Oreal Cloud Architect and C2C France team lead, comes about when companies like L’Oreal are able to “change the brain of the people.” Check the links below to explore the content from the various individual sessions:  Face-to-Face Events Early in 2022, the C2C team reintroduced face-to-face events, offering some of the most high-profile events of the company’s history, including multiple Google Next watch parties hosted in collaboration with C2C partners and the Cloud Adoption Summit in London, a day-long event featuring over two-dozen customer and partner sponsors and speakers. “I joined to check how the Google Community works especially compared to Azure,” said Robert Burton (@Rob Burton) of Bupa after the Cloud Adoption Summit. “I left knowing that Workspot might solve a problem that we didn’t know we had.” Read more stories from these events here:  New Communities In 2022, C2C also created new communities for numerous of our global regions and industry verticals. We created new spaces on the platform, hosted events, and brought on new community managers, moderators, and customer and partner collaborators in JAPAC, the Alps, and LATAM. We also introduced our Healthcare and Life Sciences community with a 2Inspire event featuring Steven Michaels (@Steven Michaels) of Intermountain Healthcare, Michael Ames (@michaelames) of SADA, and Paul Novak (@paul_novak) of Community Health Systems, who has since joined C2C as a member of our board. Take a look at the post linked below for takeaways from the event and a full recording of the conversation:  Community Research Last but not least, 2022 also saw the publication of the first large-scale research study of C2C’s membership. The long-form report collected insights on preferred cloud providers, most popular Google Cloud tools and products, and trends in provider and product usage. Insights gathered included that AI and ML tech is “look but don’t touch,” Google Cloud is #1 for “cloud native” development, and provider satisfaction and open-source tech go hand-in-hand. Read the full report below:  Do you want to be able to tell stories like these about your organization and the business and technical solutions you’ve developed on the cloud? Join C2C as a member today to take part in everything we have planned for 2023! 

“Until your event,” said Alejandro Lorenz, Lead Software Architect at IT4IPM, in a follow-up interview after attending C2C’s first Cloud Adoption Summit in London on November 30th, “I didn’t think that we had a problem.” Now, Alejandro says, after hearing from other companies at the summit about the investments they had made in their cloud migrations and their faster migrations’ impact on their overall management, he realizes that his own organization’s top management “must fully invest in the migration” to Google Cloud.The Cloud Adoption Summit was the first event of its kind for C2C: a day-long event featuring a keynote address, several industry panels and interactive breakout sessions, and numerous opportunities to network over meals and drinks with the one-hundred-plus guests and two-dozen-plus speakers in attendance. Many of the sessions were hosted by C2C partners, including Deloitte, Palo Alto Networks, Aiven, Workspot, and Appsbroker, but some of Google Cloud’s biggest customers, like Deutsche Bank and GEMA, also appeared to present and discuss their business and technical initiatives. Topics ranged from cybersecurity and infrastructure modernization to sustainability lessons from the last ten years of cloud adoption.Breakout session with Aivenand Elwood Technologies“Being at your event and hearing other companies and what they are doing helped me,” Alejandro said. Many of the attendees shared similar sentiments about the content of the presentations and the breakout sessions. “It was really important for me to attend Ellwood's CISO talk. We are a small team, as they are. And we need to go for full automation, to automate everything as they did,” added Tobias Hingerl (@THingerl), Alejandro’s colleague at IT4IPM. Tobias was referring to a session called “Scaling Fast but Secure,” a conversation with Daniel Jones of Elwood Technologies led by C2C partners Aiven. The kind of insight Tobias is describing––that increasing investment in transformative cloud technologies can present new opportunities for growth, efficiency, and security––is the kind of insight the Cloud Adoption Summit and the Google Cloud Customer Community itself exist to make possible.For many of the guests, the keynote by John Abel, Technical Director in Google Cloud’s Office of the CTO, provided not just insight but inspiration. “It was fascinating to hear John talking about Sustainability,” said Damien St. John, European Sales Engineer Lead at Appsbroker. “Not only for the impact we have on the environment...it helped me understand the marketing perspectives.” Jeremy Norwood, COO of Skytra Ltd., agreed. “John’s numbers made me think about the impact of our business on the environment. Sustainability is a big thing for sure. I have the sense that Google is a leader and they want to continue.” For Workspot Sales Engineer John Samuel (@C2Csamuelj), the call to action was immediate. “When I returned home, I went to my PC and changed my screen settings to dark mode,” he said. “I checked the energy consumption before and after. I was amazed. His talk gave us food for thought.” “Being at your event and hearing other companies and what they are doing helped me.” Other guests found the most value in the networking opportunities the event provided, which encouraged sharing ideas and making plans to follow up. Tobias and Alejandro are looking forward to catching up with Palo Alto about how their platform can help IT4IPM, and with Appsbroker about hiring new security engineers. John says Workspot made several new connections, and he’s excited to get in touch with Robert Burton (@Rob Burton) of Bupa about a solution for Workspot’s cloud desktops. Damien is anticipating a training opportunity with Google and more than one new business opportunity, including one with Mastercard.Guests networking between sessionsFor Daniel Vaughan (@daniel.vaughan) of Mastercard, the presentations and the networking at the event provided an entirely new way of looking at cloud adoption. In the conversations Daniel observed and joined, a major theme emerged: the biggest barrier to cloud adoption is employee skills. This theme was provocative enough for Daniel that he published an article on the C2C platform exploring his experience at the Cloud Adoption Summit and what he learned about the importance of skills in the cloud adoption context. “No matter how good the technology is,” he says, “without experienced people who are using it and, most importantly, can show others how to use it well, its adoption will be limited.”For the organizations who adopt it, the cloud makes storage and resources available all over the world, providing a solution to fit every need. A community like C2C does the same thing with people. At the Cloud Adoption Summit, the entire C2C community came together in one place to connect. Now those connections exist across the globe, and the people who made them can access them at any time. You and your organization can make and benefit from these connections, too. Join C2C as a member today to become a part of our global community. We’ll see you at the next Cloud Adoption Summit. Extra Credit:  

Each month, C2C shares the latest news from the team and the best highlights from all of you here in the community. Read on for the most essential C2C updates from October 2022. October is a busy time for Google Cloud—Googlers, partners, and customers alike finally get to hear all the latest and greatest announcements coming out of Google Cloud Next. And as the community for Google Cloud customers, C2C is dedicated not just to sharing these announcements, but to creating spaces for you and your peers to discuss them and how they can help you solve your technical and business problems. Google Cloud Next: The DoiT International Director’s CutAt the Google Cloud Next ‘22 DoiT Director’s Cut, longtime friends of C2C at DoiT International hosted an exclusive watch party in collaboration with C2C and Exabeam. Guests gathered early at Charmaine’s Rooftop Bar & Lounge in San Francisco for coffee and introductions before convening to view the keynote. Next, DoiT Head of Global Alliances, frequent C2C event participant, and noted yellow labrador owner Spenser Paul (@spenserpaul) hosted a breakout session with colleague and Field Services Manager Maddy Kepple to break down the many announcements from the Google Cloud leadership and customers. Finally, Exabeam Global Alliances Sales Director Chris Archinal led an interactive session about improving security outcomes through data analytics and automation. The keynote screened early on the West Coast, so the program concluded by lunch, but guests happily lingered afterward for catering from Executive Chef Jason Fox. PythianAt C2C Partner Pythian’s Next on the Road watch party in New York City, C2C President Josh Berman (@josh.berman) appeared onsite to co-host a session all about taking the barrage of information provided during the next keynote and, as Pythian CTO Paul Lewis puts it, “making it real.” Josh, Paul, and Sami Akbay of Google led a lively discussion with the attendees in the room, touching on everything from out-of-the-box AI and ML to paying for cloud services in cryptocurrency. “Josh did great,” said Paul. “He caught everything and he answered in an amazing way.”Read the full story at the link: Next Announcements at IntelIntel had a big moment at Google Cloud Next: they announced their C3 machine series powered by the 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processor and Google's custom Intel Infrastructure Processing Unit (IPU). Learn more about this partnership in this virtual event recording. Chatting About Chat With SADAHere's one for our Google Workspace professionals and enthusiasts. Do you know how to get the most out of the chat app? Watch this recording to learn about everyday use cases and getting started. Looking for more? Browse All Articles   Trying to catch the wave of that energy? We're eager for more, and we hope you can join us as we add more cities to our list. Cloud Adoption Summit in LondonWednesday, November 30C2C's largest event yet, the Cloud Adoption Summit, features a full day's schedule packed with keynotes and breakout sessions. From broader cloud strategy lessons to detailed discussions of your choosing—like cybersecurity, cost optimization, or industry insights—we're holding a spot for you at the Google UK office. North AmericaMultiple DatesIf you're in the United States, you’ll have a few opportunities to get together with us at a C2C 2Gather! Our classic in-person events are in Austin (Thursday, November 3) and New York City (Thursday, November 10). Plus, our first face-to-face event for Google Cloud startups—Angels, Accelerators or Incubators - Which Should You Choose?—is happening in Sunnyvale, CA, on Tuesday, November 8. While we encourage you to get the most out of this event and network on-site with the C2C startups community, this event also has the option to sign up to virtually attend the panel discussion.These events are happening this week and next, so don't miss your chance to sign up! São PauloWednesday, November 9 - Thursday, November 10As we expand our team into Latin America with the help of C2C community managers @Alfons and @valdecir.carvalho, we're preparing to host a double feature in Brasil. These strategic 2Gather events in São Paulo include an option for the future of work at Culture and Collaboration and hybrid and multicloud at the SAP on Google Cloud Forum. If you can't join us in person, we have plenty of virtual connections coming up. Browse all our events to speak directly with presenters and share your thoughts openly with other C2C members.  Sign Up for an Event   ConversationsWe also want to highlight some other excellent conversations happening in the communities: Want to start connecting with the community? Start a Conversation   Of course, the beauty of everything we do is having one central place for all Google Cloud users to come together to solve problems, connect and re-connect, and get access to everything from C2C. We strive to continually improve the experience of our online community, so here's the latest on what we've delivered.Last month, we announced our new feature to find groups led by independent software vendors (ISVs). Learn more about these partners and click on their names to connect directly in their groups. AivenAiven provides fully managed open-source services like Apache Kafka®, PostgreSQL®, and OpenSearch®. Jump in and gain the insights you need to build innovative applications backed by the latest open-source technologies. Automation AnywhereWhat is intelligent automation? Automation Anywhere uses a combination of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and AI to deliver cross-industry solutions as the number one cloud automation platform. In this space, bring your intelligent automation questions and challenges directly to this partner filling this niche, yet crucial, answer to power up business processes. NetAppNetApp's data management solutions help customers reduce cloud storage costs and run scalable enterprise apps in Google Cloud. Learn from this partner to effectively tackle file sharing among Linux and Windows workloads in Google Cloud while optimizing storage to cut cloud costs. Palo Alto NetworksPalo Alto Networks is the world's cybersecurity leader. They innovate to outpace cyber threats so that organizations can confidently embrace technology. Whether you're deploying their products to enable the Zero Trust Enterprise, responding to a security incident, or partnering to deliver better security outcomes through a world-class partner ecosystem, Palo Alto Networks is ready for community questions. Want to make sure you’re in the loop and don’t want to wait for these posts each month? Stay up-to-date on everything C2C by updating your profile and notification preferences so we can deliver you the most relevant news in real time.

Each month, C2C shares the latest news from the team and the best highlights from all of you here in the community. Read on for the most essential C2C updates from September 2022.  Following a summer break, the C2C EMEA team jumped right back into the fray of in-person events, rejoining old friends in Paris for more customer stories and networking as well as expanding the C2C landscape to Zurich, Switzerland. The stories shared at these events are valuable across many industry solutions being created with Google Cloud technology, but we also have a focus on having fun! ZurichAt 2Gather: Zurich, C2C’s first in-person event in the Alps region, the main topics of the day were the cloud implementation options Roche used to accelerate their get-to-market and the advantages of Google Cloud Database services. Google Cloud Principal architect Andreas Heidekrüger (@aheidekrueger) moderated a fireside chat featuring two representatives of customer F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG: Analytics Chapter lead Tomislav Ilicic (@Ilicict) and Program Manager Dominik Berroth (@Dominik). Data Analytics Customer Engineer Nic Gibson (@nicgibson) followed up with a focused look at Database Services. As always, the networking reception following the program opened the field for numerous customer-to-customer connections. Google Cloud Customer Engineer Dominik Steiner (@DominikSteiner) joined several customers in attendance for exploratory discussions breaking down various challenges faced and overcome. “It was a great possibility to give customers a platform,” he said. ParisJust a few days after breaking ground in Zurich, the C2C team was pleased as always to return to Paris for a 2Gather event led again by C2C France team leads Guillaume Blaquiere (@guillaume blaquiere), Group Data Architect at Carrefour, and Antoine Castex (@antoine.castex), Group Data Architect at L’Oreal. Customer speakers included Cyrille Doumenq of Renault Digital and Adeline Villette of Decathlon Technology, and ADEO Tech Leader Matthieu Cornillon also led a session exploring the company’s partnership with C2C partner Aiven to accelerate its native cloud strategy. “The event was very good. What I particularly liked was the ‘C’ part of the ‘C2C’ and listening to the experience of true practitioners talking to other practitioners,” said Jonathan Jowett (@jjowett), Director of Strategic Alliances at Redis EMEA. “The challenge now is to get the community of end customers to grow and gain momentum,” he added. “From my perspective, this would be a great forum to try and encourage our customers to come to and present at too.” Looking for more? Browse All Articles   Trying to catch the wave of that energy? We’re eager for more, and we hope you can join us as we add more cities to our list. Google Cloud Next Watch PartiesTuesday, October 11The biggest Google Cloud event of the year is only a few weeks away. We’re gathering together for live streams of the Next keynote to learn about the future of Google Cloud.London Paris Berlin San Francisco (DoiT Director’s Cut) Next on the Road with Google Cloud PartnersWe aren’t the only ones preparing for the announcements—check out what some of our partners are doing! Plus, you might even catch a cameo from C2C President @josh.berman if you are able to join Pythian’s event in person.New York City with Pythian New York City with SADA Sunnyvale with Palo Alto NetworksBrowse all our events to speak directly with presenters and share your thoughts in open conversation with other C2C members.  Sign Up for an Event   ConversationsWe also want to highlight some other excellent conversations happening in the communities: Want to start connecting with the community? Start a Conversation   Of course, the beauty of everything we do is having one central place for all Google Cloud users to come together to solve problems, connect and re-connect, and get access to everything from C2C. We strive to continually improve the experience of our online community, so here’s the latest on what we’ve delivered. Events FinderThe world is big, as is Google Cloud. So for our global community of Google Cloud users, we want to help navigate the sea of information and opportunities available. When you browse through C2C events, try one (or both) of these new features:Filter by event type to find the best setting—virtual or in-person—for you. Filter by tags including Google cloud solution area and other hot topics, when available, based on upcoming events. Change the view between list and calendar. Para (l)a GenteSpeaking of global reach: C2C is live in Latin America! From our summer activities in São Paulo to our first Spanish-language event last week, we’re doing everything we can to build dedicated groups to support your conversations and community where ever you are.Junte-se à comunidade para o Brasil Únete a la comunidad para LATAM (Español) Connect with ISVsOne other new feature on the Connect page is a filter for groups led by independent software vendors (ISVs). The ISV groups give you a space to bring your questions and challenges directly to our partners, including Aiven, Automation Anywhere, NetApp, and Palo Alto Networks.If you are part of an ISV and are interested in partnering with C2C to lead a group, reach out to marcy.young@c2cglobal.com. Want to make sure you’re in the loop and don’t want to wait for these posts each month? Stay up-to-date on everything C2C by updating your profile and notification preferences so we can deliver you the most relevant news in real time.

Each month, C2C shares the latest news from the team and the best highlights from all of you here in the community. Read on for the most essential C2C updates from August 2022.  The C2C team has been on the move! We’ve been unveiling a number of events with the help of our partners, Google, and other members who have joined us to share their journeys and connect with each other. The stories shared at these events are valuable across many industry solutions being created with Google Cloud technology, but we also have a focus on having fun! New YorkAt Google’s office in Manhattan’s Chelsea Market, C2C hosted a half-day event all about Google’s culture of innovation. Speakers from Google delivered interactive presentations on topics including Google’s core values and how to inform these values with the principles of DEI, culminating in an innovation workshop that prompted small groups to develop new products to meet emerging needs in the future of work. Afterward, an open networking reception catalyzed numerous customer connections. En Szu Hu-Van Wright of Chili Piper discussed virtual event planning with Boris Sotnikov (@bSotnikov), CEO of KraftyLab, and Kristian Smilenov (@kristian.smilenov) of Prime Holding made numerous new contacts, including Geoff MacNeil of Crowdbotics.“Typically when we talk to our customers, especially in a one-to-many format, it tends to be about product,” said Jessie Hochhalter, Google Cloud Global Culture & Recognition Lead. “So I really like the fact that we got to talk about the people, the processes, the culture, the DEI, those sorts of things, and not just talk about the product and what’s next with Google technology.” Read more below:  ChicagoC2C’s 2Gather event in Chicago––the first face-to-face event for the Google Cloud Customer Community in the Midwestern US––brought together speakers Paul Lewis, CTO of Pythian, Vrinda Khurjekar, Senior Director of AMER Business at Searce, and Meiling He, Senior Data Scientist at Rockwell Automation, for a conversation about cloud-hosted AI and ML solutions. Meiling had never heard of C2C when she was asked to fill in last-minute for her manager Francisco Maturana, but she found the experience to be a pleasant surprise. “I think it was so fun,” she said. “I learned a lot from the perspective, the questions, the answers. It’s so nice to be around people like Lilah and Paul. They’re so knowledgeable and outgoing.”The guests overwhelmingly agreed, including former C2C Executive Director Jeff Branham, now Director of Industry Alliances at Salesforce. “It’s a great place to connect with other professionals, business and also technical, and it’s a really wonderful experience,” said Henry Post of US Bank. “Great food, great presentation, and great people.” Read more here:  Healthcare and Life SciencesOn August 23, 2022, C2C welcomed longtime colleagues Paul Novak (@paul_novak), CTO of Community Health Systems, Steven Michaels (@Steven Michaels), Vice President of Technology Services at Intermountain Healthcare, and Michael Ames (@michaelames), Managing Director of Vertical Markets at SADA, for an inaugural 2Inspire event introducing the new Healthcare and Life Sciences community on the C2C platform. The guests unanimously agreed that the event and the group represent essential community-building opportunities for decision-makers in the HCLS space. “Having that type of collaborative capability to talk to people who have been there and done that, and to share ideas, and to share lessons learned, is so powerful,” said Paul.Michael echoed these sentiments via email in a follow-up after the event. “Customer-led, industry-specific communities are an essential complement to vendor- and technology-focused communities as Google Cloud pushes deeper into the enterprise. But it takes leadership from within the industry to make it happen in an authentic way. It was a pleasure to speak with Paul and Steven, two honest and forward-thinking health IT leaders about their experiences with Google Cloud. I look forward to C2C facilitating many more such discussions.” Read more about the event here:  Looking for more? Browse All Articles   Trying to catch the wave of that energy? We’re eager for more, and we hope you can join us as we add more cities to our list.  Thursday, September 8 C2C 2Gather: Zurich   Tuesday, September 13 C2C 2Gather: Paris  Not quite ready to travel and be part of an in-person crowd? We have plenty of virtual connections to join in on.  Thursday, September 8 2Chat France: Google Cloud   Thursday, September 8 Learn How to Forecast Your Spend on Google Cloud   Tuesday, September 27 2Chat France: Workspace   Tuesday, September 27 Building Looker Dashboards for the BR Radio App   Tuesday, September 27 Let's Talk About Site Reliability Engineering (SRE)   Wednesday, September 28 SAP on Google Cloud Forum  Browse all our events to speak directly with presenters and share your thoughts in open conversation with other C2C members.  Sign Up for an Event   C2C ResearchWe’re unveiling a piece that’s the first of its kind at C2C: a research report on our community! This is only a preview of what we learned, but you have the option to download the full report. Click the link to read an overview and key findings.  Congratulations again to our July C2Champions, @malamin, @JoeyMaller_UCC, and @sebastianmorenoe. Learn more about these outstanding community members in this post:  We also want to highlight some other excellent conversations happening in the communities:  Want to start connecting with the community? Start a Conversation   Of course, the beauty of everything we do is having one central place for all Google Cloud users to come together to solve problems, connect and re-connect, and have access to everything from C2C. We strive to continually improve the experience you have here in the online community, so here’s the latest on what we’ve delivered.You may have noticed some cosmetic changes around C2C as we continue to showcase our updated brand styles. We want the look and feel of the community to reflect the enthusiasm and ingenuity of Google Cloud users. New images, colors, and layouts are popping up throughout the community, but our big reveal is… … the new C2C home page! Take a look. It’s bright. It’s shiny. And most importantly, it’s featuring the community members who continue to shine as we deliver on our events, content, and conversations. With the update, you can navigate through what makes C2C the community it is. Want to make sure you’re in the loop and don’t want to wait for these posts each month? Stay up-to-date on everything by updating your profile and notification preferences so we can deliver to you the most relevant news in real time.

