Lobbying is also interesting because, in an era that touts the wonders of social media and moving everything to the cloud, it remains a decidedly interpersonal, real-time activity. So are trade shows and conferences that aim to advance both knowledge and support for IT and the cloud. In the IT sector there are endless rounds of these events, but over the years arguably the most important have been the COMDEX (Computer Dealer Exhibition) trade shows, which took place from 1979 to 2003, and the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), which brings together companies aiming to have their new products named “the next new thing.” CES began meeting in 1967 and continues as an annual event in Las Vegas. COMDEX was the major IT event until 1999, when it tried to restrict media coverage to writers accredited with a handful of the leading trade publications. Competition contributed to a drop-off in attendance from a peak of 200,000 attendees and, when major companies decided to make big product announcements at CES or other venues, COMDEX discontinued the event. CES picked up the slack, topping 150,000 attendees in 2012 and again in 2013 (Takahashi 2013).
Trade shows are important because they circulate technical and marketing information about products and because they build networks of promoters who share the wonders of information technology. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that trade shows are similar to religious events that bring together believers in a magical setting full of icons and symbols that affirm their mutual faith. On a more practical note, they provide opportunities for widespread coverage in mainstream and social media that amounts to free advertising of new products.
Nevertheless, attendance at these shows is leveling off, a sign that the days of the grand trade show that aimed to be all things to all participants are nearing an end. The sheer number of participants as well as the diversity of interests (or faiths) they represent appears to be overwhelming the goal of offering anything resembling a clear focus on common themes. The mass trade show is suffering some of the same effects as the religious pilgrimages, such as the Camino de Santiago de Compostela in Spain, which became so popular that it is more and more difficult to maintain the conditions of quiet contemplation and austerity so attractive to its supporters over the years. “Pilgrims” decked out in the latest hiking gear from REI and carrying iPhones updated with the latest pilgrimages apps (each route has its own) do not exactly convey the spirit of sacrifice and poverty before God that the thousand-year-old event was meant to instill. While Las Vegas is not Santiago de Compostela, the variety of pilgrims making their way to CES is so overwhelming that many of the big companies, such as Apple and Microsoft, no longer show up or appear only through their partners’ products, choosing to focus on their own or specialized events with much less clutter than the big trade show. Such is increasingly the case for cloud computing, which holds specialized events throughout the year. In June 2013 I attended the leading cloud-computing and big-data conference and exhibition, Cloud Expo, in New York City. Over four days I heard speakers from a cross-section of cloud companies; participated in cloud bootcamp, a set of sessions spanning the technologies that comprise cloud computing and data analytics; and spent hours on the exhibition floor observing and speaking to as many of the 500 or so vendors as I could.
nature: “Recent IDC [International Data Corporation] research shows that worldwide spending on cloud services will grow almost threefold, reaching $44.2 billion by 2013. And a recent Gartner report predicts that the volume of enterprise data overall will increase by a phenomenal 650% over the next five years. These two unstoppable enterprise IT trends, Cloud Computing and Big Data, will converge in New York City at the 12th Cloud Expo—being held June 10–13, 2013, at the Javits Center in New York, NY.” Moreover, the website proclaimed, “In the most transformative technology shift since the personal computer and the Internet, it’s apparent that migrating business to the cloud has reached a tipping point in 2012, where it is no longer a trend but rather an absolute business requirement.” And if we needed an exclamation point: “Join us as a media partner—together we can rock the IT world!” (Cloud Expo 2013). All pilgrimages exact a price; even las peregrinas who walk the Camino have to pay for equipment, accommodations, and the muchencouraged donations. But the pilgrimage to the cloud in the Big Apple costs considerably more. To simply attend all of the conference sessions over four days runs $2,500. So, unlike the Camino, the cloud pilgrimage, whether to New York or to any of a number of cloud-trade-show venues, is limited to those who can afford the high entry fee.
