Heads up post. Coming up on March 14th and 15th is the inaugural Pure Storage Pure//Accelerate user conference taking place in San Francisco at Pier 48. So, a nice thing right off the bat is it is not at the ever-too-familiar Moscone Center.

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The question you might first be asking is why should I come to another conference? Well there are the standard reasons: good keynotes and sessions, access to engineers, technical content etc. That’s all great, but what I am personally excited about is in addition to those reasons (without of course discounting them). I have had the honor of presenting at seven Pure Storage User Groups in the past year across the United States (with at least three more on my docket in the next two months) and they have been an absolute blast.

The sessions have been great, but I really enjoyed seeing current customers and prospective customers interacting and talking about their experience with Pure Storage and our FlashArray. The advantages they have found from what we have to offer and of course some of the challenges. Of course hearing how people love your product and the company you work for is nice, but what really is important and helpful to me is hearing what can be done better, allows me to do my job so much more effectively and purposefully when I get that kind of feedback. Users that love the product and feel that responsibility and ownership and a desire to help, really is telling I think. Really cool. The conversations alone, with small and large groups of customers from all different sectors of business has been a great experience. I get the feeling it is a similar mood as the early VMUG meetings–excitement and passion for something new and what’s coming up next.

Anyway, Pure//Accelerate promises to bring all of these customers, partners, analysts, consultants etc. and of course Pure Storage employees under one roof for two days to do all of this on a much larger scale. Should be a really good opportunity for everyone to learn from each other. I really think this conference will be just as useful for our customers and Partners as it will be for me. We are trying to make this conference just as much about conversations as about Pure employees simply presenting. The agenda so far seems to be heavily weighted in the favor of the former. Plus this isn’t just going to be all about Pure Storage–there will be presentations and conversations and discussions on industry trends and technologies that should be helpful to you and your career no matter where in the IT path you sit.

There will still be deep dive Purity Operating Environment architecture discussions too, so you won’t miss that if you want to hear about it. This will come from our lead architects and founders, so you won’t want to miss that everything. Learn about what we put into the product that enables its simplicity from a user standpoint.

Conference Overview:

Like I said it is March 14th and 15th at Pier 48 in San Francisco. Quick references for accommodations can be found below:

https://www.purestorage.com/events/pure_accelerate2016/hotel-and-travel.html

Anywhere in SF will work fine. Getting to and from the pier is pretty simple (taxis, Uber, Lyft, etc.).

The agenda (which is still forming internally and from external submissions) can be found here:

https://www.purestorage.com/events/pure_accelerate2016/hotel-and-travel.html

Check back often on that as it evolves.

Some session tracks and examples: