Tech Field Day Coverage
Our delegate panel includes independent writers and thought leaders, and we collect their coverage of the event, Tech Field Day presentations, and sponsoring companies here.
Meraki’s Eye in the Sky
Meraki may be the last name you think of when it comes to security cameras. But the engineering effort put into their line of on-premises security devices is very impressive. Tom Hollingsworth takes a look at a couple of their new offerings that they showed at Tech Field Day Extra at Cisco Live US 2019 and gives his perspective on how Meraki sees the world.
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Meraki in the Middle – Smart Security Cameras
John Herbert got to hear from Cisco Meraki during Tech Field Day Extra at Cisco Live US 2019. The company detailed their new second generation MV security cameras, which John sees as a entering into a new market for the company. These fall somewhere in the middle between consumer cloud-managed cameras and high end centrally managed enterprise one. In terms of features and quality, Meraki’s cameras approach the high end, but with the same underlying cloud-managed simplicity with which it has approached wireless, switching and security. For John, the new lineup looks “really neat”.
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Meraki In The Middle - Smart Security Cameras
Cisco Live 2019 – a Whirlwind of Networking Goodness
It was great to have Amy Arnold as a delegate at Tech Field Day Extra at Cisco Live US 2019. At the event, NetBeez’s presentation really stood out to her. She’s long been impressed by the monitoring company, and with their recently announced integration with Cat9K switches, there’s even more utility in their solution. Overall it was a busy event for her, but one with a lot of networking goodness.
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Cisco Live 2019 – A Whirlwind of Networking Goodness
Hot Take From TFD19 – RPA With a Security First Mindset
Scott Driver was at Tech Field Day last month, and got to hear from first time presenter Automation Anywhere. They showed off their Robotic Process Automation (RPA) solution, something that caught Scott’s eye as his financial sector background is just starting to really look in that space. What really impressed him in the presentation was Automation Anywhere approaching their solution from a privacy and security first perspective.
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Hot Take from TFD19 – RPA with a Security First mindset
If You Build It….
At Cloud Field Day earlier this year, Al Rasheed got to hear from Rubrik. The company is no stranger to Field Day events, and this time they used their presentation to discuss Rubrik Build. This is a site dedicated to user education as well as for hosting events to build and bring a community together. With section dedicated to Software Development Kits, Tooling Integrations, and Use Cases, Al found it a really valuable resource. He appreciated that this wasn’t something tied to sales, but instead meant to make their customers more productive.
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Tech Field Day 19 – (Fairly) Full Disclosure
Dan Frith is a familiar site at the delegate table for Storage Field Day, but last month he was able to attend his first Tech Field Day, seeing presentations from across data center verticals. In this post, Dan outlines what was provided during the event, where he went, and gives an impression of the overall Field Day event experience.
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Tech Field Day 19 – (Fairly) Full Disclosure
Fortinet @ NFD20
In this post, Snehal Patel shares his thoughts on what he saw from Fortinet at Networking Field Day earlier this year. At the event, Fortinet showed off their secure SD-WAN solution. This is available as a feature on all Forinet devices, allowing customers to get more features out of things like Fortigate Firewalls. This was Snehal’s first time looking at Fortinet, and he was really impressed with their controllerless approach to SD-WAN.
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Security Wasn’t Always My Day Job
Nathaniel Avery finds himself in a familiar position to a lot of people in IT. Originally his role as a Solutions Architect didn’t have to have security strictly in mind, rather focused on compliance and best practices. But the role has evolved where it is now of primary importance. At Security Field Day, these themes were reiterated, with looks at the latest in microsegmentation and zero-trust security approaches.
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Security Wasn't Always My Day Job
My Tech Field Day Experience
Evan Mintzer attended his first Field Day event as a delegate for Security Field Day. He really appreciated the unique “un-conference” quality of the event, which allowed for real communication and community building between the delegates and the presenting companies. He was really impressed not just with the technical content, but with the organization and thought that went into organizing it. It was great to have Evan there and we can’t wait to have him back.
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News From Cloud Side #2
Lino Telera put together a look at some of the big cloud news, and we were thrilled to see our most recent Cloud Field Day on the list! Be sure to get caught up on the event if you missed it live, we post all videos of the presentations on our YouTube channel. He’s also excited for the next Cloud Field Day, and so are we!
