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On August 30, 2022, C2C joined forces with our partners at DoiT to host a 2Gather event all about modernizing your organization on Google Cloud. Presented live at Google’s office in the repurposed Spruce Goose hangar in Playa Vista, California, Google Cloud Modernization with DoiT offered a deep exploration of the practices and technologies DoiT uses to help organizations modernize their resources and infrastructure on its Cloud Management Platform. DoiT’s Yuval Drori Retziver (@yuval) delivered the main program, comparing and contrasting the capabilities and advantages of Google Cloud Run and the Google Kubernetes Engine.Yuval prefers Cloud Run’s serverless, pay-per-use model, but he also made a point of mentioning numerous features and benefits of Kubernetes, including liveness, readiness, and startup probes and horizontal pod autoscaling. Even when Yuval offered to skip slides reviewing details familiar to most users, the crowd urged him to cover everything he had prepared. The various options for modernization Yuval described illustrated North America Head of Google Cloud Customer Community Dale Rossi (@Dale Rossi)’s comment that “As a Google Cloud customer, or any customer, it’s a journey.”Watch the full recording here:  Extra Credit:  

Cost is a key issue for startups. If you are just thinking about how to build your company, predicting what you will pay for using Google Cloud can be challenging. Learning how the different products are priced will ensure you’re not met with any surprises when you receive your bill.Fernando Olvera (@ferolvera), Customer Engineering Manager, and Jeremy Massey (@jeremymassey), Startup Success Manager, Google Cloud, joined C2C for a 2Chat event to help you better understand how Google Cloud pricing works, covering topics such as:A Google Cloud pricing overview examining various scenarios How to get a clear understanding of your cloud infrastructure costs Useful pricing resources every Google Cloud customer should know how to find Watch the full video here:   Extra Credit:Resources to Help Forecast Spend on Google Cloud Best Practices for Cost Optimization and Architectural Planning in GCP Browse our previous Google Cloud Startups content and join the C2C Startups Community to continue the conversation!

When startups begin their journeys building on relational databases, they often find that these databases run out of steam as their businesses grow. At this point, re-architecting with a more robust solution can be painful. Most applications require database transactions that meet ACID compliance requirements. The financial services, retail, gaming, and healthcare industries all require that queries for the latest data and updates happen in real time.Cloud Spanner meets these needs by getting you up and running fast and scaling as you grow. Spanner is a fully managed, globally distributed, ACID-compliant database that automatically handles replicas, sharding, and transaction consistency, allowing you to quickly scale to meet any usage pattern and ensure the success of your products.Jack Bradham, Global Solution Manager, Data Management for Spanner and Dylan Zuniga, Cloud Technical Resident at Google, joined C2C for a 2Learn event to explain how Spanner lets you:Experience the benefits of a global OLTP database with unlimited scaling up and down Enjoy high availability with zero scheduled downtime and online schema changes Focus on innovation, eliminating manual tasks with capabilities like automatic sharding and replication Benefit from resources such as sample code Watch the full recording here:  

At a 2Chat event for the C2C Startups community, Martin Gonzalez and @hannahparker got together to provide actionable advice for startup founders at all stages, based on learnings from high-potential startups across the world. Drawing on in-depth analysis, extensive research, and thousands of hours spent with entrepreneurs, the hosts provided practical, universal tips for recognizing and correcting the “people problems” that pose the biggest risks to a startup’s success.At The Effective Founder’s Project: Strategies to Overcome Startups’ Biggest Risks, our speakers covered:Why most startups fail The biggest risks startups face How to overcome these risks with actionable and practical guidanceWatch the full video here:  Extra Credit:Presentation Slide Deck Founders User GuideBrowse our previous Google Cloud Startups content and join the C2C Startups Community to continue the conversation!

Do you have questions about how to start your business? C2C is here to help. At Don’t Mind Your Own Business––Let us Help!, a C2C 2Chat event, experienced serial entrepreneur Louis Huynh, Head of Strategic Startup Growth and Community at Google, dedicated his time to answering startup questions from our community to allow our members to learn from his battle scars and offer them the opportunity to trade stories with their peers.If you weren’t able to attend, you’re in luck: we recorded the session to make it available on demand on our platform. Check out the recording to get tips from someone who has been in your shoes on topics like:Business models Pitching Fundraising Go-to-market strategy Product and customer development OperationsWatch the full video below:  

As a result of a partnership between Google and Canonical, the launch of Ubuntu Pro provides critical integration options for Google Cloud. Customers now have access to expanded security coverage, patching, and compliance features for public clouds using open-source software.The C2C team was pleased to be able to invite Hugo Huang, Product Manager at Canonical and Ubuntu, to give a presentation on Ubuntu Pro and Google Cloud integration options and sit down afterward for a chat with our community. This session introduced the full product portfolio, including segments on:Using the latest Ubuntu features to secure the Open Source software supply chain A hands-on tutorial for an in-place upgrade from Ubuntu LTS to Ubuntu Pro A demo to create Ubuntu 22.04 on Google CloudWatch the full recording here:  

In the current startup environment, we are seeing a slowdown in funding. How do fledgling companies get around that? One way is to come up with a great business idea and speed your time to market to get your prototype out. The faster you can build and deploy, the sooner you can get your product in front of customers and VCs.In her presentation for Accelerate Your Time to Market with Serverless, a C2C 2Chat event, Rachel Tsao, (@rachel) Product Manager, Google Cloud, discusses how you can maximize developer productivity and time to market using scalable, containerized applications with Google Cloud Run. Watch the full recording here:  