What a great day for our team at C2C Global as we officially launch our Healthcare and Life Sciences community! The new vertical will bring together healthcare leaders, technology experts, practitioners, administrators, and pioneers to share best practices, problem solve and develop new innovative solutions for the future of healthcare. Collaboration in this space is what leads to life-changing breakthroughs for billions across the globe, and we hope that the new community will be a place that serves as a catalyst for innovation for years to come.Read more here: C2C GLOBAL LAUNCHES NEW GOOGLE CLOUD COMMUNITY GROUP DEDICATED TO HEALTHCARE AND LIFE SCIENCES  New healthcare group will facilitate sharing of information, techniques, and best practices to solve problems and spur innovation across the sector   CHICAGO, IL – C2C Global, the largest worldwide community of Google Cloud users, announced today the launch of its newest vertical dedicated to Healthcare and Life Sciences. This latest offering from C2C will bring together healthcare leaders, technology experts, practitioners, administrators and pioneers to share best practices, problem solve, and develop new innovative solutions for the future of healthcare. “In recent years, the healthcare and life sciences community has been placed at the forefront of our lives like never before, and as a result has faced additional challenges. Collaboration in this space is what helps lead to not only industry solutions, but life-changing breakthroughs for billions of people across the globe,” said Josh Berman, President, C2C Global. “By launching a new, dedicated community for these practitioners, we want to provide a place that serves as a catalyst for innovation in an ever-changing, dynamic landscape.” In addition to diverse forums, in-depth case studies and a continuous sharing of the latest news, trends and solutions affecting the industry, the new community will feature executive panel discussions highlighting some of the problems facing the industry today and how practitioners can come together to solve these challenges. C2C recently hosted a discussion with senior leadership from Intermountain Healthcare and Community Health Systems to outline how they have leveraged Google Cloud to meet today’s healthcare needs, especially since the industry has seen a boom in innovation over the past few years in frontline caregiving, virtual care, and patient management.“Creating a community and having this type of collaborative capability to talk to others who have been there and done that and to share ideas, and to share lessons learned, is so powerful,” said Paul Novak, CIO of Community Health Systems. “It allows you to move forward quickly when you’re having problems or trying to innovate. Having this ability to connect is priceless.” The C2C Healthcare and Life Sciences Community will regularly host online and in-person panel discussions and will populate a continuous stream of conversations highlighting the most up-to-date needs facing the industry where members can come together to share best practices and solutions on a daily basis. About C2C Global C2C is the only peer-to-peer community built to support, connect, and educate Google Cloud customers across regions and industries so they can better harness the power of the cloud—and each other—to solve their biggest challenges and drive innovation.

C2C is a global community where Google Cloud customers and partners can explore new technical solutions and transform their businesses using Google Cloud products. What makes C2C so unique, however, is the opportunity for our members to meet, share their knowledge, and collaborate with one another. Learning which products to use and how to use them is important, but the chance to hear the story of another colleague who has done so successfully or tell your own success story is vital. To demonstrate this value to our membership, C2C has introduced a new program all about recognizing the individuals who make our community so dynamic and rewarding. Read on below to learn more about our monthly community C2Champions. Category: Platform Posts Mohammad AlaminMohammad Alamin (@malamin) has been an extremely engaged member of our community as of late. Mohammad posted 79 times in July, which might just be an all-time record. In his posts, Mohammad always tries to be as analytical as possible, offering sources and diagrams, explaining in detail, and spending a lot of time ensuring there are no questions left. Mohammad is an AI/ML solution architect at Aiiotsys, but his technology journey has been long and eventful. He has worked for the Bangladesh Election Commission and a property management company based in the United Kingdom, and has also taught in various schools and colleges, including at a computer training center he opened himself in his home town. In his spare time, he likes to hike, draw, and watch adventure movies. Mohammad is part of C2C, he says, because “Everyone here is a Google user. They are developing a unique solution with Google Cloud technologies. I may learn from their experiences and occasionally share my own. I may also expand my knowledge and gain confidence in my abilities.” Category: Attending Events Joey MallerJoey Maller (@JoeyMaller_UCC) has been elected a July C2Champion in the Attending Events category for faithfully participating in coffee chats and sharing his invaluable experience and know-how about Google Workspace. Joey is Vice President of Sales at UpCurve Cloud, where he specializes in Google Workspace solutions. A longtime C2C member, Joey has been attending C2C events and contributing to C2C content for almost as long as the Google Cloud customer community has been around. Joey is a mainstay of the C2C Workspace crowd and on the C2C platform in general, and also came out to C2C’s Spring 2022 face-to-face event in Los Angeles, where he connected with customers SADA and Sony and his old friend Jesse Nowlin (@Jesse). Category: Google Support Sebastián MorenoSebastián Moreno (@sebastianmorenoe) has been collaborating with C2C, sharing his knowledge on Google Partners, and presenting at C2C events for some time. Thanks to his recent participation and enthusiasm, our Community Managers have nominated him as a July C2Champion in the Google Support category. Sebastián is a Google Regional Partner Engineer in LATAM leading the development and technical enablement of Google partners. Outside of work, he is a music producer and a racing enthusiast. About C2C, Sebastián says “This is one of the biggest Cloud communities I know with a lot of different topics. I also like the different activities to share knowledge and collaborate.” Do you want to be a C2Champion? There are countless ways to engage on our platform or at our events, but the easiest way to get started right now is to join us as a member! We look forward to seeing you around our community.

Each month, C2C shares the latest news from the team and the best highlights from all of you here in the community. Read on for the most essential C2C updates from July 2022.  The C2C team has been on the move! We’ve been unveiling a number of face-to-face events with the help of our partners, Google, and other members who have joined us to share their journeys and connect with each other. The stories shared at these events are valuable across many industry solutions being created with Google Cloud technology, but we also have a focus on having fun! Speaker Panel at 2Gather: San FranciscoSan FranciscoThe C2C team has spent enough time in California over the past year that a NoCal roadshow was long overdue. At the end of July, C2C’s own Josh Berman (@josh.berman), Alesha Neely (@Aneely), Kathy Sullivan (@Kathy Sullivan), and Marcy Young (@Marcy.Young) made up for lost time by traveling West for two events in San Francisco and Sunnyvale. 2Gather: San Francisco brought speakers Peter-Mark Verwoerd (@PMV), Associate CTO of Infrastructure at SADA, Ethan Lo (@ethanwlo), VP of Infrastructure & Security at Premise Data, Kavish Seda (@kavseda), Manager of Customer Success in the Americas at Aiven, and Anthony Wang (@anthonyw), Infrastructure and Platform Engineering Manager at Bevy for a packed agenda.First, Peter-Mark and Ethan sat down for a fireside chat breaking down the custom solution Premise Data built on top of their Security and Command Center on Google Cloud. Kavish and Anthony followed with a second fireside chat about Bevy’s Google Cloud adoption. Finally all four speakers reconvened for a wide-ranging panel discussion before the crowd wound down with food and drinks. Andrew McIntyre (@amcintyre), a guest from MariaDB, particularly appreciated how the event brought customers together to share common interests and discuss the solutions helping their businesses. Lena Kannappan (@lena), Co-Founder and Head of Strategy at Healthcare Triangle, Inc., says he loved the community and conversation. SunnyvaleSpeaker Panel at 2Gather: SunnyvaleThe team continued their mini-tour with another stop in Sunnyvale, where speakers Tim Csontos, Vice President of Strategic Alliances at Automation Anywhere, and Shalini Mayor (@smayor), Sr. Director of Enterprise Automation at Salesforce, grabbed time for a fireside chat and then a panel discussion with Allen Leibovitch (@Allen Leibovitch), Senior Manager of Cloud Solutions at AMD, and returning guest Spenser Paul (@spenserpaul) of DoiT. Of course, no panel featuring Spenser is complete without his yellow labrador Milton. As usual, Milton kept his comments brief.Anantharamu Suryanarayana (@Ananth), founder of Camphor Networks, had already attended some virtual events on the C2C platform, but he especially enjoyed networking in person with the other guests, and will be on the lookout for more events from our Google Startups team. Thomas DeMeo, Director of Product Management for Google Cloud Platform Developer Tools, was excited to be able to get actionable feedback from customers on the products he develops. He will be connecting with Yuval Drori of DoiT to discuss DoiT’s product challenges and help provide solutions.You can also find recordings from virtual events, interviews with Google Cloud thought leaders, and other news and content from C2C by browsing all our articles by solution area, industry, or hot topics in cloud.  Trying to catch wave of that energy? We’re eager for more, and we hope you can join us as we add more cities to our list.Not quite ready to travel and be part of an in-person crowd? We have plenty of virtual connections to join in on.Browse all our events to speak directly with presenters and share your thoughts in open conversation with other C2C members.   Congratulations again to our June C2Champions, @MoiGonzaga, @Vick, @MarkusK, and @Niaz Tadayyon. Learn more about these outstanding community members in this post We also want to highlight some other excellent conversations happening in the communities.  Want to start connecting with the community?  Of course, the beauty of everything we do is having one central place for all Google Cloud users to come together to solve problems, connect and re-connect, and have access to everything from C2C. We strive to continually improve the experience you have here in the online community, so here’s the latest on what we’ve delivered.New Group: Connected LeadersThis group features the Google Cloud Connected Leaders Exchange, whose purpose is creating an inspirational community for women, under represented groups and allies across Google, our Customers and our Partners. Their vision is to connect, make an impact and drive positive change for all through sharing stories, learnings and collectively making a difference to many through working as one community.Join the Connected Leaders group.  Want to make sure you’re in the loop and don’t want to wait for these posts each month? Stay up-to-date on everything by updating your profile and notification preferences so we can deliver to you the most relevant news in real time.

C2C is a global community where Google Cloud customers and partners can explore new technical solutions and transform their businesses using Google Cloud products. What makes C2C so unique, however, is the opportunity for our members to meet, share their knowledge, and collaborate with one another. Learning which products to use and how to use them is important, but the chance to hear the story of another colleague who has done so successfully or tell your own success story is vital. To demonstrate this value to our membership, C2C has introduced a new program all about recognizing the individuals who make our community so dynamic and rewarding. Read on below to learn more about our monthly community C2Champions. Category: Platform Posts Moises GonzagaMoises Gonzaga (@MoiGonzaga) started his career journey as an Analyst. He has since had the chance to work as a Senior Analyst and a Product Owner, and now serves as a New Technologies Engineer at Nidec-MCE, supporting on-site applications and proposing new technologies to improve daily activities. He loves learning and is always researching and trying new tools and platforms, but he also loves teaching, which has led him to serve on the faculty of two different universities in his home of Mexico, teaching about programming, databases, and other tech topics including cloud. Moises has been a very active user on the C2C platform, notably welcoming other users to the community, and contributing essential posts. For these efforts, our community managers have nominated him as a June 2022 C2Champion. Category: Solving problems Victor DicksonVictor Dickson (@Vick) started his journey in tech as a novice, coming originally from a non-tech background: the construction industry. In his words, Vick was able to make the pivot that transformed his career “through hard work and perseverence.” Now he is a DevOps Engineer and an Instructor at New Vision Institute of Technology. Apart from the work he does as a DevOps Engineer, he’s passionate about impacting knowledge and helping those who are new to tech navigate their way through. Because of this commitment to helping others, Vick responds regularly when member share their technical problems, which is why our community managers have nominated him as one of this month’s C2Champions. Category: Attending Events Markus KoyMarkus Koy (@MarkusK) is the founder of thefluent.me and a Google Build Partner and AI enthusiast based in Vancouver, British Columbia. Markus has 18 years of experience as a Business Analyst, IT Project Manager, IT Consultant, Strategic Controller, and Developer. Born and raised in Germany, Markus immigrated to Canada in 2008. His hobbies include fishing, snowshoeing, and hiking. Markus has been nominated as a June 2022 C2Champion for being a regular presence in our events since the beginning of C2C. Markus has also collaborated with the C2C team by presenting and giving demos in events, and is a well known entrepreneur in our community. Read our Member Spotlight on Markus here:  Category: Google Support Niaz TadayyonNiaz Tadayyon (@Niaz Tadayyon) works with strategic customers and partners to design and execute on their conversational AI and transformational customer experience visions. Her strengths include analyzing clients’ business requirements, ideation and qualification, developing business cases and defining digital strategy, articulating AI impact on business, designing a simplified architecture, data foundation and data science solutions, delivering challenging projects, and, finally, scaling AI to gain full value. She has a bachelor’s degree in Applied Mathematics in Computer Science and a Master’s in Computer Engineering. Niaz was an engaging host and moderator at our in-person event in Irvine, guiding meaningful discussions and ensuring a successful and impactful event to bring the C2C community together, and has since expressed interest in presenting at future events. For this willingness to participate, our community managers have nominated her as our Google Support C2Champion for June. Do you want to be a C2Champion? There are countless ways to engage on our platform or at our events, but the easiest way to get started right now is to join us as a member! We look forward to seeing you around our community.

Each month, C2C shares the latest news from the team and the best highlights from all of you here in the community. Read on below for the most essential C2C updates from June 2022.Jump to:Where We’ve Been... ...And Where We’re Going In the Community Newest Features for YouWhere We’ve Been... EventsThe C2C team has been on the move! We’ve been unveiling a number of face to face events with the help of our partners, Google, and other members who have joined us to share their journeys and connect with each other. The stories shared at these events are valuable across many industry solutions being created with Google Cloud technology, but we also have a focus on having fun! São PauloOn June 1, C2C hosted an in-person event in São Paulo, Brazil, featuring speakers Marco Bravo, Head of Google Cloud Brazil, and Dr. Wade Holmes (@wadeholmes), Google Cloud Solutions Manager for Security Global Lead, and moderated by Renato Marcovitti, Cloud Security Specialist, Google Cloud. The first C2C event hosted in Latin America, this event marked the official launch of C2C’s regional LATAM community. The program explored Google Cloud’s security benefits and how new developments in cybersecurity, including Zero Trust concepts, are helping Google Cloud eliminate cyber threats. “I really liked the opportunity to have contact with other customers of other clients and with the Google Cloud community,” said Renato Wada (@rmwada) of FIS. Jéssica Romão (@jessica.Romão) of BV Financeira agreed. “I think this kind of event is very important for security and to the people," she said. “To know new things about security, and to know each other, also.” CambridgeC2C’s in-person event in Cambridge was the first C2C in-person event produced specifically with C2C’s Healthcare and Life Sciences group in mind. The program featured speakers Taylor Lehmann (@taylorlehmann1), Director of the Office of the CISO at Google Cloud, Jonathan Sheffi (@sheffi), formerly a Director of Product Strategy at Veeva Systems and Google Cloud, and Luke Ge (@Liangwei77ge), an AI Solution Specialist at Intel, as well as moderator Yee-chen Tjie (@yeetjie), Google Cloud Life Sciences Head of Customer Engineering. For a full recap of the program and some onsite reporting from the networking reception that followed the event, complete with interviews with speakers and guests, follow the links below.You can also find recordings from virtual events, interviews with Google Cloud thought leaders, and other news and content from C2C by browsing all our articles by solution area, industry, or hot topics in cloud.  ...And Where We’re GoingTrying to catch wave of that energy? We’re eager for more, and we hope you can join us as we add more cities to our list. Not quite ready to travel and be part of an in-person crowd? We have plenty of virtual connections to join in on. Here are a select few we recommend joining live so you can speak directly with presenters and share your thoughts in open conversation with other C2C members. Looking for more? In the CommunityCongratulations again to our May C2Champions, @chanelgreco, @HayesJohnD, and @shaijut. Learn more about these outstanding community members at this post below. We also want to highlight some other excellent conversations happening in the communities.  Want to start connecting with the community? Newest Features for YouOf course, the beauty of everything above is having one central place for all Google Cloud users to come together to solve problems, connect and re-connect, and have access to everything from C2C. We strive to continually improve the experience you have here in the online community, so here’s the latest on what we’ve delivered. Navigation UpdatesOur homepage may look different to returning users. Previously, our topic categories had prominent real estate on the homepage of the community. This new navigation now makes clearer the three main purposes of logging in: finding your topics of interest, reading C2C-published articles, and signing up for in-person and virtual events.Main navigation: community, articles, and events The newly-activated community overview page is the dedicated home to everything for technology-based conversations, including the member leaderboard and popular tags added to topics. These categories—sorted by Google Cloud solutions, industry solutions, and Google Workspace—are available to start discussions and get questions answered.We also merged the previously listed “Shape” page from the top navigation into the “Community” sections. Now, shared resources are included among the conversations in a one-stop-shop. New User Roles: Team Leaders and ModeratorsThe C2C community managers (@ilias, @Dimitris Petrakis, and @Alfons) work directly with C2C members to keep the conversations lively and appropriate in our topic categories and regional groups. You can now easily identify these individuals marked by the “Moderator” or “Team Leader” tags on their profiles.Example of the “Moderator” role on a the profile for @MarkusK  If you’re interested in becoming a team leader or moderator, reach out directly to @ilias. Want to make sure you’re in the loop and don’t want to wait for these posts each month? Stay up-to-date on everything by updating your profile and notification preferences so we can deliver to you the most relevant news in real time.

“I was at the hotel one morning working at a hospital in Missouri, noticed blood on my t-shirt, and said ‘What’s that about?’” Sitting at a high-top conference table outside the Boston Common auditorium on the fourth floor of Google’s Cambridge, MA office, Michael Preston (@Preston14) of Healthcare Triangle briskly recounted his struggle to find effective treatment for melanoma. Before he was able to eliminate the cancer with immunotherapy, he explained, he underwent chemotherapy and experienced near-fatal complications. “That medicine that I qualified for because of my gene mutation nearly killed me,” he said. “How do you get genomics to reflect how a patient will interact with a medicine, not just whether or not they qualify for that medicine based on their genomic profile?”Jonathan SheffiPreston had come to the office for a C2C Connect Live event for Healthcare and Life Sciences professionals in the Boston-Cambridge area. This last question is the same question Preston asked Jonathan Sheffi (@sheffi), a director of Product Strategy formerly of Google and Veeva Systems, who had taken the stage earlier for a presentation and panel. Sheffi’s presentation focused more broadly on use cases for cloud technology in genomics and clinical trial matching, but the content resonated with Preston enough that he was moved to share his personal experience with the rest of the group. This kind of personal connection to technical and business-related discussions is typical of the HCLS space, Preston said. “Something will resonate, whether it’s my grandmother, my grandfather, my neighbor down the street, or me. If you can’t bring your own perspective into a conversation with a client or a partner, then it’s too generic.”Sheffi agreed: “Working in healthcare and life sciences, no matter what industry you work in, everyone’s a patient, and everyone knows some patients.” Before he began working in technology, Sheffi was able to experience firsthand what it’s like to serve in a patient-facing role. “I was actually a pharmaceutical sales rep early in my career, and met patients who would come up to me and would say, ‘your drug saved my life,’” he recalled. “I feel weird taking the credit, because I didn’t develop it, I didn’t manufacture it, I was just making sure that they had access and had it available to them, but there is nothing quite like meeting a patient who’s actually been impacted by your work.” Although Sheffi has held executive-level positions at several major tech companies, he has organized his career around the opportunities he sees to serve patients and meet their needs. As he put it, “I’m here because I’m excited about what technology can do for patients.” Guests mingling before the eventThe program at the event, which included presentations from Sheffi, Google Head of Cloud Sales Engineering Yee-Chen Tjie, Taylor Lehmann, Director of the Office of the CISO at Google, and Luke Ge, an AI Solutions specialist at Intel, and a panel discussion with Ge, Tjie, and Sheffi, was largely technically focused. However, patient experience dominated the conversations that followed, which Sheffi and Preston both cited as a unique value of a community space for HCLS professionals in the tech field. “Another gentlemen talked about his parent, who had cancer,” Sheffi recalled. “He had to push for a more medically appropriate treatment option that wasn’t initially recommended by the physician.” “Working in healthcare and life sciences, no matter what industry you work in, everyone’s a patient, and everyone knows some patients.” Sheffi was referring to Raj Tuliani (@tuliani), a customer engineer with Google Life Sciences who shared his experience caring for his sick parents during the panel discussion that closed the program. “I was trying to give my perspective as a patient advocate, as a patient caregiver,” he says. “There’s a good use case for a patient advocate to use the genetic data that’s being given as a way to guide treatment, not only from the provider perspective, but from the patient side as well.” Tuliani had wanted to be a doctor from a young age, and when he started at Google he had already worked as a senior director of technology at Anthem and at Johns Hopkins, and had also taken time off from work to be a full-time caregiver to his parents. As a patient advocate, Tuliani appreciates that Google’s life sciences products are “are all about helping everyone,” with “the emphasis on helping and everyone.”A focus on patient experience is that much more impactful at an event where technical and business professionals are convening to share ideas and make new connections. Once the guests started opening up in the room during the prepared program, they were primed to engage candidly during the networking reception that followed. Making himself vulnerable in front of the others in attendance only made Preston more eager to connect one-on-one with his colleagues and peers. In the middle of describing the security risks his clients in the small- to medium-sized community hospital space face when they don’t have resources like a CISO, he caught sight of Lehmann walking past. “I’m going to go hunt him down and talk to him more,” he said. Extra Credit:  

June 2022 marks the second year the United States observes Juneteenth as a federal holiday. However, Juneteenth has been an occasion for public celebration since 1866, immediately following the end of the Civil War. This year, to recognize Juneteenth and its long history of celebrating the liberation of enslaved people in America, C2C and BDPA invited Mike Tucker, a software developer and project manager who also runs the YouTube channel Fight for Democracy, to share his knowledge about this momentous day and everything it represents. In the video below, Tucker traces the many legal and political battles that eventually led to the nationwide liberation Juneteenth was established to commemorate, as well as the long journey to the date’s official designation as a legal public holiday. Please watch and share your thoughts to help us in our mission of cultivating a community that prizes the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion above all.  

C2C is a global community where Google Cloud customers and partners can explore new technical solutions and transform their businesses using Google Cloud products. What makes C2C so unique, however, is the opportunity for our members to meet, share their knowledge, and collaborate with one another. Learning which products to use and how to use them is important, but the chance to hear the story of another colleague who has done so successfully or tell your own success story is vital. To demonstrate this value to our membership, C2C has introduced a new program all about recognizing the individuals who make our community so dynamic and rewarding. Read on below to learn more about our inaugural monthly community C2Champions. Category: Solving Problems Chanel GrecoChanel Greco (@chanelgreco) is a Google Workspace trainer who loves helping others get the most out of Google's “awesome” productivity suite. Chanel has spent most of her professional career in IT. With saperis, a company she founded in 2020, she decided to bring together two things she's very passionate about, tech and education, by creating a platform for teaching people how to use digital tools.Chanel enjoys sharing her tech knowledge with other women and encouraging other women to consider getting into tech themselves. She regularly serves as a mentor or coach at coding events for women and girls. For relaxing, Chanel enjoys a nice workout, Playstation 5 games, or a good read.On C2C, Chanel has met other Google Workspace enthusiasts and started collaborating with various C2C members on customer projects. To learn more about Chanel and her presence in our community, read our exclusive interview with her here:  Category: Attending Events John HayesJohn Hayes (@HayesJohnD) has had an interest in computers “pretty much from the beginning.” Back in the early days of the PC, he says, “everyone” asked him for help on PC or Windows problems. In his work as a design engineer he used PCs with AutoCAD to create mechanical drawings and hydraulic schematics.Now that cloud is becoming more relevant, John is pursuing new learning. He recently completed the Google Data Analytics Certificate with Coursera, as well as a class on Looker. Continuous learning since the early days of the PC have kept John on the leading edge of tech, and he is planning to continue his education with ML after getting caught up on his Skills Boost classes.Outside of tech, John used to fish as a hobby, to take a break, enjoy the sport, catch some fish, and experience the nature around him. He has since had to stop, and has turned to the computer for online learning and keeping up to date on tech and news. John came to C2C after attending a training webinar and receiving a follow-up email from Google. The camaraderie of people with shared interests reminds him of his time with his “military buddies” in the Navy. John would like to make more connections in the Data Analyst arena, as well as in the broader cloud arena. If he has any knowledge about a topic of discussion, John is more than eager to share it with people. Category: Platform Posts Thomas ShaijuThomas Shaiju (@shaijut) has been interested in learning about computers since his school days. Later in his academic career, he says, “by God's grace,” he got a chance to pursue a Masters degree in Software Engineering. His first work experience was with an eCommerce startup, which offered him valuable opportunities to build things from scratch. Thomas has also had opportunities to work in digital publishing and on oil and gas domains, focusing on back-end development, APIs using C#, .NET, .NET core, SQL, website deployment, and cloud. Out of work, Thomas enjoys reading and listening to life-changing books and stories, singing, blogging, mentoring, and sightseeing.Thomas learned about C2C from a LinkedIn post by Dan Sullivan, an author and Udemy instructor focused on Google Cloud topics. Dan had shared some information related to Google Cloud certifications, originally provided by one of C2C’s community managers, Ilias Papachristos (@ilias). Thomas was pleased to find that C2C is an active and engaging Google Cloud community. He is now here to connect with folks who know or are learning about back-end development, APIs, and anything else Google Cloud. Do you want to be a C2Champion? There are countless ways to engage on our platform or at our events, but the easiest way to get started right now is to join us as a member! We look forward to seeing you around our community.

Want to make sure you’re in the loop and don’t want to wait for these posts each month? Stay up-to-date on everything by updating your profile and notification preferences so we can deliver to you the most relevant news in real time.Welcome to the inaugural roundup of everything happening at C2C. Each month, we’ll share the latest news from the team and the best highlights from all of you here in the community.Jump to:Where We’ve Been... ...And Where We’re Going In the Community Newest Features for YouWhere We’ve Been...The C2C team has been on the move! We’ve been unveiling a number of face to face events with the help of our partners, Google, and other members who have joined us to share their journeys and connect with each other. The stories shared at these events are valuable across many industry solutions being created with Google Cloud technology, but we also have a focus on having fun! SoCalOur roadtrippers Josh Berman (@josh.berman), Alesha Neely (@Aneely), and Marcy Young (@Marcy.Young) traveled from across North America to visit three cities on the west coast: San Diego, Irvine, and Los Angeles. All three events were sponsored by one of our many partners, SADA, who helped bring together speakers from MovieLabs, BlueVoyant, Hyundai, 4Medica, Brain Corp, Automation Anywhere, and Flexible Vision. We also saw a familiar face⁠—Miles Ward (⁠@MilesWard), CTO, SADA—who had nothing but good things to say about his experience at the events. “It’s not only great to connect with customers,” he told us, “but even building our network of additional Googlers is fantastic.”C2C Connect Live: San Diego connected customers Flexible Vision, Brain Corp, and Automation Anywhere for a live panel featuring multiple presentations, including a customer story about Cue Health. “It was a great opportunity for everyone, and our team truly enjoyed the talks and positive energy in the room,” said Aaron Silverberg (@Silverberger), Founder and Vice President of Flexible Vision. “It’s great to be back in person, and the red, yellow, green stickers were a simple but nice gesture,” he added, referring to the stickers the C2C team handed out at all events for guests to use to indicate their preferred level of physical contact.C2C Connect Live: Irvine connected customers Hyundai and 4medica via partners Dataflix and SADA for a panel discussion, prompting multiple questions from guests at First American Financial. “Thank you for arranging the C2C event in Irvine, it was great meeting you,” First American Data Scientist Chris Ow (@chrisow) told us afterwards. “The event was very engaging and informative!”The climax of the west coast tour was the event at Google’s office in the famous Spruce Goose hangar in Los Angeles, where guests enjoyed impromptu tours of the facility led by Google Program Manager Dale Rossi (@Dale Rossi). Kumar Chinnakali (@kumarchinnakali7), an Enterprise Architect at CapGemini, had a particularly memorable experience at the Los Angeles event. “I enjoyed great food and drinks and made a lot of new friends,” he says. He remembers sharing a valuable exchange with representatives of System Integrators. “They are doing a unique GKE project of migrating from monolithic to microservices architecture.” He also remembers discussing Google Cloud certifications, and getting some enlightening insights from Google Global Head of Autonomic Security Iman Ghanizada’s (@iman) comments during the panel discussion. “The platform to build in-person connections after a long time was incredible,” says Chinnakali. EMEAIn EMEA, our enthusiastic community managers, Ilias (@ilias) and Dimitris (@Dimitris Petrakis), flew from their homes in Greece to visit Paris, Munich, and London. At C2C Connect: Paris, we reconnected with our friends at Carrefour and L’Oreal, respective home companies of our C2C France Team Leads Guillaume Blaquiere (@guillaume blaquiere) and Antoine Castex (@antoine.castex). Live conversations covered Looker use cases for BigQuery and data solutions for Confidential Virtual Machines. C2C Connect Live: Munich connected customers MediaMarkt Saturn and UberCloud for a conversation about MediaMarkt Saturn’s game-changing Data Mesh.C2C Gold partner AMD joined all three events. At C2C Connect Live: London, C2C Platinum partner DoiT international joined them for a conversation with customer VU.CITY about optimizing their cloud implementation. BidFX also appeared to give a presentation about using Google Cloud to transform their fintech business. Simrin Gill, Business Development lead at Cobry, spoke highly of her experience at the event in London. “I really enjoyed the fireside chats in particular. I found them to be extremely valuable for both customers and partners” she said. “It was refreshing to hear about someone else’s experience.” New York CityWe were on site in New York City to follow up with the star speakers at our first live event on the East Coast in the United States, and also had the opportunity to talk to some attendees about their experience at their first C2C event. We’re excited to be the home of community relationships in the Google Cloud ecosystem, wherever they can be made. Check out the posts below to read about the conversations C2C started on and off the stage in New York:You can also find recordings from virtual events, interviews with Google Cloud thought leaders, and other news and content from C2C by browsing all our articles by solution area, industry, or hot topics in cloud.  ...And Where We’re GoingTrying to catch wave of that energy? We’re eager for more, and we hope you can join us as we add more cities to our list. Not quite ready to travel and be part of an in-person crowd? We have plenty of virtual connections to join in on. Here are a select few we recommend joining live so you can speak directly with presenters and share your thoughts in open conversation with other C2C members. Looking for more? In the CommunityCongratulations again to our April C2Champions, @seijimanoan, @yuval, @Katsiaryna Vyshydkevich, and ​​​​​​@MadisonJenkins. Learn more about these outstanding community members at this post below. We also want to highlight some other excellent conversations happening in the communities.  Want to start connecting with the community? Newest Features for YouOf course, the beauty of everything above is having one central place for all Google Cloud users to come together to solve problems, connect and re-connect, and have access to everything from C2C. We strive to continually improve the experience you have here in the online community, so here’s the latest on what we’ve delivered. New Communities: Platform and Industry Solutions We have opened new categories for topics identified based on our members' interactions. Make sure you’re subscribed to our new groups to stay informed on the latest happenings in the community.Google Cloud Platform Solutions and Technologies contains some of the groups you are familiar with—like Infrastructure, Data Analytics, or AI and Machine Learning—but you’ll now see the new additions DevOps and SRE and Identity and Security.We recognize that Google Cloud has plenty of specific Industry Solutions used by our members. We will expand our related content over time, but for now, check out the categories dedicated to Healthcare and Life Sciences and other Industry Solutions. New Communities: Google Workspace We have also split Google Workspace into two categories: Workspace Admins for topics related to the migration, setup, and administration of Google Workspace in a company, and Workspace Users for topics related to the general use of Google Workspace.

Trevor Marshall (@tmarshall) had just left the stage after over an hour of nonstop conversation, but he was ready for another interview. The CTO of Current, an aptly-named disruptor in the developing fintech space, had come to the event to participate in a panel discussion with Spenser Paul of DoiT (@spenserpaul), Michael Brzezinski of AMD (@mike.brzezinski), and Michael Beal of Data Capital Management (@MikeBeal), immediately following a one-on-one fireside chat with Paul, who also brought his labrador Milton onstage with him for both sessions. Now Marshall was sitting at a wooden dining table in an open workspace overlooking Manhattan’s Little Island floating park, enthusiastically describing a proof-of-concept his company is running with Google Cloud’s C2D compute instances, an offering powered by AMD’s EPYC processors.“It’s cool to actually be able to put a face to some of this technology,” he said. “We have a lot of compute-bound instances, and for me, I was like, ‘Oh, it’s the C2D guy!’” Brzezinski had discussed AMD’s role in bringing C2D instances to Google Cloud customers, but Marshall hadn’t known until the two were seated onstage together that his fellow panelist is directly involved in selling the same technology he hopes to adopt. “I’m going to be reaching out to that guy,” he said. “I do have some questions. That will actually unlock some progress in our stack, and I think that’s pretty sweet.” Trevor Marshall of Current, Spenser Paulof Doit, and Paul’s Labrador, MiltonMarshall’s positivity and excitement to collaborate reflected the prevailing atmosphere at C2C Connect Live, New York City, the most recent of C2C Global’s regional face-to-face events for Google Cloud customers and partners, this one hosted at Google’s 8510 building in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood. The scheduled program put Marshall in conversation with Brzezinski, AMD’s Global Sales Manager, Paul, DoiT’s head of Global Alliances, and Beal, Data Capital Management’s CEO, on the topic of innovation and cost optimization on Google Cloud. These sessions were designed as a starting point for the reception that followed, where the panelists and guests shared their stories and explored the topics discussed in more depth.“You get an opportunity to say the things you feel like people are interested in, and then you get to talk with them afterward,” said Brzezinski. “They’ll come and ask you more about what you said, or say, ‘you mentioned this one thing, but I want to know more about something different.’” “You collide two atoms together, you create something new. You collide two people together and have an open discussion, you learn something new, get new insight.” Thomson Nguy (@thomson_nguy), Vice President of Sales in the Americas at Aiven, was grateful to be able to meet both Brzezinski and Beal in person, having worked with both companies, AMD as a vendor and Data Capital Management as a customer, but only remotely. “We’re an AMD customer, we’re a Google customer, but also we’ve got one of our customers [at the event] that can actually use the price performance that AMD can drive, and so it’s actually being able to connect relationships along the whole value chain,” he said. “Working together as partners, we can actually create real value for the customers.” Customer conversations outside Google’sGoblin King AuditoriumNguy particularly appreciated being able to make these connections in an informal setting, where sales was not top of mind for him or his team. When he and Beal met, before talking shop, the two reminisced about Harvard Business School, where both earned their MBAs. “This event was very natural,” said Nguy. “It wasn’t like going to an AWS summit, where you get lost in 10,000 people at the Javitz center. It’s a very intimate place that lets you connect and talk with people, and it has that really cool vibe, a community vibe that I really appreciate.” Faris Alrabi (@faris.alrabi), one of Aiven’s Sales Team Leads in the Americas, wholeheartedly agreed. At most events, he said, he feels obligated to pitch, whereas, at C2C Connect Live, he went out of his way not to.Attendees repeatedly echoed these sentiments. In conversation with Nguy in front of a spread of refreshments that depleted rapidly over the course of the reception, Geoff MacNeil of Crowdbotics, another company that brought multiple team members out to the event, attributed the unique value of this intimate setting to the possibility of chance encounters. “Collisions create innovation,” he said. “You collide two atoms together, you create something new. You collide two people together and have an open discussion, you learn something new, get new insight.” Nguy and MacNeil also exchanged information to discuss opportunities to partner in the future.New business deals aside, however, the ability to meet and share ideas and impressions in person, guests agreed, was reason enough to attend already. “Even if we left this event without getting a single lead,” said Nguy, “the experience of being here and understanding our customers and the way they think and the way they talk in a lot fuller context, I thought that was super valuable.” C2C Will be hosting many more face-to-face events in the coming months. To connect with Google Cloud customers in your area and spark more innovation for your company, register for these upcoming events below:  

