Highlights of the Winter Symposium

Each winter, members of the SNIA gather with the Board, Technical Council and Staff to coordinate the efforts of the organization’s Technical Work Groups, Forums and Initiatives at the SNIA Winter Symposium. This year’s event took place January 24–27, 2011, at the Sainte Claire Hotel in San Jose, Calif., and provided opportunities for networking, working group meetings, informative keynote sessions, and other unique programs designed for SNIA members.

Noteworthy sessions included the Keynote Presentation by NetApp, Inc.’s Senior Data Storage Technologist, Larry Freeman and a special SNW tutorial on leveraging social media. In addition, the Cloud Storage Initiative held a kickoff and update of their planned activities for 2011 – details of this session, including a video of the presentation, is available at www.snia.org/cloud.

The always popular Birds-of-a-Feather (BoF) meetings addressed topics including file systems initiatives and the possibility of turning the Technology Center in Colorado Springs into a Green (Storage) Center of Excellence. Another of the BoFs has led to the formation of a new Special Interest Group (SIG) in the Cloud Storage Initiative (CSI) focused on Archive Preservation in the Cloud.

With 100-plus members gathered, this year’s Winter Symposium was another successful, collaborative gathering. The event laid the groundwork for the significant accomplishments that will take place throughout the remainder of the year.