Community-Building and New Solutions at C2C's EMEA Next '22 Watch Parties

C2C Global did right by its name at Google Cloud Next '22: in addition to participating in partner-led events across the United States, the team also hosted three watch parties of its own in London, Paris, and Berlin. All three in-person events took place on October 11 in conjunction with the Next '22 Keynote, with C2C on staff greeting numerous distinguished guests from Google Cloud's global customer community. Just like at the watch party C2C hosted with Pythian, the takeaways from the keynote inspired more conversation than any event program could contain. What made C2C's events unique, as always, were the opportunities to share ideas and innovate in the room in real time.

At the London event, Simon Dawson ( @simonbdawson ), Head of Engineering at Atom Bank, appeared alongside Google Cloud Infra and App Modernization Customer Engineer Andrew Feldman ( @usernum-gcp ) and two guests from NetApp: UK Country Manager Andrew McGlashan and Google Cloud Volumes Field CSA Leader Steve Winfield. Simon was more than pleased with his experience at the event. Having never before engaged with C2C, he was excited to be welcomed into the customer community. He was even more excited to be able to make connections with other customers that provided him with insights he could bring back to his team. "I connected with people from Aiven and from NetApp," he said, "and I will follow up and work with Aiven, because we are using Apache Kafka, and they have a service that might be a solution for us."

Other guests echoed this appreciation for the community-oriented aspect of the event. "At other events, I felt like going to a supermarket to buy something, a product," said John Samuel ( @C2Csamuelj ) of C2C partner Workspot. "But at your event, it felt like going for coffee with friends where we could talk about the things we like." John is now planning to present Workspot to Frederico Costa, a Googler he met at the event.

The casual feel John noted was also not exclusive to the London event. Alexandre Custenoble, a Data Engineer Manager who heard about C2C from L'Oreal Enterprise Architect and C2C France Team Lead Antoine Castex ( @antoine.castex ), shared similar sentiments. "It's great to be able to talk about Google Cloud without having people trying to sell us anything," he said.

C2C's team in France has a strong track record of bringing new Google Cloud customers into the C2C community. Antoine has arranged for C2C to host multiple events at L'Oreal's office in Paris, and Team Lead Alan Muntadas ( @alan.muntadas ) has also hosted local gatherings for the C2C France community online and in person, including the Paris Next '22 watch party at the office of C2C partner Devoteam. The event brought Devoteam a wealth of new business contacts, some of which they had been chasing for months. "I have reached people I couldn't connect with before," said Virginie Velten ( @vvelten ), Devoteam Head of Google Cloud Sales. Virginie specifically mentioned Carrefour, L'Or�al, Decathlon, Renault, and Adeo. "Thanks to your events I have done more business," she said. "Not during the event, but because of the networking at the event. I have reached more people. People that I was trying to reach for six months."

"Other events felt like going to a supermarket to buy something. At your event, it felt like going for coffee with friends."

At the Berlin watch party, C2C welcomed three speakers from AppsBroker: Europe GmbH Sales Manager Oliver Karalus, CTO Khalil Dimachkie, and Solutions Lead Jon King. The event took place at a Google office with C2C partners assuming hosting roles, but as they had at the London and Paris events, the customers in the room enjoyed the full advantage of the closing networking reception. "I've met and connected with new people. I'm going to talk and work with Hendrik Schulz from Mercedes-Benz," said Hartmut Loesch ( @Hardy ), Business Development Director at AMB Software GmbH. "My company can help them."

Beyond new connections, for guests like Hartmut and Virginie, a standout benefit of C2C membership is the ability to be part of a living community and build relationships that become another resource for a growing professional. "Thanks to you, to your events, I learned where to start for my Google Cloud Certification, and which resources to use, and I know that I can always ask questions and get an answer back," said Hartmut. First-time C2C guests at the watch parties are looking forward to building the same kind of relationship with the community. "Your event was well organized, with quite a lot of people and traffic on social media," said Simon Dawson. "I will be there at your next in-person event for sure."

Extra Credit: