I’ll be out in Austin, Texas in a couple weeks to exhibit at the sixth annual HostingCon, the premier conference and trade show for the hosted services industry.  If you follow the hosting industry, cloud computing or sell services to online companies – you’ll find value in attending. The networking opportunities alone make it worth the trip to Texas!

The show will run from July 19-21 in Austin, Texas. It includes tracks on Sales/Marketing, Technology Operations, Cloud Computing, and Business Development, with nearly 60 presentations in total.

As to be expected, a large focus of the show this year will be placed on cloud computing.  Don’t believe me?  Check out the schedule and you’ll see what I mean.  I’m looking forward to talking to customers, vendors and consultants to get input to shape the next round of cloud products at ReliaCloud.   If you make it to the show, stop by booth #419 and say “Hi”.

You can learn more about HostingCon by following their blog.

Register now and use the code ReliaCloud2010 to get a significant discount.

Cloud Lab ‘10 (formerly known as Cloud Slam) is having their annual global virtual cloud computing event from April 19-23, 2010. You will be able to network with peers, get up-to-speed on cloud computing, and view hands-on virtual labs.

This is the second year that this virtual conference has taken place. 2000 registrants from 80 different countries are anticipated to listen in throughout the course of five days. With over 65 different keynotes, labs, and sessions, you’re sure to find quite a few topics that spark your interest.

ReliaCloud has lined up a few of our experts to spread their knowledge of cloud computing during the event as well. Jason Baker, CTO for ReliaCloud, will speak on regional clouds on April 19th at 5:00pm CST. Al Afflitto (Channel Manager) and Johnny Hatch (Product Manager) will be hosting a session regarding our new Partner Program on April 21st at 3:00pm CST.

It’s not too late to register! With the purchase of one ticket, you will gain access to tune in and out throughout the course of the five days.

P.S.  We have two free tickets available for the event.  If you’re interested, I’ll make them available to the first two people that express their interest by commenting on this post.

Interested in Internet Marketing, including social media and search engine optimization? If so, you won’t want to miss the GetListed Local University event on May 13th in Edina, Minnesota. Two identical half-day seminars will be held with the aim to teach Minnesota businesses the best practices on:

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Local Search (Google LBC and Maps, Bing Local)
• Social Media (Blogs, Facebook, Twitter)
• Web Analytics

ReliaCloud, a national cloud computing provider, is proud to sponsor this can’t-miss event. With experts from Google and Bing there to help you bring qualified web traffic to your business, how could you afford NOT to go? Head on over and register today – but hurry, there are only 200 seats available per session!

Enjoy the video below recapping the first half of the Overnight Website Challenge. The night is still young…

Keep up-to-date in real-time by following the Twitter hashtag #webchallenge.

I arrived on the scene to find a slew of 160 energetic web developers buzzing around, some typing code as quickly as their fingers could handle and others animatedly telling jokes to their fellow web nerds. I say nerds in a positive way. The Overnight Website Challenge refers to the web developers who have donated their time for this cause as “an army of nerds”, while in the same context, media sources have described the event as “the nerdy helping the needy”. After all, the company who created the entire theory behind the Challenge is called Nerdery Interactive Labs.

These 160 web developers, split into 16 equal teams of 10, will transform the websites of 16 local nonprofit organizations over the course of 24 hours at the cost of a good night’s sleep. These generous developers have been supplied with a plethora of food, and more importantly, energy drinks.

The paired teams of developers and nonprofits are:

Pollywog Stew and Minnesota Jaycees
Polymorphine Power Rangers: Global Warming and Rural Renewable Energy Alliance
Ruby.MN and Homeward Bound
MSP WordPress and DesignWise Medical Incorporated
ArcStone Super Squad and Minnesota Association for Children’s Mental Health
Team Placeholder and Dakota Wicohan
Myths, Mysteries, and Legends and World Savvy
Bold Italic Outline Shadow and MORE: Multicultural School for Empowerment
Happy Go Lucky Robot Fun Time and Redwood Area Communities Foundation
5 Men, 4 Women, and an Animal and Kinship of Greater Minnesota
Praxis and Child Protection International
Web Monkeys and Restorative Justice Community Action
.NERD and Common Ground
Rainbow Ponycake and Minnesota Senior Corps Association
The JWT League of Embetterment and Centro Campesino
Ratchet and The Bloomington Chorale

Stay tuned for video footage of the event!

