A Note from Connect Leadership

Greetings NonStop Community,

We are fresh off another successful NonStop Technical Boot Camp, and I hope all of you that attended found it to be a valuable experience. We had a great few days with presentations from HPE, Partners, and Customers, as well as loads of Networking time. The first-ever NonStop Hackathon was a great success and the second-ever NSU40 Pub Crawl was a great time! Other notable events included the second annual Women in Technology event and our Community Celebration with trivia from Geeks who Drink. The trivia competition that night was fierce, and it took a tiebreak question to determine a winner! Basically good times by all!

A major announcement also took place regarding the show’s future; the 2021 TBC event will be held in Denver, Colorado! It marks the first move out of the Bay Area since the TBC was started. With a growing HPE office in Fort Collins, and a venue in the heart of Downtown Denver, we at Connect expect this show to be as successful as ever and are excited to be in the Mile High City in 2 short years.

This letter also marks an end of a chapter in this author’s community involvement, as this is the last letter I have the pleasure of writing as Connect Board President. Come 2020, my term will come to an end. It was a tremendous experience and I will particularly miss writing these letters and having the honor of opening up the TBC for the last couple of years.

I’ve had the experience of being deep on the inside of the NonStop Community and I can truly say it’s one of the most active user groups around. We have members from all generations and are growing not only in numbers but evolving in our ways of defining community. Looking back to just a few of the changes during my tenure; this magazine went exclusively online, new networking events were formed for the next generation at TBC, a new Slack channel was created for the community, and of course, a new show location was announced for the future. The tide is always changing, but the people in the NonStop Community are a constant evolving force. Even though I won’t be President anymore, I’ll always be proudly part of the community. I thank you all for allowing me to serve and am excited to see where we go next!

Navid Khodayari
Idelji
Connect Worldwide President