On June 14, C2C hosted an event in Google’s Cambridge office. We believe in-person connections are invaluable to everyone in our community, especially when our members are able to immediately converse with amazing speakers who are sharing their journeys and business outcomes.The stories from this event—presented on stage from Google Cloud customers, partners, and employees—can all be reviewed below. Introduction from Google Yee-chen Tjie (@yeetjie), Google Cloud Life Sciences Head of Customer Engineering, kicked off the program at C2C Connect Live: Cambridge with a few words about how Google is using 10x thinking to make major unique and substantial investments in Healthcare and Life Sciences technology. Tjie made a point of mentioning Google’s record of solving problems using AI and ML, particularly with AlphaFold 2, the focus of the presentation Luke Ge of Intel gave later in the afternoon.After his opening remarks, Tjie hosted a round of Google trivia, inviting everyone in the audience to stand and then sit down every time they answered one of his true-or-false questions incorrectly. After guessing whether Google Suite was initially offered on CD in 2006 (false), the first Google Doodle was about Coachella because the founders were going (false––they were going to Burning Man), and the English translation of Kubernetes is “cargo ship” (false––it’s “pilot”), Tjie handed the lucky winner a free Google hub device. CISO Healthcare and Life Sciences Reflections Before beginning his presentation, Taylor Lehmann (@taylorlehmann1), Director of the Office of the CISO at Google Cloud, thanked the hosts for the opportunity to join and speak, noting that he had just had his “mind blown” talking to fellow presenter Jonathan Sheffi before the event. Lehmann went on to discuss some of the core principles of invisible security, and his office’s mission to “get to this vision where security is unavoidable.” A big part of this project, he explained, is eliminating the shared responsibility model in favor of what Google calls “shared fate.” Under this model, Google provides blueprints, solutions, and curated patterns to enable customers to manage their own security infrastructures. “If you have a bad day on Google Cloud, it’s a bad day for us too,” he summarized. “If you win on Google Cloud, you win too.” The History and Future of Human Genomics Jonathan Sheffi (@sheffi) formerly a Director of Product Strategy at Veeva Systems and Google Cloud, began his presentation by prodding the audience with an enthusiastic “How’s everyone doing?” and then added “First rule of public speaking, make sure the audience is awake.” The focus of Sheffi’s presentation, the history and future of human genomics, took the audience back to the year 1990, when, in Sheffi’s words, “Nirvana’s Nevermind is a year from coming out, it’s a very exciting time.”Sheffi went on to cover the advents of next-gen sequencing and of public cloud computing, government and pharmaceutical adoption of genomic sequencing, and recent cost-cutting advancements in genomics. When he opened things up to the audience for questions, Michael Preston of Healthcare Triangle shared his own experience seeking treatment for melanoma to ask how genomic sequencing can be used to predict patient reactions to prescribed medications. Sheffi took the question to heart, and acknowledged the need for sequencing and screening processes that take into account data on patient-reported side effects. End-to-End Optimization of AlphaFold2 on Intel Architecture Luke Ge (@Liangwei77ge) an AI Solution Specialist at Intel, opened his presentation by saying, “Yesterday I spent 6 hours on a plane to come to this beautiful city,” prompting a round of applause form the audience. Then he asked “How many of you are using Alphafold 2?” A few hands went up. He followed up with, “How many of you have heard of Alphafold 2?” Many more hands raised.Ge’s presentation explored how analyzing human tissue from DNA to protein structure requires using AI for processing huge sequence data. The Google product that handles this processing is AlphaFold 2. Ge explained how Intel’s computing hardware supports Alphafold 2, including by providing a deep Learning model inference and removing memory bottlenecks in AlphaFold 2’s attention and evoformer modules. At the end of his presentation, Ge demonstrated a model generated using non-optimized versus optimized Alphafold 2 code. The difference was clear. Panel Discussion Tjie moderated the panel discussion with Sheffi and Ge by asking each whether he is a Celtics fan or a Warriors fan. Immediately, the tension in the room rose: Sheffi and Ge are from opposite coasts, making Sheffi a Celtics fan and Ge a Warriors fan. The tension was short-lived, however. When Tjie asked Ge what he considers the best way to choose a compute instance, Sheffi followed up to ask Ge if it’s possible to run multiple sequences on a single instance and maintain performance. Ge said yes.When Tjie opened questions to the audience, several guests rose to ask Sheffi questions about genomic sequencing, more than one of them focusing on use cases for genomic research for patients and caregivers. After several of these questions in a row, Tjie turned to the crowd and said, “I warned Luke that if he picked the Warriors then he would get less questions from the audience.” After the laughs in the room died down, Tjie asked Ge where he sees HCLS problems being solved with AI. Ge did not have to think long before citing computer vision as a solution for detecting cancerous cells. Winding Down Following the presentations, all in attendance broke away to connect during a networking reception. To read more about it, check out the exclusive onsite report linked below in the Extra Credit section. Extra Credit  

Machine Learning is an essential component of every major tech product today. With tools like BigQuery ML, you don’t have to be a data scientist to quickly and easily incorporate ML into your applications.At a recent C2C Deep Dive event hosted by the Google Cloud startups team, Google Cloud AI/ML Specialist Customer Engineers Mike Walker and Rob Vogelbacher explained how you can use BigQuery ML to power insights for you and your customers. There are many built-in algorithms for regression, classification, clustering, forecasting, and recommendations that you can train with just a few lines of SQL. All these help you learn more from your data in a short time and in a cost-effective way. The models you build can be called from BigQuery or from external applications.The recording from this session includes the following topics:(0:00) Introduction from C2C (2:35) What is BigQuery? (6:00) Decoupled storage and compute on BigQuery (8:00) Typical ML Workflow (10:00) BigQuery ML and AI (11:30) BigQuery ML-supported models and features (17:30) BigQuery Use cases (18:30) BigQuery Explainable AI (21:05) AutoML Tables and BigQuery ML (23:25) BigQuery ML Example Models: Miami Housing Dataset (41:30) Audience Q&AWatch the full recording of the conversation below: Extra Credit:  

On May 12, C2C hosted its first east coast event at Google’s New York office. We believe in-person connections are invaluable to everyone in our community, especially when our members are able to immediately converse with amazing speakers who are sharing their journeys and business outcomes.The stories from this event—presented on stage from Google Cloud customers, partners, and employees—can all be reviewed below.  A Warm Welcome from C2C and Google Cloud Opening the event was Marco ten Vaanholt (@artmarco), who leads C2C initiatives at Google Cloud. To kick things off, Marco prompted the audience to get to know each other, and all enthusiastically turned to their table neighbors. After Marco covered the history of C2C and our early adventures in hosting face to face events, Marcy Young (@Marcy.Young), Director of Partnerships at C2C, followed to reiterate our mission statement: we’re here to connect Google Cloud customers across the globe. Since March of 2021, when the C2C online community first launched, our community has grown in size to make valuable connections with people like Arsho Toubi (@Arsho Toubi), Customer Engineer, Google Cloud, who followed Young to introduce C2C’s partner speakers.All three introductory speakers emphasized the excitement of being able to make new connections in person again. As ten Vaanholt put it, peers introducing themselves and initiating new relationships is “the start of community building.” When Toubi announced “I received some business cards, and that was a fun experience I haven’t had in two years,” the room responded with a knowing laugh. Toubi also asked the Googlers in the room to stand up so others could identify them. “These are my colleagues,” she said. “We’re all here to help you navigate how to use GCP to your best advantage.”  Getting to Know AMD and DoiT C2C partners and the sponsors for this event, DoiT and @AMD shared updates of the partnership between the two companies focused on cloud optimization.Michael Brzezinski (@mike.brzezinski), Global Sales Manager, AMD Spenser Paul (@spenserpaul), Head of Global Alliances, DoiTBrzezinski framed the two presentations as a response to a question he received from another attendee he met just before taking the stage, a question about how the two companies work together to enhance performance while reducing cost. One half of the answer is AMD’s compute processors, which Brzezinski introduced one by one. To complete the story of the partnership between the two companies, Spenser Paul of DoiT took the stage with his Labrador Milton. “I’m joining the stage with a dog, which means you won’t hear anything I’m saying from here on,” he said as he took the microphone. “And that’s totally okay.” The key to minimizing cost on AMD’s hardware, Paul explained, is DoiT’s Flexsave offering, which automates compute spend based on identified need within a workload.  A Fireside Chat with DoiT and CurrentSpenser Paul, Head of Global Alliances, DoiT Trevor Marshall (@tmarshall), Chief Technology Officer, CurrentPaul invited Marshall to join him onstage, and both took a seat facing the audience, Milton resting down at Paul’s feet. After asking Marshall to give a brief introduction to Current, Paul asked him why Current chose Google Cloud. Marshall did not mince words: Current accepted a $100,000 credit allowance from Google after spending the same amount at AWS. Why did Current stay with Google Cloud? The Google Kubernetes Engine. “I like to say we came for the credits, but stayed for Kubernetes,” Marshall said. Paul wryly suggested the line be used for a marketing campaign. The conversation continued through Current’s journey to scale and its strategy around cost optimization along the way.When Paul opened questions to the audience, initially, none came up. Seeing an opportunity, Paul turned to Marshall and said, “Selfishly, I need to ask you: what’s going to happen with crypto?” Just in time, a guest asked what other functionalities Current will introduce in the future. After an optimistic but tight-lipped response from Marshall, another moment passed. Marshall offered Paul a comforting hand and said, “We’re all going to make it through,” before fielding a few more questions.  Panel Discussion  All our presenters, with the addition of Michael Beal (@MikeBeal), CEO, Data Capital Management reconvened on stage for a panel discussion. Toubi, who moderated the conversation, began by asking Michael Beal to introduce himself and his company, Data Capital Management, which uses AI to automate the investment process. Beal ran through Data Capital Management’s product development journey, and then, when he recalled the company’s initial approach from Google, playfully swatted Marshall and said, “The credits don’t hurt.” Toubi then guided Beal and Brzezinski through a discussion of different uses cases for High Performance Computing, particularly on AMD’s processors.When Toubi turned the panel’s attention to costs, Paul took the lead to explain in practical detail how DoiT’s offerings facilitate the optimization process. “I have an important question,” said Toubi. “Can DoiT do my taxes?” Then she put the guests on the spot to compare Google Cloud to AWS’s Graviton. Brzezinski was ready for the question. The initial cost savings Graviton provides, he explained, don’t translate to better price performance when taking into account the improved overall performance on Google Cloud. Other questions covered financial services use cases for security, additional strategies for optimizing workloads for price performance, and wish-list items for Google Cloud financing options.Marco ten Vaanholt kicked off the audience Q&A by asking what a Google Cloud customer community can do for the customers on the panel. Marshall said he’s interested in meeting talented developers, and Beal said he’s interested in meeting anyone who can give him ideas. As he put it, “Inspiration is always a very interesting value proposition.” After a couple more questions about estimating cost at peak performance and addressing customer pain points, Toubi asked each panelist to offer one piece of advice for someone considering using Google Cloud who isn’t already. Again, Paul saw a shot and took it. “If you’ve never been to Google before,” he said, “Come for the credits, stay for the Kubernetes.” Winding Down Following the presentations, all in attendance broke away to connect during a networking reception. To read more about it, check out the exclusive onsite report linked below in the Extra Credit section, and to get involved in the customer-to-customer connections happening in person in the C2C community, follow the link to our live event in Cambridge, MA to register and attend. We look forward to seeing you there! Extra Credit 

