In June 2011 I attended Gigaom Structure for the first time as a blogger, meeting many great people. A lot I had known through blogging like Barton George. http://bartongeorge.net/about/ Shortly after, Gigaom's Stacey Higginbotham reached out to Barton and asked for some one who could work for Gigaom as a freelance analyst on the data center topic, and Barton threw my name in the hat.
Note: Gigaom has been talking about data centers for a while, they just did not have someone focused on data centers. Below is when Dan Costello currently with Google spoke about Containers and a 1.3 PUE in 2008.
Microsoft Presentation on Containers at GigaOM's Structure 2008 - a PUE of 1.3!
THURSDAY, JUNE 26, 2008 AT 2:47AM
PCWorld reports on a Container presentation by Microsoft's Daniel Costello, Director of data center research at GigaOm's Structure 08.
"The idea of modular, portable data centers is key to the industry's future," said Daniel Costello, Microsoft director of data center research, in a presentation at GigaOM's Structure 08 conference in San Francisco. "That's why I'm here to talk about data centers, not just for Microsoft but for our customers as well."
In June 2012 I attended Gigaom Structure as an analyst and started to attend more Gigaom events. Met more people. Connected with many who I had known during my Microsoft days - Satya Nadella, Paul Maritz, Bill Veghte, Scott Guthrie, Tod Neilsen are some. And chatted with other industry visionary people like Urs Hoelzle, Werner Vogel, Frank Frankovsky, and so many more. Oh and of course Om Malk. Gigaom's events were industry leading.
In June 2013 I attend Gigaom Structure moderating a panel in addition to being an analyst. Got a better idea of how Gigaom worked and how I fit in. The cloud, big data, and mobile were big topics then. Gigaom was in a leadership position with great relationships to the VC community. It is impressive how many VCs attended Gigaom events.
In June 2014 I attended Gigaom Structure again as an analyst and more of the same. Om Malik had passed on the leadership role by exiting Gigaom. Gigaom looked like it was on a path to be independent of its founder. Gigaom asked me to do more analyst type of work, but unfortunately I had other commitments that took up more and more of my time, and I gradually exited the analyst role starting in June 2014. Since that time I have not been on a Gigaom webinar or written a white paper, and became a reader of Gigaom like the rest of you. I had insight into Gigaom and could reach out to the staff to discuss topics of mutual interest, but nothing was as a paid freelance contributor/analyst.
March 6, 2015 I was with some data center friends and I told them some strange things were going on at Gigaom as I had heard from two friends that they needed to chat off the record, and I hadn't had a chance to catch up yet. March 9 one of the same data center friends sent me a text saying it was sad to hear about Gigaom. And, the other friend e-mailed me the link to https://gigaom.com/2015/03/09/about-gigaom/
A brief note on our company
Gigaom recently became unable to pay its creditors in full at this time. As a result, the company is working with its creditors that have rights to all of the company’s assets as their collateral. All operations have ceased. We do not know at this time what the lenders intend to do with the assets or if there will be any future operations using those assets. The company does not currently intend to file bankruptcy. We would like to take a moment and thank our readers and our community for supporting us all along.
— Gigaom management
Today is March 11, 2015 and I have had many friends tell me it is sad to see the end of Gigaom. Many of my Gigaom friends are without words to express their reaction to the end. Some of the analyst I know have unpaid invoices. Without funds the staff may not get paid or reimbursed for expenses. At some point Gigaom.com could disappear or it could be acquired, but who would want to own the brand without the people. The people who worked for Gigaom, spoke at its events, attended its events, and read the blog is what has value. There was one post on Mar 10 from an analyst I saw yesterday and it has been removed. What remains is these last three posts. It is nice to see Stacey Higginbotham's post made it as the last post from a writer. Stacey is the one who brought me into the Gigaom group of friends.
I'll miss my Gigaom friends.