In just one day, 18 hours and counting, The Nerdery’s third annual Overnight Website Challenge will be underway. Sixteen nonprofit organizations within the Twin Cities have been chosen to have their websites completely revamped within a period of 24 hours – in a row! 160 website developers have agreed to donate their time and talent for this worthy cause.

The festivities will kick off at 8:00am on Saturday with bagels, coffee, and Red Bull when the countdown officially begins. An organized mess of computers, cables, energy drinks, and web nerds will take over the Continuing Education Conference Center at the University of Minnesota. This army of sleep-deprived developers will work continuously until the giant clock strikes 9:00am the next morning.

ReliaCloud is proud to sponsor the Challenge. As a thank you to the nonprofits involved, we have given each of them the opportunity to utilize our cloud servers for free for an entire year.

Keep up with the action on the ReliaCloud Blog as we post video of the Challenge throughout the night.

ReliaCloud and enStratus have teamed up to discuss how businesses moving into the cloud can understand the security issues in public cloud computing and how to best configure your cloud environment.  Hear from Jason Baker with ReliaCloud and George Reese from enStratus on how you can take advantage of the security features ReliaCloud and enStratus provide.

ReliaCloud Servers are deployed within a robust and resilient virtualization environment and architected to maximize uptime and performance.  enStratus operates outside of the ReliaCloud cloud, watching over its operations, and keeping your authentication and encryption credentials safe outside the cloud while encrypting the data inside the cloud both in transit and at rest.

Highlights include:

• Review of cloud computing and ReliaCloud
• Security, reliability and business continuity considerations
• Enforcing your IT policies and compliance in the cloud
• User management issues
• enStratus and ReliaCloud solution
• Evaluating potential applications for the cloud

The webinar will be held on April 7th, 2010 at 12:00pm CST.  Registration for the webinar is now open.

For those of you that are new to CloudCamp — CloudCamp is an unconference where attendees can exchange ideas, knowledge and information in a creative and supporting environment, advancing the current state of cloud computing and related technologies.

CloudCamp Minneapolis will be the second CloudCamp for Minnesota. Last year’s event was sold out and brought together local cloud experts along with representatives from many of the national cloud players.

Who should attend? Anyone wishing to further cloud computing or just learn what all the fuss is about!

The general agenda for this year will be:

5:30-6:30 Networking
6:30-7:00 Lightning Talks
7:00-7:30 Lightning Panel
7:30-8:30 Breakout Session #1
8:30-9:30 Breakout Session #2

Registration is now open! You’ll want to act fast as the free event is expected to sell-out soon.

I’m excited to announce that ReliaCloud has been selected to present at MinneDemo.  What is MinneDemo?  MinneDemo is one of Minnesota’s most popular tech events. A couple hundred technology and design folks will gather to show off new software applications that they’ve created. Each of the ten individuals selected to present with have 7 minutes to show off their stuff. There is only one rule — no PowerPoint allowed!

The MinneDemo event sold out within days.  But, there is still room at the MinneDemo Annex for those that were unable to get tickets. And there is one more option, you can stay home and watch the demos live by tuning into Tech.MN at 6:30pm on February 5th.

Thanks to all who attended yesterday’s breakfast seminar with ReliaCloud and enStratus entitled “Security and Reliability in the Cloud”. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive!

Topics covered include:

• Cloud security challenges
• Perceptions and gracefully losing control
• How to address security concerns
• How to retain data control
• ReliaCloud’s Partner Channel

Don’t forget that ReliaCloud still has some time left before our free beta period ends for Cloud Servers. It’s not too late to test-drive for free at https://order.reliacloud.com.

EnStratus is offering a 1:1 discussion with you to review the security and reliability for any applications you are considering moving into the cloud. Please contact George Hadjiyanis if you are interested (George.hadjiyanis@enstratus.com).

Click the images below to view the presentations.

P.S. Did you know that 75% of technology decision makers at small and large companies across the U.S. say cloud computing is a priority for their companies in 2010? For more information on cloud computing, a free white paper with nationwide survey results can be downloaded at www.reliacloud.com/cloudcomputingsurvey.