Looker is a business intelligence platform used for data applications and embedded analytics. Looker helps you easily explore, share, and visualize your company's data so that you can make better business decisions. During this deep dive, Cat Huang and Tema Johnson, Looker customer engineers at Google Cloud, discussed the value of Looker for startup companies, including recommendations for how to choose a data warehouse complete with a product demo. The recording from this session includes the topics listed below, plus plenty of conversation infused in the presentation from open Q&A from community members present at the live event:(0:00) Welcome and introduction from C2C and the Google Startups Team (5:25) Looker (creating a data culture) vs. Data Studio (data visualizations) (9:00) Using Looker and Data Studio together for a complete, unified platform for self-service and centralized BI (10:10) Using looker with a data warehouse like BigQuery (13:15) Serverless big data analytics vs. traditional data warehouses (14:10) Integrated AI and ML services for data analytics (15:30) The power of Looker: in-database architecture, semantic modeling layer, and cloud native (21:05) Live demo: Looker (40:00) Closing comments and audience Q&AWatch the full recording below: Preview What’s NextJoin the Google Cloud Startups group to stay connected on events like this one, plus others we have coming up: 

Machine Learning is an important component of every major tech product today. However, not everything beyond excel sheets is big data, and not all big data problems require ML. The most important function of ML should be to supplement the product.Decision makers in the ML and big data spaces should know how an ML mindset differs from a traditional software development mindset. Hear from startup mentor, program manager, and trained architect KC Ayyagari (@kcayyagari), Senior Customer Engineer at Google Cloud.The recording from this session includes the topics listed below, plus plenty of conversation infused in the presentation from open Q&A from community members present at the live event:(0:00) Welcome and introduction from C2C and the Google Startups Team (3:30) Agenda overview (5:00) What is Machine Learning? (16:55) How ML is different from normal software development and how to represent physical problems in data (42:30) The do’s, don’ts, and focus areas in the ML mindset for managersWatch the full recording below: Preview What's NextJoin the Google Cloud Startups group to stay connected on events like this one, plus others we have coming up: 

End user computing devices account for 1% of greenhouse gas emissions. This may not sound like a lot, but it’s far too much if we want to change the course of our planet’s future. Fortunately, sustainability is a top-ranking trend across the business landscape, and Michael Wyatt, Head of Google’s Chrome Enterprise in EMEA, was happy to join C2C Global’s Clean Clouds Happy Earth event to tell our members about using Chrome OS to practice Sustainable IT.Chrome has committed to more sustainable manufacturing, consumption, and downstream practices for managing its products, integrating sustainability into the entire device lifecycle. Chrome’s manufacturing partners are producing more sustainable devices, including the first made entirely from ocean-bound plastics. Chromebooks also use up to 46% less energy than competitors. If other vendors adopt these practices, and customers make it a priority to invest in these resources, the goal of a sustainable future will be that much easier to achieve.After reviewing Chrome’s commitments, Wyatt introduced two case studies submitted by Chrome customers. Kingston & Sutton Council partnered with Citrix, Chrome, and Acer to update its systems and reduce their energy consumption by one third. Nordic Choice Hotels converted 2,000 windows PCs to chrome using OS Flex in one weekend after suffering a ransomware attack to adopt more secure software without investing in any new machines. The company distributed one-pagers to all of its hotels and each location’s staff migrated their machines onsite. As these stories demonstrate, sustainability is achievable for any organization willing to work proactively with Chrome.Watch a full video of Wyatt’s presentation below:  Extra Credit:  

