CloudFest is the world’s biggest event devoted to cloud-based Internet infrastructure. In 2023, the conference was held in Germany from March 20 to 23. This is the fourth time that we took part in it. Previously, we attended it back in 2019. Our prolonged absence was a result of CloudFest’s cancellation due to the epidemiological situation at the time. Although the event did take place in 2022, it was small and subject to many restrictive measures. No such restrictions were present in 2023; the huge turnout really impressed us.
The time we spent at the conference allowed us to gather unique knowledge from the lectures, meet our regular partners and develop new business relationships to improve our extensive offer of domains for you.
What interesting happened during the CloudFest 2023 conference?
The CloudFest 2023 event was held yet again in Rust, a German town, specifically in the Europa-Park amusement park. According to the organizer, over 150 exhibitors incl. popular companies such as Intel, Verisign, CloudLinux, Kingston, Dell, Samsung, Gigabyte, Lenovo, and Toshiba, announced their participation.
CloudFest’s global event status is made evident by the presence of over 65 different nationalities on it.
Many important matters were discussed during this year’s CloudFest 2023 conference, including, among others, virtual servers, domains, SSL certificates, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence (AI), content management systems (CMS) and their plugins, NFT, and other issues related to the Metaverse.
Just by the entrance to the main building, we saw an attention-grabbing slogan referring to a current trend in AI – “This sign was not written by ChatGPT.” ChatGPT is a popular AI chatbot used to generate replies to questions entered by its users.
During the conference, our Marketing department noticed how frequently the .io domain is used by startups. Moreover, the stairs covered with ideas for domain hacks looked very nice.
Among all the available stands, one, in particular, deserves recognition: a low-budget commercial for a Linux-based system with a slogan: “The Linux system for those who prefer great code over great marketing… 100% open source”, which perfectly replicates the potential of Linux.
We also appreciate the efforts put into promotional campaigns with various prizes, including, among others:
- Searching for four rugby player cutouts created by InterNetX. They were hidden throughout the conference building. Once found, you had to read the domain name at the bottom of the cutout, look it up on the Internet, and answer various questions about the functioning of domains – these were not easy.
- Assembling a server from set parts as fast as possible – we took the second place
- Lifting a fully built server for as long as possible – it was really heavy; when we tried to lift it, we only managed to do so for less than one and a half minutes.
- Cracking a safe sponsored by the .shop domain.
- Lotteries involve writing basic information about your company on a small piece of paper (complementary lead collecting), which would later be randomly drawn from one of the piles, once per day.
- Spinning the wheel and a prize draw – cleverly smuggled in was a free consultation with the company.
- Gathering stamps of various companies from all around the conference on a piece of paper supplied by CloudFest. The winner was randomly chosen from the signed and filled-in pieces of paper – this way, the organizer helped the participants familiarize themselves with the exhibitors.
- Timed quizzes on hosting – rivalry and a boost of knowledge, all in one.
- And other numerous contests linked to specific companies.
We are impressed at how well marketing-wise can equipment related to the Internet infrastructure be promoted.
The conference gave us an opportunity to talk with representatives of both new companies and those we had already known. We saw effective waterproofing technology for servers and their components in action. We also witnessed the skills of a robo dog, a luxurious Ferrari exhibited to promote premium cloud, a corporate hockey game to play during breaks from work, and an advanced racing simulator with three wide-angle screens. We learned what the latest capabilities of VR glasses are, and how they may be used in business. Based on our needs, we discovered many companies which offered us server components and assembly
We spoke with representatives of companies that are especially important in our industry, such as Tucows, EURid, DENIC, CentralNic, CloudLinux, cPanel, Apache, and Yoast.
On the last day of the conference, we received a domain-themed Monopoly board game from our partner, CentralNic – the “Pay the ICANN tax” field being among the most expensive ones on the board really amused us.
Every day during the lunch break, we had a chance to stroll in a park straight out of a fairytale and ride the rollercoasters in it.
Each evening, after an intense day at the conference, various team-building events were waiting for us at the picturesque Hotel Colosseo.
CloudFest 2023 lectures and speakers
The CloudFest event was primarily aimed at educating and sharing current information about the Internet infrastructure. During four days, more than 250 world-class speakers shared their unique knowledge with the participants. Alongside the lectures, there would often be solutions and sales references of the specific presenting company. The speakers presented on four different stages:
- The main .COM Dome stage;
- The NameStudio API arena stage;
- The Ballsaal Berlin;
- The Rock Café.
Renowned speakers important to our industry included, among others:
- Igor Seletskiy – CloudLinux CEO;
- Tim Callan – Sectigo CEO;
- Michael Riedl – CentralNic Group PLCCEO;
- Burt Kaliski – Verisign CTO;
- Josepha Haden Chomphosy – WordPress Executive Director at Automattic;
- Christian Jaeger – CloudFest CEO;
- The WebPros team – people from the company managing the cPanel, Plesk, WHMCS brands.
We had the pleasure of meeting most of the people mentioned, with the biggest impression being left by the Verisign CEO, who gave a technologically-oriented speech on, among other things, quantum algorithms, DNS security in a post-quantum world, the upcoming threats stemming from the risk of breaking today’s public key cryptography, new algorithms, DNSSEC, the process of implementing new algorithms in security protocols and other cybersecurity matters.
The security of domains and our clients’ data is and will always be our priority – something we will always take care of for you.
Meetings with our partners
During the event, we took breaks from the conference and the lectures to take care of matters of utmost importance – meetings with our business partners, which were the essence of our presence on CloudFest.
We managed to successfully talk with many representatives of our partner companies, which shared their most unique knowledge with us, impossible to obtain during the conference or the lectures. We learned about potential changes and fun facts about the management and functioning of domains and cPanel. For instance, we discussed new promotions for particular domains and the implementation of Redis in our servers. We are satisfied with the course of these meetings and hope you will soon hear nothing but good news from us.
Do we plan to attend CloudFest again in 2024?
CloudFest is most definitely the perfect place to strengthen business relationships and discover new valuable partners. If nothing holds us up in 2024, we will attend it once again. By the way, we already know the date of the next edition: March 18-21, 2024.
Have YOU ever heard of the CloudFest event? If you own a business related to the Internet infrastructure and would like to meet us personally and talk about either official or private matters, we believe the CloudFest 2024 conference will be the perfect place for that! Let us know in the comments or message us about this in the next edition.