Connecting Across Career Journeys at 2Gather: Chicago

When Meiling He, Senior Data Scientist at Rockwell Automation, was asked at the last minute to fill in for her manager, Francisco Maturana ( @maturanafp ), at 2Gather: Chicago, she had never heard of C2C Global. The next day, she was on a train from Milwaukee preparing to speak at the Google Cloud Customer Community's first face-to-face event in the Midwestern US. "Yesterday was the first time I heard about this, at around 3:00 p.m.," she said. "It was new, but my manager sent me the information about what questions would be asked, and he did have his preparation for the event, so I got the information I needed."

Meiling presented alongside Pythian CTO Paul Lewis, who spoke to C2C in advance of the event about how the company prepares data sets to be used for a variety of AI and ML solutions, and Vrinda Khurjekar, Senior Director of AMER Business at Searce. The panel discussion, moderated by Google Head of ISV's and Marketplace Sales Lilah Jones, explored how businesses can use AI and ML solutions in general to get the most value out of their cloud adoption. Even though she had had so little time to prepare for it, Meiling's experience at the event was a pleasant surprise: "I think it was so fun. I learned a lot from the perspective, the questions, the answers. It's so nice to be around people like Lilah and Paul. They're so knowledgeable and outgoing."

Meiling was also pleasantly surprised to be able to make her own connections following the scheduled program with other customers in attendance. She appreciated having the chance to talk shop with a fellow data practitioner, Revantage Data Engineer Trevor Harris. Many of the other guests in attendance were satisfied with the opportunity to network as well. "It's a great place to connect with other professionals, business and also technical, and it's a really wonderful experience," said Henry Post of US Bank. "Great food, great presentation, and great people." Jeff Parrish ( @Jeff P ) of Redis agreed. "I thought it was excellent," he said. "It was a good flow, good panel, good interaction, and a good pick of different industries and different people."

"I think it was so fun. I learned a lot from the perspective, the questions, the answers."

The opportunity to connect with other Google Cloud Customers was also a major value-add for the Google and C2C Partners in attendance. "It was excellent. I learned a lot about Google's partnership with some of its customers, and got to network with some excellent people," said Brendan O'Donnell ( @bpod1026 ), a customer success manager at Aiven, which joined C2C as a partner after sending employees to multiple C2C events this Spring and Summer. "I met some representatives from Salesforce. Jeff from Salesforce."

Unlike Meiling, Jeff Branham ( @Branham24 ), current Director of Industry Alliances at Salesforce, knew all about C2C. In fact, as many of our members will remember, Jeff served as C2C's first Executive Director before moving on to his new role. He was excited to be able to attend a C2C event in person, having left the company with COVID quarantine measures still in place, and was pleased to see how the team had grown. He was also pleased to be able to make some connections of his own, particularly with Paul Lewis of Pythian, who gave him some valuable insights as a representative of a Google partner company about collaboration between CTOs and CFOs.

Meiling was also excited to be able to hear from a CTO, as a practitioner who hopes to someday be able to move into an equivalent role. "Since day one of working at Rockwell I wanted to be a data scientist," she said. "I was the Business Intern, then Data Analyst Intern, then IT Associate, then Data Scientist, then finally Senior Data Scientist, so it was a long journey." Now that she has reached this point in her career, Meiling is grateful to be able to connect with leaders who inspire her to take the next step professionally. She looks forward to more opportunities to do so at C2C events.

"I would like to know what other people are doing at their own company," she said. "I hope I will be invited."

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