On Thursday, April 14, 2022, the C2C DACH region hosted a powerful and informative event with guest Joel Goodman, a staff cloud architect at DoiT International, focused on Cloud Workflows, a serverless offering from Google Cloud. Thomas Hug (@tom), one of our DACH Team Leaders, served as moderator of the session. Read on below to review the key takeaways from this in-depth introduction to this dynamic product. 30 Minutes in 30 seconds (3:47) Joel Goodman began his presentation by explaining why a Google Cloud user should consider Workflows. The more services a user has talking to each other at once, the harder they are to manage, and the more tedious the process of sending events to a pipeline becomes.  (5:01) Goodman compared Workflow to an orchestrator: a central process that executes the workflow from start to finish.  (5:26) Next, Goodman gave an overview of Workflows and its capabilities, and what writing a workflow looks like. (7:00) To provide some examples of use cases for Workflows, Goodman brought up microservice orchestration, continuous integration and deployment (although he admitted he wouldn’t use it for heavier things), transactional consistency, ETL and Data pipelines (although he acknowledges that Workflows would be a better way to start for light data pipelines, and that for more complex needs there are a number of other tools available that would be more suitable), and long-running workflows.  (9:00) To give attendees a demo of Workflows, Goodman used the example of a mechanic who runs an application whose users send pictures of their vehicle. The microservice orchestration in this case is as follows: save the image to Google Cloud Storage, extract the license plate number from the image, look up the vehicle’s information, save the information to BigQuery, and finally email the vehicle image to the mechanic with the information he needs.  (10:44) Next Goodman listed some workflow design requirements: It has to be cheap, it has to focus on business logic and not infrastructure, it has to scale up and down with customer demand, and it has to be reliable and allow for easy troubleshooting.  (11:07) Goodman also expanded on his design decisions––Cloud Run for microservices and Cloud Workflows for orchestration––and analyzed the managed and external services and the microservices required.  (11:58) To break everything down further, Goodman explained the specific uses for the web app, the license plate reader, and the notification service.  (12:25) Goodman next provided an extensive analysis of the differences between orchestration and choreography. (16:40) Finally, Goodman gave attendees a demonstration of the application’s front end, the submission of the image, and the process in the background.  (20:56) For the rest of the session, Goodman fielded questions from C2C members hoping to implement Cloud Workflows for their own services.   Extra Credit: Looking to get more involved with our DACH community? Come to our in-person event in Munich on May 18, 2022. This session will cover how MediaMarktSaturn built its Data Mesh, and why this solution is such a game-changer. Attendees will also hear from our partner AMD about how they are making their industry leading AMD EPYC processors available on Google Cloud, and how UberCloud is helping organizations run their simulation tools using HPC application containers.Join us and these amazing speakers as they share their journeys and business outcomes, and how they have overcome their technical and business challenges:   Fabian Seitz, Group Product Manager, MediaMarkt Saturn Pawel Walczysko, Cloud Solution Specialist Wolfgang Gentzsch, President, UberCloud Daniel Gruber, Director of Architecture, UberCloud Sign up below today!  

What does it take to build resiliency into your supply chain in a world full of potential crises? With the complexities of world health, geopolitics, and the labor market, no one person can expect to predict every obstacle; however, we can broaden the scope of our data to make better-informed decisions.Louisa Loran is the Director for Supply Chain and Logistics in Industry Solutions at Google Cloud and brings in Google’s technology and thinking to transform and solve for businesses’ supply chains. Loran explains that using Google Cloud accelerators, companies can open new forms of collaboration by breaking down data silos to access geospatial information, media sentiment, and assessments for raw material risks.Watch Louisa’s presentation from C2C Global’s Clean Clouds, Happy Earth event below:  Extra Credit: 

Certifications are a Google Cloud user’s keys to success. Google Cloud’s many certifications provide the training and expertise practitioners need to identify and excel in their career paths, and certifications help employers and industry decision-makers find the talent that sets their teams apart from the competition.This C2C Connect was hosted by Devoteam, a foundational platinum partner of C2C and Google Cloud Premier Partner. Devoteam has an ambition to encourage consultants to become fully certified on Google Cloud, being well versed in multiple disciplines, and has four consultants who have done it, with two of them being Anthos fellows. The presenters shared reasons for why they think this is important and their methodology and support system they have built to roll this out to 400 consultants world wide.The recording from this session includes the topics listed below, plus nearly twenty minutes of open Q&A from community members present at the live event:(0:00) Introduction to the session from @Alfons, C2C (1:50) Introduction on Devoteam and our presenters, Jason Quek, Global CTO of Devoteam G Cloud, and Niels Buekers, CTO of Devoteam G Cloud Benelux & UKI (5:10) Session overview on the why, what, and how: continuous learning, business value, and leading by example by building the best talent on Google Cloud to serve customers (9:00) Why continuous learning is necessary for building trust (11:35) Testing your theoretical knowledge and preparing for certification exams (18:25) How Devoteam uses gamification (leaderboards) to award exam vouchers and why they celebrate newly certified exam-takers (27:40) Gaining hands-on experience and qualifying for cloud jobs (30:15) Mentorship programs and study sessions (32:15) Leading by example and the goal of becoming fully certified (33:45) Final thoughts and community Q&AWatch the full recording of the conversation below: 

In 2019, Emily Ma, Head of Google Cloud’s Food for Good program, began her journey as a Googler conducting waste audits. Every day, Ma and her team members would collect every trash bag in their Google facility, cordon it off in a designated outdoor space, and sort through all of it piece by piece. The goal of this process was to categorize the waste to understand what the Googlers in the building threw away every day. One particular insight emerged very quickly: office workers, like people everywhere, waste a lot of food.When Ma was working on supply chain hardware, she says, waste yields of less than 95% were considered “unconscionable.” By comparison, she adds with emphasis, “The food system has a 60% yield.” Ma started multiple teams at Google to enhance transparency for supply chains within the company and beyond. They used tens of thousands of video recordings of people throwing away food to build computer vision algorithms that recognize trends in food waste disposal. These trends align with what we already know: “Our food system is designed to overproduce.”Since 2014, Google Food has successfully saved 10 Million pounds of food waste, which is equivalent to over 25,000 pounds of carbon and 1.25 billion gallons of water, enough to supply all Google office spaces with water for 5 years. “There is a genius in setting out bold goals,” says Ma. By 2025, Google plans to reduce food waste per Googler by 50%, and divert all of that food waste away from landfill, where it would otherwise emit methane gas. To do so, Ma’s teams plans to focus their efforts in five areas: sourcing and procurement, operations optimization, user behavior change, physical infrastructure, and food recovery.In 2019, Google made a commitment to “circularity” to maximize reuse of finite resources in Google’s operations and empower others to do the same. Google is also the anchor funder for a $10 million catalytic grant through ReFED, the premiere food waste research organization in the United States. To learn more about these and the other efforts Ma has taken on with Google Food, watch the presentation she gave at C2C Global’s Clean Clouds, Happy Earth event below:  Extra Credit:  