C2C Global President Josh Berman recently published a feature article as a guest author at AI Technology news outlet AiThority. In the article, Berman outlines a couple of the main drivers of cloud adoption among startups, including lower infrastructure costs and the ability to access resources on demand while limiting spend to immediate usage, streamlining upfront expenses. Berman also connected with Dheeraj Nallagatla, Founder and CEO of C2C partner Dataflix, to discuss the unique advantages of building a business on the cloud.For Dataflix, the main priority when weighing cloud solutions is security, but the company also places a premium on the ability to implement quickly and efficiently and estimate costs up front according to transparent pricing models. Cloud usage also makes for easier and better coordinated collaboration, a practice Dataflix values very highly. “The Google Cloud community, specifically C2C Global, is bringing customers, partners and developers together across the globe,” said Nallagatla. “This gives us an opportunity to learn how Google Cloud is being leveraged by companies of all sizes and verticals.” Read the full text of the article at AiThority. Extra Credit:  

C2C is a global community where Google Cloud customers and partners can explore new technical solutions and transform their businesses using Google Cloud products. What makes C2C so unique, however, is the opportunity for our members to meet, share their knowledge, and collaborate with one another. Learning which products to use and how to use them is important, but the chance to hear the story of another colleague who has done so successfully or tell your own success story is vital. To demonstrate this value to our membership, C2C has introduced a new program all about recognizing the individuals who make our community so dynamic and rewarding. Read on below to learn more about our inaugural monthly community C2Champions. Category: Platform Posts Seiji ManoanSeiji Manoan (@seijimanoan) is a 30-year-old father of two based in Brazil. As a Software and DevOps engineer, he helps organizations build and maintain resources on Kubernetes by providing outstanding SRE support. “I used to be a full-stack developer and tech lead,” he says, “until I realized how much I love to keep the workloads up and running with scalability and resilience.” To date, Seiji has started six new conversations on our platform, and participated in 16 altogether. Many of our members are engaging at this rate, but the resources and the personal touch he provides make Seiji’s posts stand out to our community managers and the rest of our members. Check out some of Seiji’s most-engaged posts below:  Category: Solving Problems Yuval Drori RetziverYuval Drori Retvizer (@yuval) is an experienced Staff Cloud Architect for C2C Foundational Platform Partner DoiT International, managing production environments for GCP and working with countless GCP customers. He is an infrastructure expert known for his extensive knowledge of Kubernetes, GKE, service mesh, and blockchain. An active participant at C2C events and on the community platform, Yuval has successfully provided solutions to a range of problems raised by C2C community members. The C2C Team and community are always grateful to have Yuval available to share his knowledge and resources. Follow the links below to explore some of the solutions Yuval has provided for other C2C members:  Category: Attending Events Katsiaryna “Kate”VyshydkevichKatsiaryna Vyshydkevich (@Katsiaryna Vyshydkevich), or Kate, is an experienced QA Engineer based in Belarus, where she studied at the University of Informatics and Radioelectronics. Kate is passionate about cloud and self-driving cars. A committed advocate for women in the Google Cloud ecosystem, she serves as an #IamRemarkable workshop facilitator, a WTM Ambassador, and a mentor for the Women in Tech community. Beyond the cloud, Kate is an avid traveler who dreams of visiting every part of the world. She enjoys windsurfing, books, and seeing local amateur theater productions. Kate engages enthusiastically across the C2C community, but her presence at C2C events is what inspired our team to nominate her as a C2Champion. Read these posts from Kate to hear what she has to say about some of our recent events:  Category: Google Support Madison JenkinsC2C would not be complete without the participation and support of colleagues and teammates across the Google organization. In recent months, Madison Jenkins (@MadisonJenkins) of Google Cloud Startup Community Marketing has played a key role in nurturing the C2C startups community. Madison is a Northern California native who has been working within the startup ecosystem since she attended California State University, Sacramento. As COO of AngelHack, she managed the company’s global hackathon series logistics, reaching over 60 cities a year. Madison is an operations guru with an expertise in event management, logistics, and marketing. When she’s not working, she loves to brew beer, travel, and explore the outdoors. Take a look below at some of what Madison has contributed to the C2C community experience:  Do you want to be a C2Champion? There are countless ways to engage on our platform or at our events, but the easiest way to get started right now is to join us as a member! We look forward to seeing you around our community.

Our team always says that the “C”’s in C2C are up for interpretation. Whether we’re connecting to customers, connecting customers to communities, connecting companies to the cloud, or enabling communities to connect, C2C exists to facilitate these connections and foster community and growth. All Google Cloud customers have valuable experiences and insights to share within and among one another, no matter their location, their demographic, or even their species. With all of the above in mind, C2C is proud to announce that April 1, 2022 marks the official launch of C2C’s newest Google Cloud Customer Community: Cat2Cat. JellyCommunity Manager, C2CAs we open up this new section of our community, please give a big welcome and a healthy amount of head scratches to C2C’s newest community manager, Jelly. He is a good boy, having previously provided support and socialization training to stray fosters for housecat readiness.  Like some of the other community managers you can expect to meet in C2C, Jelly fuses his connection-minded spirit with his significant experience using Google Cloud products. Jelly joins us from happn, where he worked as a product architect to upgrade the app’s infrastructure to Google Cloud Platform. Happn’s app uses geolocation information to notify users—whether people or outdoor cats roaming the neighborhood—when they’ve crossed paths, allowing them to connect afterward. To fully scale the application, terabytes of data were transferred to servers hosted in GCP data centers, using Google Compute Engine for additional functionality. Read happn’s full case study here. Throughout history, cats have been recognized variously as exalted souls protected from harm by law, familiars to witches and other beings blessed with magical powers, and immortal creatures possessed of multiple lives. Today, we recognize these early mythological depictions of cats as attempts to recognize their facility with the extraordinary technologies that govern the world we live in. Cats may not be able to do magic or live forever, but in recent years they have proven especially adept at harnessing the power of the cloud to host their software and data, build their own cloud-native applications, and adopt digital architecture to transform their businesses. Read on below for some detailed examples of how cats representing some of Google Cloud’s biggest customer companies are incorporating Google Cloud Products into transformative technical and business initiatives. CheddarCloud Data Architect, Mondelez InternationalWith a name like hers, Cheddar was destined to become a subject matter expert in the field of snacking. She has been collecting data on snack brands and their products her entire life, and she is grateful to have the opportunity to put this expertise to use at Mondelez International, the largest snacking company in the world. Thanks in large part to Cheddar’s efforts, Mondelez recently adopted the Google Cloud tech stack to transform its data collection and analysis to allow for personalized insights on cat customer experiences. As a lifelong snacker, Cheddar understands the Mondelez customer experience as well as anyone. Now, with Google Cloud, she is developing data solutions that will model this customer experience for every cat in search of the perfect snack. Read Mondelez International’s full case study here. LunaMachine Learning and Data Engineer, Johnson & JohnsonLike many cats, Luna has very little patience for bathtime. However, she does believe that grooming is essential to the leisurely life of a cat, which is why she wanted to bring her expertise building machine learning models to healthcare giant Johnson & Johnson, known most widely for its hair care products. J&J recently started working with Google’s Cloud Talent Solution to rebuild its careers portal. Luna, knowing that cat baths are projects not to be mismanaged, was eager to take the lead on this project. Read Johnson & Johnson’s full case study here. LeiaLead Engineer, Stores and Supply Chain, TargetAs a busy consumer looking for the best products to support her many hobbies—eating fish, drinking milk, and finding the most opportune spots for a nap—Leia is inspired by the ways Google Cloud technology can improve customer experience. Target has employed products like Google Kubernetes Engine and Compute Engine to deliver enhanced convenience for inventory management and online commerce. Leia’s work is also impacted by cross-team collaboration, working with her canine colleague, Chewi, whose work focuses on serverless technology for mobile app development to empower store associates. Read Target’s full case study here. Cats are proud and particular animals. We don’t always think of them as natural community builders. However, their characteristic skill and grace makes Google Cloud’s adaptable and dynamic platform a perfect fit for their technology needs. Our continuing mission at C2C is to connect cloud users, no matter how cuddly or sassy they may be. As long as cats are using cloud technology to solve their business problems, C2C will be here to remind them that every cat is welcome on Google Cloud.