Trade shows build community in several different ways. The registration fee itself makes certain that only people who are strongly motivated to be part of the community participate. The content ranges across every dimension of promotionalism. Registrants who need basic training in the wonders of the cloud can join a cloud-computing bootcamp and take a cloud-essentials course. All participants have access to exhibitors representing every type of cloud-computing and big-data company. The exhibition hall is a massive marketing and sales space. As in any promotional event, whether people are selling spirituality or computer services, some are singled out as especially gifted in the field, and these take up roles as keynote speakers who sell the cloud and big data from their own positions within the industry. Whether they are covering the trade-offs between the cloud and on-premises computing, the potential of big data to identify customers or voters, or the transformation of the IT profession from operations to service delivery, there is a pattern to the keynotes and the breakout sessions. They tend to begin with a broad overview that praises the cloud as a general and profitable business tool. This might involve cost comparisons between different types of cloud arrangements: public, private, and hybrid. Next, they identify a problem that businesses face, such as maintaining data security or entering the Asian market. Finally, they conclude with a pitch on how the products and services of the speaker’s company, whether Rackspace’s hybrid cloud or Pacnet’s experience in the Asian market, will solve the problem. Whatever the subject, the outcome is the same: follow our lead, buy our product, and watch your business take off.
Despite the best efforts of the self-proclaimed cloud evangelist who chaired Cloud Expo and introduced the keynote and general sessions, occasional discordant notes reverberated throughout the event. At a lunch panel discussion, big-data experts were asked to state what comes to mind when they hear the term big data. Following the unwritten script, the experts chirped the expected—“opportunity, challenge.” One, however, refused to follow their lead and instead proclaimed it “a bullsh*t marketing term.” As the saying goes, you could hear a pin drop.5 But soon thereafter, the evangelist MC returned to the upbeat message that might convince the audience to buy a big-data analytics service from Hadoop
or Teradata. This event was no exception to the widespread use of props and inducements to spur attendees to buy the cloud. As an academic unused to the special effects that fill these events, I was a bit surprised to hear loud rock music, including heavy metal, blaring in the run-up to a general session. Also unexpected was the presence of models in short shorts, thigh-high boots, and sparing no makeup opportunity, walking the conference floor and chatting up delegates. The spokesmodel presence was right out of an old-fashioned auto show except for the high-tech tool each used to scan attendee conference badges for information useful to the company that hired her. In addition, there were the cheesy freebies such as buttons (I “heart” the cloud; Do IT in the cloud), yo-yos, wind-up toys, and T-shirts (mine supports the hybrid cloud). To trade on the icons of tech work, the exhibition hall featured bean-bag seats for plopping, as well as foosball and air-hockey games for unwinding. Exhibitors offered more serious enticements to attract shoppers, such as lottery drawings for tech equipment. One enterprising speaker, in what was actually an interesting session on cloud security, kept the audience in the room by raffling two state-of-the-art, high-capacity Intel solid-state drives at the end of the session. In addition to equipping their spokesmodels with scanners, the conference made use of another modern conference add-on by live-streaming the entire event to a worldwide audience of paying viewers. High-tech gear aside, one of the most remarkable, and remarkably ironic, points in the conference arose when a massive line snaked its way through the exhibition hall. It was by far the longest queue of the four-day event, with a thousand or so people waiting patiently for a very low-tech reward: free copies of a hardcover book on how cloud computing will change everything (Erl, Puttini, and Mahmood 2013).
Cloud Expo helped advance my understanding of cloud-computing technology, big-data methodology, and the leading companies that produce both. But it also underscored the role of large conventions in the promotion of cloud computing and big data. The conference and others like it are promotional because they insist on the absolute necessity of adopting cloud computing. They are also promotional for what they do not address, primarily the pressures that the cloud imposes on the built environment and on the electrical grid, the tendency to concentrate power in a few large companies, and the challenge to employment arising from big changes in the international division of labor. Data security and privacy attract a bit of attention, but largely as a threat to cloud adoption.
The forms of cloud promotion that this chapter has considered—commercial advertising, blog posts and social media, promotional research reports, lobbying, and trade conferences—do not exhaust the major examples. They cover a great deal of ground, but there are other topic areas, including government promotion. In the United States, the 2010 federal government chief information officer’s report hailing the cloud and ordering agencies to adopt cloud computing was one of the first in a series of government promotional steps. In addition, there was a 2011 National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) report that promised major cost savings for government agencies moving their information technology functions to the cloud (NIST 2011). Then in 2012 the National Science Foundation joined the chorus supporting the NIST report and committed the government to carry out research on all aspects of cloud computing (National Science Foundation 2012).
All of the promotion and the hyperbole are important to mobilize support, which, as the history of communication technology demonstrates, can be fickle, as people continuously flock to the next new thing. So it is essential for those who envision the cloud as an engine to drive informational capitalism to continually promote its revolutionary capabilities.6 Promotion is also essential to protect the cloud from criticisms about its challenges, problems, and even dangers. The next two chapters address these and, in doing so, raise questions about the wisdom of moving to the cloud.