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Vexata Execs Depart for Greener Shores
This piece covers management shakeups at the high performance storage startup Vexata. Former CMO Ashish Gupta left the company and took up a role at the security company Banyan, a presenter at Security Field Day last month. In fact, during their presentation, he revealed he had been at the company for just three days. Be sure to check out their full presentation video to see what Ashish is taking on in this new venture.
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Vexata execs depart for greener shores
Tech Field Day 19 – Day 0
Matt Callaway attended Tech Field Day out in Silicon Valley last month. In this post, he details one of the parts of the event that doesn’t make it onto the live stream, the “Day 0” before any of the presentations. This involves getting to the event, meeting up with the organizers and other delegates, and getting into great conversations over dinner. As a first time delegate at the event, Matt found it a great way to get to know the community.
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I Met Stephen Foskett
In this post, Jim Palmer details his experience meeting Tech Field Day founder Stephen Foskett. Jim had previously attended Wireless Field Day last year, but got invited to Tech Field Day this year. Getting exposed to new technology and new people was a really unique opportunity and it was great to have Jim at the event. He even got Stephen to explain RAID storage to him!
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Meet Field Day Delegate – Matt Callaway
Matt Callaway attended his first Field Day event, and we got to know him a little better thanks to this awesome interview. He talks about how he used to try to write down all the URLs he came across on the early Internet, how he got into IT, and how he manages the constant challenge of work-life balance. Plus there’s talk of ice cream. It was great to get some insight into him ahead of the event, we can’t wait to see him at another soon.
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Meet Field Day Delegate - Matt Callaway
Intelligence in the Mist
How can cloud and artificial intelligence combine to make your wireless network more resilient to faults? Tom Hollingsworth takes a look at how Mist Systems, now a Juniper Networks, is using brand new ideas to solve age-old reliability issues. They presented at Cloud Field Day recently, so Tom got a deep dive at the event. We’re looking forward to seeing them at Mobility Field Day later this year as well!
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Meet Field Day Delegate – Scott Driver
New faces make for great Field Day events, whether its new companies presenting or new delegates bring their expertise. Scott Driver is someone we’re thrilled to have at our events. In this post, we get to know him a little better to how he go into IT, his favorite movie, and why he sees IT refocusing on the SMB space in the near future. We can’t wait to hear what he thinks of the event.
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Meet Field Day Delegate - Scott Driver
My Defining Moments
Jim Palmer got to hear a great Ignite Talk while at Security Field Day earlier this year. The focus was on Your Personal Brand. For Jim, this prompted a reflection about how he got to where he is, and what his purpose is now. It’s an amazing journey that includes some very scary moments, his time in the military, saving a relationship, and more. We really appreciate Jim sharing this really thoughtful post.
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Tech Field Day (#TFD19): A Heads-Up
Before heading to Tech Field Day this week, Ather Beg wrote up a little homework in this blog post. He gives an outline of what to expect from each presenter. For those watching along on the live stream or catching up on the video later, it’s a good one stop shop for background information. He’s got links to relevant material, as well as his own thoughts on the presenters.
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Tech Field Day (#TFD19): A Heads-Up
TECHunplugged Videocast #1 – Liqid and Composable Infrastructures
In this take, TECHunplugged Analyst Max Mortillaro talks about Liqid, composability, and their upcoming Gen-Z composable infrastructures. Max was a delegate at Tech Field Day Extra at Dell Technologies World, and got to hear directly from Liqid at the event. Their PCIe-based composability lets customers create pools of resources for servers or VMs that aren’t bound by physical enclosures. What’s exciting though is what is coming down the road. Be sure to watch the video to find out Max’s thoughts.
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TECHunplugged Videocast #1 - Liqid And Composable Infrastructures
HyperConverged for Containers? Cool Concept!
While at Cisco Live US 2019, Matt Leib attended a few Tech Field Day Extra presentations. One was from Cisco, where they highlighted HyperFlex product using Kubernetes and the Anthos management platform. For Matt, the dream of true multi-cloud, with the ability to move actual containers from location to location, requires a proper management layer. This is what Anthos offers to users. He still has some questions about the approach, but HCI for containers certainly has a nice ring to it.
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