Information Week recently invited C2C Global President Josh Berman (@josh.berman) to contribute an article about the shared roles of businesses and cloud service providers in ensuring cloud security. For broader perspective on this critical topic, Berman spoke with Paul Lewis, CTO of Pythian, a C2C Foundational Platinum Partner and Google Cloud Premier Partner, about the nuanced distinction between “Security of the Cloud” and “Security in the Cloud.”In the article, Berman identifies a series of emerging cybersecurity threats and enumerates a core set of best practices for preventing them—shared responsibility, identity and access management control, security by design, active monitoring, and data protection—ending with a reminder: “Do not stand still.” The considerations Berman offers are many, but all speak to one common essential value: accountability. In Berman’s words, “Cloud security is only effective if businesses and their cloud providers fundamentally agree and share responsibility. They must work in tandem.” Read the full text of the article at Information Week. Extra Credit:  

As we expressed in our recent Q&A with France Team Lead Guillaume Blaquiere, we are always interested in giving C2C community members space to share their expertise on our platform. When Abdel Sghiouar (@boredabdel) reached out to ask about contributing technical content to our website, we asked him a few questions to learn more about him and his work as a Google Cloud Senior Cloud Engineer. Sghiouar has been working for Google for eight years, and his most recent projects have helped him get comfortable with some of the infrastructure products and solutions currently changing the cloud space as we know it, including Serverless, Service Mesh, and Anthos.Read our Q&A with Sghiouar below, and check our website regularly to find his contributions. He is also available on Medium and Twitter. 1. What is your name and current role? What kinds of projects do you work on and/or what kinds of clients do you serve?Abdel Sghiouar, Senior Cloud Engineer at Google Cloud. I'm part of the PSO (Professional Service Organization) of Google Cloud, which provides consulting services to customers. I specialize in GKE, Serverless, Service Mesh, and Cloud-Native Technologies. I’ve worked with big customers like banks and energy companies and also with startups in the last four years in this role, helping them migrate or use Google Cloud. 2. What are your areas of professional expertise and what kinds of topics do you write about?My background is in data centers and infrastructure (I spent 4 years working in a Google data center before joining Cloud). So naturally, Infrastructure is the foundation I work on, and on top of that GKE, Serverless, Service Mesh, and Cloud-Native. 3. What is your relationship to the C2C community and how did you first get involved?I just signed up this year. I host a podcast called The Cloud Careers Podcast (cloudcareers.dev) and someone from C2C reached out last year and asked me to join. I just finally found the time. 4. What do you find most valuable about the C2C community?It's a great place for Google and its customers to come together, discuss ideas, help each other out, and support each other. It gives us Googlers direct access to customers using our products so we can get feedback and bring it back to the product teams. 5. What is a current or future development in the Google Cloud space that you're excited about?GKE, Serverless, and Anthos are products I'm keeping an eye on. They are changing the way people consume Cloud Services, and with the advancement in Edge and Mobile use-cases, these products will play a vital role in Cloud deployments.

The following article was written by C2C Global President Josh Berman (@josh.berman) as a member exclusive for TechCrunch. The original article is available here. The past two years have been exciting periods of growth for the cloud market, driven by increased demand for access to new technology during COVID-19 and the proliferation of the “work-from-anywhere” culture. IT leaders worked to shift workloads to the cloud to ensure business continuity for the remote workforce, leading to skyrocketing adoption of cloud computing. This momentum is expected to pick up in 2022 and beyond. For many businesses, the pandemic accelerated their digital transformation plans by months, or even years. Reliance on cloud infrastructure will only continue to grow as organizations adjust to the hybrid work model. Gartner projects that global spending on cloud services is expected to reach over $482 billion in 2022, up from $313 billion in 2020. As we start the new year, C2C, an independent Google Cloud community, has identified six cloud computing trends to watch in 2022. More people are harnessing new technologies The pandemic inspired a new generation of entrepreneurs. Whether out of necessity from mass layoffs, a desire for a more flexible lifestyle, or finding the inspiration to finally pursue a passion, millions have started their own ventures. As their businesses grow and digitize, entrepreneurs across industries are embracing the cloud and adopting technologies like machine learning and data analytics to optimize business performance, save time and cut expenses. There are countless benefits to small businesses and startups. For one, the cloud makes data accessible from anywhere with an internet connection, enabling the seamless collaboration necessary in a hybrid work environment. Without having to spend on expensive hardware and software, entrepreneurs can invest in other areas as they scale their businesses. We often see founders leveraging the power and ease of use of Google Cloud Platform AI and ML tools to rapidly prototype and build applications. They’ve used this technology to create unique and exciting solutions, like tools that use ML to analyze English pronunciation or ML that predicts one’s mood from their breath. There’s an increased desire for more direct access to product developersAs more users shift to the cloud, there is an increased desire to connect and network with product developers who have worked behind the scenes to bring the latest technologies to market. Online communities, like C2C, make having these conversations possible and easy. These conversations ultimately help users secure the right applications they need and successfully deploy them to ensure operational success. Greater emphasis on security in the cloud Last year, businesses looked to the cloud to reshape their operations and become more agile. While cloud computing certainly offers the benefits of that flexibility and productivity, it also puts organizations at risk of becoming more vulnerable to cyber threats and data breaches. For that reason, security is going to become a larger part of the cloud conversation throughout 2022 and beyond. This reality is going to influence a greater emphasis on building more security into the cloud. As the world continues to go digital, organizations are being tasked with ensuring security within the cloud is properly integrated into evolving business models. More organizations will seek out data solutions Almost all enterprises operate in multi-cloud environments. As a result, a lot of valuable data is spread across systems, creating a need to make data accessible to more analytics tools. Cross-cloud analytics solutions are on the rise to help data analysts manage all their insights. At C2C, we’ve discussed the noticeable rise in the number of people and companies looking at data solutions, specifically BigQuery, Google Cloud’s fully managed, server-less data warehouse. These companies are typically mapping out their data strategy, but, interestingly, some companies that are trying to work with AI and ML realize they need a solution that makes their data consistent and easy to store. Productivity tools will become even more sophisticated When the world was forced into a remote work model overnight during the pandemic, many companies were not prepared for the challenge of immediately shifting their processes to a virtual format. The ongoing challenge for many companies that have transitioned to a hybrid model has been determining how to best keep both remote and in-person team members engaged. This opened doors for cloud-based collaboration tools like Google Workspace, which are only going to become a bigger part of our day-to-day operations. These solutions have capabilities like document collaboration, integrated chat features, virtual whiteboards and more. Much of that growth has already occurred: Nearly 80% of workers are using collaboration tools for work in 2021, up from just over half of workers in 2019, according to Gartner research. Not only are more companies going to adopt these cloud-based collaboration solutions, but the solutions are going to be enhanced and evolve as the needs of the hybrid workforce change. Cloud certifications are becoming more sought after by employers As industries accelerate remote adoption of cloud technologies, certifications and other IT credentials are becoming increasingly important and sought after by employers. And more IT professionals see the benefits of earning these certifications as well. More than 90% of IT leaders say they’re looking to grow their cloud environments in the next several years, yet more than 80% of those same leaders identified a lack of skills and knowledge within their employees as a barrier to achieving this growth. It turns out, the next big challenge for companies will not be how to manage cloud technology, but how to find enough qualified workers certified in it.

The Startups Roundtable series hosted by C2C and Google Cloud Startups continued on Tuesday, Jan. 25 with another session on AI and ML, this one devoted solely to technical questions. These roundtable discussions are designed for startup founders seeking technical and business support as they realize their visions for their products on the Google Cloud Platform. This time, 10 Googlers including 6 Customer Engineers led private discussions in small groups of over forty guests from the C2C community. Watch the introduction to the event below:As in the previous Startups Roundtable, after the introduction, the hosts assigned the attendees to breakout rooms where they could ask their questions freely with the attention of the Google staff on the call. The breakout rooms in these sessions are not recorded, but C2C Community Manager Alfons Muñoz (@Alfons) joined one of the conversations to gather insights for the community. In this breakout room, Google Customer Engineer Druva Reddy (@Druva Reddy) explained how to understand the value proposition the startup is giving and how users will interact with the business. Reddy advised guests to focus on having a vision of the market and to build a product with a high level of abstraction, rather than focusing simply on the data-specific tools they are going to use.According to Muñoz, after the time allotted for the discussions in the breakout rooms ended, the conversations kept going. Guests had more questions to ask and more answers to hear from the Google team. The hosts invited all attendees to bring their questions to the C2C platform for the Googlers to answer after the event. Two guests took them up on the offer, and Reddy wrote them both back with detailed advice.Markus Koy (@MarkusK) of thefluent.me wrote:Hi everyone,I am using the word-level confidence feature of the Speech-to-Text API in my app (POC) https://thefluent.me that helps users improve their pronunciation skills. Is there an ETA when this feature will be rolled-out for production applications and if so, for which languages?@osmondng, @Druva Reddy thank you for offering to reach out to the Speech API team.Markusand Reddy wrote back:Hi Markusk,It was great chatting with you!!The Product team is aiming for Word Level Confidence General Availability stage (GA) by end of Q2 2022. Regarding languages supported, currently it supports English, French and Portuguese and that being said, multiple languages will be supported as we rollout the support for other languages in phases.Please stay tuned and checkout announcements here-  https://cloud.google.com/speech-to-text/docs/languages.Thanks,Druva ReddyThe next day, Erin Karam (@ekaram) of Mezo wrote:Hello,We are looking for guidance with training our DialogFlow CX intent.  Our model is limited by the 2000 limit on training phrases for a single intent. Our use case is that we are attempting to recognize symptoms from the user.  We have 26 different symptoms we are trying to recognize.  We have 10s of thousands of rows of training data to train for these 26 symptoms.  The upper limit of 2000 is hampering our end performance.  Please advise. Erinand Reddy responded:Hi Ekaram,Thanks for joining today’s session!!Default limit is 2000 training phrases per intent. This amount should be enough to describe all possible language variations. Having more phrases may make the agent performance slower. You can try to filter out identical phrases or phrases with identical structure.You don't have to define every possible example, because Dialogflow's built-in machine learning expands on your list with other, similar phrases.However, create at least 10 to 20 training phrases so your agent can recognize a variety of end user expressions.Some of the best practices i would suggest is,Avoid using similar training phrases in different intents. Avoid Special characters. Do not ignore agent validation.Let me know if that works.A startup is a journey, and no startup founder will be able to get all the answers they need in one session. That’s why the Startups Roundtable series is ongoing; more business and technical roundtables will be coming soon. For now, if you are a startup founder looking for more opportunities to learn from the Google Startups Team and connect with other startup founders in the C2C community, register for these events for our startups group: