Grace Lau
Exhausted after a long day at Moscone? Not at Google Next 2018 at all but curious about what’s happening at the biggest cloud conference in the world?
Here’s the play-by-play you never knew you needed.
7:30am - The scene at Moscone South’s Expo Hall: fast and furious last-minute booth setups. Attendees are surging toward the café area and picking up various yogurts (mostly lemon-flavored), hard-boiled eggs, and coffee. Lots of coffee.
8am - Lines for the 9am keynote are beginning to form at both ends of the hall. Overflow areas are already packed. (What time were people starting to line up??)
8:50am - DJ Dren is getting everyone hyped for the opening session featuring Google Cloud CEO Diane Greene. Somewhat blurry close-up shots of DJ Dren’s computer screen show someone who looks like her but isn’t her—also DJing. Is DJ Dren an AI experiment?
8:55am - Whaaa? DJ Dren has a twin sister who is also a DJ. Not an AI experiment.
9:09am - Finally, everyone is getting seated inside the auditorium. Turns out there are enough seats for everyone. Yay!
9:15am - The first keynote of Google Next 2018 begins as Diane Greene takes the stage via one of the few animated cubes on screen. A few highlights:
- Google’s data centers are carbon neutral.
- Target is on Google Cloud. (Google’s verticals are many, and growing.)
- Security is executives’ #1 worry; AI is their #1 opportunity.
- “Customers win when tech companies partner.” - Yes!
11:08am - Our CMO, Morgan Norman, kicks off the panel on The Evolution of Relationship Management featuring Alex from Door, Jamie from MailChimp, and Ariell from RHR International. Highlights:
- Morgan: “With the shift toward long-lasting relationships, every business is a relationship business today, whether you’re Zendesk or Nike or Slack.”
- Jamie on the Relationship Era: “Everyone is a Relationship Maker at MailChimp. We have agency partners, vendors, sponsors—when they enter our ecosystem, they can get into any corner of our business. That's why we need G Suite & tools like Copper to keep everyone on the same page.”
- Alex on being "SaaSed to death": “We've always been on Gmail & G Suite, so we didn't really have a ramp-up period when we're onboarding people... Then one day you realize that you're using like 30 SaaS tools—when you could've still just been using G Suite.”
- Ariell on lessons learned on the journey: “Get senior staff to help drive progress in your organization. When we found success, it wasn’t just IT teams teaching business teams. Teams were teaching each other and growing together."
- Candy Embray won the DJI Spark Drone giveaway! 🎉🎉
12:35pm - Lunchtime! Chaos ensues. Thankfully, there are multiple snack stations to tide you over in Moscone South as you wait to grab food.
1:00pm - Attendees are excitedly realizing that the Yerba Buena gardens have no lineups for food, a bumpin DJ, and plenty of sunshine. Huzzah.
Speaking of excitement, let's see what Jamie from MailChimp is excited about at Google Next.
1:47pm - Copper demos are in full swing at Moscone South 1515. Visitors at the booth (aka. you!) are super nice and loving it so far. 🙌
3:52pm - It’s official: the word on everyone’s lips this year is Kubernetes.
5:13pm - Olivier, Mary, and Brent from LumApps (a proud Copper customer!) are presenting a wicked session on engaging employees through the social Intranet.
And that’s a wrap! If you didn't have a chance to drop by and catch a demo of Copper and you're looking for a better way to manage your calendar and contacts, collaborate with other teams, and be more productive, why not try Copper for free? It's designed specifically for G Suite, so you'll be able to pick up on the best features right away.