On April 12, 2022, C2C France Team Leads Antoine Castex (@antoine.castex) and Guillaume Blaquiere (@guillaume blaquiere) were excited to welcome Policy Intelligence Product Manager Vandhana Ramadurai to join a powerful session for the Google Cloud space in France and beyond. These sessions intend to bring together a community of cloud experts and customers to connect, learn, and shape the future of cloud. The following points summarize the key takeaways from Ramadurai’s presentation: Policy Intelligence is a suite of 4 major tools which simplify security and IAM (identity and access management) at the project, folder, and organization levels. IAM Recommender analyses, understands, and proposes new roles after an observation period of 90 days. The feature uses AI to increase recommendation accuracy. The least privilege principle is important, but can be complex to enforce at project, folder, and organization level. IAM Recommender helps in that respect, and users can easily enforce or roll back the recommendation with a simple click (or API call). IAM Simulator is a solution for users or organizations who may not trust AI to enforce recommendations. Users can manage IAM policy changes and simulate their potential impact.  User accounts or service accounts may not have the permissions required to execute certain actions. IAM Troubleshooter understands mission roles and permissions and grants those required, without breaking the least privilege principle. IAM Analyser, the final tool in the Policy Intelligence suite, lists the permissions granted a user to access a certain resource, the account assigned a specific permission or role, or a combination of both. This tool is particularly useful for auditing granted permissions. The Policy Intelligence tools continue to evolve to include all the developing features in the IAM space (denied policy, for example). In the future, the flagship product, IAM recommender, will include more ability to customize the duration of the observation period. Despite its 60-minute time limit, this conversation didn’t stop. Policy Intelligence is a hot topic, and it certainly kept everyone’s attention. The group spent time discussing asset inventory, AI and ML modeling, and various topics in IAM including security, least privilege, and trust. Ramadurai also fielded questions from attendees, including Damien Morellet (@dmorellet) of SFEIR, who wanted to know if Policy Intelligence includes a dry run feature (it does!). Watch the full video of the event below to learn more about this suite of tools and the many features and use cases of each one:  Preview What's Next These upcoming C2C events will cover other major topics of interest that didn’t make it to the discussion floor this time around:  Extra Credit Looking for more Google Cloud products, news, and resources? We got you. The following links were shared with attendees and are now available to you!  https://youtu.be/IAhJs3-0RoY IAM Recommander IAM Simulator IAM Troubleshooter IAM Analyser

The centerpiece of C2C’s virtual Earth Day conference, Clean Clouds, Happy Earth, was a panel discussion on sustainability in EMEA featuring C2C and Google Cloud partners HCL and AMD and cosmetics superpower L’Oreal. Moderated by Ian Pattison, EMEA Head of Sustainability Practice at Google Cloud, the conversation lasted the better part of an hour and explored a range of strategies for enabling organizations to build and run sustainable technology on Google Cloud.According to Sanjay Singh, Executive VP of the Google Cloud Ecosystem Unit at HCL technologies, when advising customers across the value chain evaluating cloud services, Google Cloud becomes a natural choice because of its focus on sustainable goals. Connecting customers to Google Cloud is a key part of HCL’s broader program for maintaining sustainable business practices at every organizational level. “What you cannot measure, you cannot improve” says Singh, which is why HCL has created systems to measure every point of emission under their purview for carbon footprint impact. In alignment with Google Cloud’s commitment to run a carbon-free cloud platform by 2030, HCL plans to make its processes carbon neutral in the same timeframe.Suresh Andani, Senior Director of Cloud Vertical Marketing at AMD, serves on a task force focused on defining the company’s sustainability goals as an enterprise and as a vendor. As a vendor, AMD prioritizes helping customers migrate to the cloud itself as well as making its compute products (CPUS and GPUS) more energy efficient, which they plan to do by a factor of 30 by 2025. On the enterprise side, Andani says, AMD relies on partners and vendors, so making sure AMD as an organization is sustainable expands to its ecosystem of suppliers. One of the biggest challenges, he says, is to measure partners’ operations. This challenge falls to AMD’s corporate responsibility team.Health and beauty giant L’Oreal recently partnered with Google Cloud to run its beauty tech data engine. In the words of architect Antoine Castex, a C2C Team Lead in France, sustainability at L’Oreal is all about finding “the right solution for the right use case.” For Castex, this means prioritizing Software as a Service (SaaS) over Platform as a Service (PaaS), and only in the remotest cases using Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). He is also emphatic about the importance of using serverless architecture and products like AppEngine, which only run when in use, rather than running and consuming energy 24/7.For Hervé Dumas, L’Oreal’s Sustainability IT Director, these solutions are part of what he calls “a strategic ambition,” which must be common across IT staff. Having IT staff dedicated to sustainability, he says, creates additional knowledge and enables necessary transformation of the way the company works. As Castex puts it, this transformation will come about when companies like L’Oreal are able to “change the brain of the people.”As Castex told C2C in a follow-up conversation after the event, the most encouraging takeaway from the panel for L’Oreal was the confirmation that other companies and tech players have “the same dream and ambition as us.” Watch a full recording of the conversation below, and check back to the C2C website over the next two weeks for more content produced exclusively for this community event.  Also, if you’re based in EMEA and want to connect with other Google Cloud customers and partners in the C2C community, join us at one of our upcoming face-to-face events:  Extra Credit:  

On April 21, 2022, C2C hosted a live virtual Earth Day conference dedicated to all things sustainability in the cloud. Built around a live panel of C2C and Google Cloud customers and partners, the Clean Clouds, Happy Earth program also included a series of sessions featuring Google representatives, exploring different use cases and topics of high priority for all collaborators on the shared mission to bring about a clean and happy future for the cloud and the Earth. Over the next three weeks, we’ll be publishing these sessions on our website for you to view, share, and discuss with the rest of the C2C community. The video below is a presentation from Jenny Fernandez, Google Cloud’s Human Truths Lead in EMEA, about using data on human consumption patterns to inform more sustainable business and technical solutions:  Check back to this page in the coming days for more of the content produced for this event, and please feel free to share your own thoughts here or directly to our community. Extra Credit:  

The Google Cloud certifications program offers career-enhancing training and testing for professionals in all areas of cloud technology. Data, infrastructure, and security are often topics of particular interest for those investigating these options, but developers make up one of the biggest and most vibrant communities in the world of Google Cloud. Sebastian Moreno is a Google partner engineer and the author of the Google Cloud Certified Professional Cloud Developer Exam Guide. In this C2C Connect event, Sebastian joins us to share his insights and field questions directly from C2C members interested in taking this exam. Questions answered and topics explored include: (0:00) Introducing Sebastian and the Professional Cloud Developer exam (4:45) Who is the target of the Professional Cloud Developer certification? (7:30) Does the Professional Cloud Developer exam include case studies? (9:30) The Professional Cloud Developer exam, DevOps, and related certifications (19:30) Preparing for the Professional Cloud Developer exam with Pluralsight and other labs (24:00) How difficult is the Professional Cloud Developer exam? (28:00) What tools does a data professional need to take the Professional Cloud Developer exam? (31:40) Retaining knowledge gained while studying for the Professional Cloud Developer exam (37:30) The Professional Cloud Developer exam and career advancement Watch the full recording of the conversation below:  

Druva Reddy, a Solutions Architect specializing in ML at Google Cloud, discussed Vertex AI, which brings all of Google Cloud’s ML services together under one unified UI and API. In Vertex AI, you can now easily train and compare models using AutoML or custom code training and store all of your models in one central model repository. In this overview session, Druva covered some major components of the Vertex AI platform, from training to prediction to MLOps services. This recording also includes a demo of an end-to-end example that shows these services in action.Review all parts of the presentation, including:(00:00) Introduction to Google Cloud Startups team (05:05) Introduction to functional solutions with AI (10:15) ML on GCP with Vertex AI What’s included in Vertex AI Choosing the right tools or pre-trained models Low/No code (25:55) Operationalizing ML MLOps, life cycle, and framework Using Vertex AI with MLOps (32:55) Vertex AI demo (44:05) Open community questions  Extra credit: Google Cloud Vertex AI Docs Get started in Cloud Console Best practices for implementing machine learning on Google Cloud To connect with Druva, reach out to him directly in the Google Cloud Startups community and tag @Druva Reddy 

On March 17, 2022, the C2C Connect: UK and I group, led by Charlotte Moore (@charlotte.moore), Andy Yates (@andy.yates), Fintan Murphy (@fintan.murphy), Paul Lees (@paul.less), Sathy Sannasi (sathyaram_s.), and Yasin Quareshy (YasinQuareshy), invited Google Cloud Developer Advocate Alexis Moussine-Pouchkine to join them for an hour-long session on Site Reliability Engineering. The group’s monthly sessions bring together a local community of cloud experts and customers to connect, learn, and shape the future of cloud.  60 Minutes Summed Up in 60 Seconds  Pouchkine started the session by citing a number of publications and books on SRE, and then introduced the focus of the session: the Service Management aspect of SRE, and how it is applied at Google. Next, Pouchkine introduced DevOps Research Assessment (DORA), which helps measure how an organization compares to the best organizations in its delivery of its services, and how close the organization is to becoming an elite performer. Pouchkine shared key metrics DORA uses to measure a team's software delivery performance and explained how to set up an environment using FourKeys (available on GitHub) to implement workload measurement methods. To demonstrate practical implementation, Pouchkine introduced Pic-A-Daily App as a SRE use case. Pic-A Daily App is a photo recognition app that tags an image into a searchable category and an event driven microservice app with several delivery components. Next, Pouchkine gave his definition of SRE, making reference to the billions of users of Google's services and the 2,500 SREs responsible for the reliability of these services. He also discussed balancing reliability with agility. Pouchkine discussed tools, infrastructure observability, and culture in detail, citing the following key metrics used to measure impacts on a customer:  Service Level Indicator (SLI), which captures metrics that impact a customer, e.g. availability, latency. Service Level Objective (SLO), or the quality of service promised, e.g. error budget. Service Level Agreement (SLA), a business driven metric not used by the SRE. Pouchkine also discussed some recommended SRE best practices to follow: Versioning your software. Having multiple versions of software deployed and ready to serve requests if needed.   Canary Blue/Green deployments to provide flexibility and confidence in rolling back releases (if required) and A/B testing your software. Google Cloud Tools discussed that help diagnose and remediate faults. Having a centralized view of things rather than using multiple locations to identify issues. The climax of the session was a demo of Pic-A Daily App demonstrating how the tooling and SLO metrics can be used to identify and diagnose a fault. Tools that support the SRE include monitoring, error reporting, debugger, logging, traces, and profiler The session closed with a Q&A and some available resources on the topic.  Watch the full recording of this event below:  Despite its 60-minute time limit, this conversation didn’t stop. What are your thoughts on SRE, Service Management, DORA, or any of the other topics discussed above? Reply in the comments below or start a new topic on our group page.Be sure to sign up for C2C and join our C2C Connect: UK and Ireland group to connect with Google Cloud customers and experts based in the UK & Ireland and beyond Extra Credit  SRE Resources  DORA at C2C

On Thursday, March 10, C2C DACH Community Manager Dimitris Petrakis (@Dimitris Petrakis) hosted a powerful event with Patrizia 'Pati' Jurek  (DevRel Regional Lead DACH, WTM Europe Lead, Google) focusing on the different Google Developer Communities. 60 Minutes in 60 seconds (3:05) Who We AreJurek began her presentation by explaining what the DevRel (Developer Relations) team really is: an on-the-ground network of developers overlooking engineering programs and community managers who drive various global programs that follow the “1:few:many” model. (4:20) What We DoThe main goal of DevRel is to nurture influencers and their communities everywhere to boost Google technology advocacy, adoption, quality, and perception. (5:21) How do Google Developers support communities?Google Developers support communities through learning, mentoring, and business building. The community is very diverse, with people coming from a huge variety of different backgrounds, such as enterprises, startups, and etc. They partner with communities, Women in Tech leads, Google technology experts, startups, and more to provide them with the resources and guidance they need to be successful in building on Google. (7:43) Video Presentation: "Google Developers: Community Connect 2021After her initial overview, Jurek shared a short video to give attendees a better understanding of what it means to be a part of this bigger community. (11:46) Google Developers: Developer Ecosystem TeamThe DevRel team spans 30 countries and connects with developers in over 140. Jurek presented analysis on these numbers, as well as the benefits gained by further developing communities worldwide and by engaging with top startups in strategic and up-and-coming markets. (14:00) Community ProgramsJurek introduced the different Google Community programs––GDG (Google Developer Groups), GDSC (Google Developer Student Clubs), GDE (Google Developer Experts), and WTM (Women Techmakers)––and then explained in detail their statistics and numbers (countries, groups, events annually, developers reached, content reads, public speaking events and workshops, ambassadors, women in tech reached) as well as the events they host, where they are organised, when, by whom, and what they contain. (22:08) Why does Google have Developer Groups?Three words: Connect, Learn, Grow! Developer community is about meeting other local developers and those interested in developer technologies, learning about a wide range of technical topics and new skills, and applying new learnings and connections to build great products and advance your skills, career, and network. (28:43) Google Developers ExpertsGoogle Developer Experts are a global network of highly experienced technology influencers who actively support developers, companies and communities. GDEs are independent volunteers who do not work for Google in any capacity. (47:34) Google Developer Student ClubsGDSCs are university based community groups for students interested in Google's developer technology. (52:25) Women TechmakersWTM engages over 100,000 women in tech across 190 countries each year. WTM provides visibility, community and resources for women in technology across all career levels to drive innovation and participation in the industry. (56:44) Become a Google Cloud Developer HeroGoogle Developer Heroes showcase and celebrate the innovation and career development of their teams, meet and exchange ideas with Google execs, cloud solution experts and product teams, and join Google tech communities or become Experts to grow skills, mentor fellow developers, and partake in exclusive Google projects. Watch the full recording of the event below: Extra Credit   

Scott Wilson, Co-Founder of QA Wolf and former Senior Director of Product Marketing for Wyze Labs, presented during a tactical Deep Dive all about getting your product followed, liked, loved, and reviewed. This hour-long session covered actionable steps and expert tips on positioning your product and connecting with your audience using product journey examples from Scott’s work at Wyze, including:(00:00) About C2C and Google Cloud Startups (02:50) Introduction to Scott Wilson, his experience at Wyze, and agenda overview for his best practices for product positioning (08:45) Step 1: Create a remarkable solution that surpasses your users’ expectations Defining “solution” as product plus experience Identifying your core user Creating customer avatars Creating a method of trial Meeting and surpassing expectations Example: what makes Wyze remarkable (21:40) Step 2: Make it easy to share so your customers can advocate for you Building into the solution Encouraging and asking customers to share Example: Wyze sharing (26:20) Step 3: Tell the right people so they do the marketing for you Example: Wyze outreach campaigns Finding the right people and using the right tools (all linked below) Creating a one-pager Drafting your outreach message Sending your message How to persist (45:50) Step 4: Keep your solution remarkable so users keep coming back Example: How Wyze keeps their product remarkable Continually moving the goalpost by keeping a pulse on the market (48:05) Bonus: use cases at QA Wolf (53:15) Open community questions Extra CreditScott shared a great variety of his favorite tools for finding the right people, including:AHREFs for SEO tools and resources Quantcast for digital advertising, website analytics, and audience insights WhatRunsWhere for ad intelligence Brand24 for media monitoring SimilarWeb for website traffic analytics HappierLeads for identifying potential buyers Sparktoro for audience research To connect with Scott, reach out to him via email at scott@qawolf.com