My thoughts on SCOMathon 2020 by Leon Laude
Last week Squared Up, Cookdown, NiCE and Microsoft organized "SCOMathon 2020", a virtual conference fully dedicated to SCOM (System Center Operations Manager).
What is SCOMathon?
On June 16th, 2020 the first edition of the SCOMathon event took place, a 16 hours event consisting of sessions, panels, meet the speaker, and various discussions related to SCOM.
The event was free of charge, anyone around the globe could attend. To overcome the challenge with the different time zones, all the main sessions were recorded and will be made available at ttps://scomathon.com.
In case you were too late, or forgot to register, don't worry! You can still sign up and get a chance to view the main sessions.
The SCOMathon event used Zoom for all its live sessions, and Slack was used as the main chat software for announcements, discussions and questions.
My thoughts
SCOMathon 2020 had well over 1400 registrations, and each session reaching an average of over 200 attendees, this really shows how much interest there still is in SCOM as a product.
There's been some unfortunate rumors going on about SCOM being a "dying product", I can imagine it must be dreadful to be working on a product, and hearing people say that your product is dying. Personally I believe that if an event can gather this much attraction, and become as big as it did, SCOM is by all means no dying product, not by far. I am happy that some of the SCOM product team from Microsoft were able to attend and witness this great event. I hope this brought both happiness and hope, showing what a great product they still have, and to continue doing a great job.
This event also showed how big the community around SCOM is, and how much passion there still is. One of the things I enjoyed the most about the event was to bring together the community, it was great to meet so many other SCOM experts and enthusiasts, and to be able to put a face or voice to the names that have been lurking around in the Microsoft communities.
There were loads of interesting discussions going on in the Zoom meetings, especially in the "meet-the-speaker" meeting. There were also a lot of interaction in the Slack channels, if I have to say one good thing about virtual events is that you have an easier time to reach out. In real-life I know that many face the challenge to reach out in public and ask questions, even if it's only to one person, so this is a great opportunity for people to act anonymously and being able to reach out.
The absolute best thing however was the initiative of the organizers to donate 1$ (USD) for each attendee per session to the Doctors without Borders, which is an international humanitarian medical non-governmental organisation, they are best known for their projects in conflict zones and countries that are affected by endemic diseases.
The goal was to raise a total of 5000$ (USD) for the Doctors without Borders organisation, I am pleased and happy to say that we reached over 6700$ (USD)!
The official feedback results haven't yet been announced, but in my opinion the event was well organised. As a speaker I found no issues or challenges whatsoever, it did however take some time to get used to Zoom and the different zoom meetings/rooms, but I believe most of us were all in the same boat. I think the organizers put up a flawless effort in getting everything working and the schedule was also quite on time, a big applause and a huge thanks to them!
What's Next?
What's next? Well it looks like SCOMathon was indeed very successful event, and that there most likely will be future events in the future.
The https://scomathon.com website will also become a content hub for the SCOM community. I think this is great, I definitely don't mind all the different blogs out there (including my own) sharing amazing content, but to having a lot of content into one place is far better and easier for anyone who is seeking for help/guidance/tools or any other kind of information.
Until next time, if you have any feedback from the SCOMathon event, please comment on this blog post, let's make the next edition of SCOMathon even better together!
Last but not east, a big thanks to Squared Up, Cookdown, NiCE and Microsoft!
