First Ever Bay Area CUGC

This might come as a surprise to many in the San Francisco Bay Area to learn that this is the first ever Citrix User Group Community (CUGC) meetup, considering we are located in one of the largest concentration of technology based firms around the world.  But, there is a 1st for everything and we are excited about future meetups, garnering the momentum that’s generated from this event.  We had close to 40 participants for the inaugural event ranging from customers, vendors, sponsors, partners, and other attendees who just wanted to learn a bit more about the CUGC.

Location

Our venue was at the The Farmers Union, located in the historic downtown area of San Jose, CA.  We meet upstairs in quartered off room and noise level from the other parts of the restaurant/bar sections were manageable.  It was cozy enough where people still sat comfortably and others enjoyed the opportunity to rub shoulders and share contact information. We had a suggestion for a quieter venue for our next event.

Introductions and Social

The event kicked off with quick social so everyone can get a chance to mingle with familiar faces and get to know likes of new and old.  A quick thanks to our sponsors and vendors, ControlUp and Citrix for sponsoring the venture, food, and libation.  Garren Quibelan, the CUGC onsite event coordinator (In case you can’t spot him, he’s the one in the bright blue CUGC shirt standing under the monitor), did a welcome chat to talk a little about what people would like to see since this is our 1st event, we didn’t have barometer to measure against previous events.

Presentations

ControlUp was 1st on deck with their presentation, delivered by Breno Basilio.  They are a monitoring solutions company offering data on:

‘Performance Visibility, IT Insights, and End-user Experience’

I think everyone came here to look at deeper insights so slides were optional.  Breno went straight into environment and walked everyone through the use of management portal and console.  He demo’ed various usecases on ControlUp’s capabilities and native integration with Citrix components. What makes a great monitoring solution is having readily available data at your disposal and to be able to make calculated decisions based on those metrics.

Next up was Citrix, represented by Courtney Morris, Michael Neuberger, Dimitri Petropolis, Ray Anderson, and Chris Donovan.  Apologies in advance if I missed any other Citrix representatives.  Keeping with the minimal slides theme, the Citrix team delivered a short, but yet focused content around the major announcements stemming from the Citirx Synergy Conference back in May with topics around Experience, Choice, and Security.  A couple of hot topics includes the end of life for XenApp 6.5 on June 30th and the capabilities and usage of Smart Check.

A deep dive into User Based Search Index Roaming for Outlook quickly ensued and some curious questions soon followed regarding deployment best practices and technical reference architecture.  These types of discussions are in line with what we would like to see from meetups because not every topic can be covered thoroughly, but there we can dive deep into ones where the target audiences were interested in.

A full copy of the presentation can downloaded using this link: Citrix CUGC Presentation

What’s Next? – Open Discussion

Dane Young – CTP lead the last session of the evening on what’s next for the Bay Area CUGC.  A quick raffle drawing was held for a couple of lucky winners of Amazon giftcard and a speaker system. The audience was asked on what they thought of the venue, the content, and what else they would like to include in future CUGC meetups.  Notable quotes and suggestions included below.

Venue – “…It’s appropriate, but could be quieter”

Content – “We would like to see more customer testimonials and how the dealt with the challenges in there environments.”

Content – “Can we have a debate or bake-off style format for competitive solutions…?”

Content – “How about a panel of participants or experts (SME) to answer questions?

Content – “Keep slides to a minimal.  The length of time for presentations was about right”

For those who would like to attended an upcoming Citrix event in San Jose or Sacramento to learn more about the Citrix Synergy Conference announcements, you may scan these following QR codes to get registered for their respective event locations.

Location: San Jose

Location: Sacramento

What a great event!

This was the 1st ever Citrix User Group Community meetup in the Bay Area and I know it won’t be the last.  Just a having a place to interface with my peers was the simplest expectation I could have hope for and this event did not disappoint.  There are a lot of bright and sharp individuals in our Bay Area community and we hope to see everyone again in future events.

Check out this awesome VLOG by TECH VLOG TIME! Covering the FIRST Bay Area CUGC – YouTube  Leeza Malachevsky

I’d like to thank again all the individuals who contributed to make this event possible: CUGC leaders, sponsors – ControlUp, Vendors – Citrix, Partners – Entisys360, all the customers, and other attendees who came out to support our 1st event.

Donald Wong

@dywwong | Citrix Technology Advocate | blog.itvce.com