With the March 2010 GoGrid newsletter, we welcome and introduce a new name to our communications, that of Maria Gallegos who has joined us as a Product Marketing Coordinator for GoGrid. Maria comes from a marketing background (from financial services to non-profits) and will be producing the GoGrid newsletter as well as managing other customer experience programs. One of her first tasks has been the March 2010 Customer Update Newsletter.

For those who are not current GoGrid users, we provide the full newsletter on our blog, just so that you can see what you are missing out on! If any of the items that are mentioned here interest you, or if you want to get started on GoGrid right away (remember, we provide a full range of hosted infrastructure solutions ranging from Cloud Servers to Dedicated Servers to Cloud Storage, all within a Load Balanced network), I encourage you to speak with a GoGrid Sales Representative. They can provide you with answers to many of your infrastructure hosting questions. Just tell them that I sent you!

Here is the full March 2010 GoGrid Customer Update newsletter:

Hello,

As 2010 continues to progress, so does GoGrid. From system enhancements to new partners, you’ll find this edition of the newsletter full of information to better help you manage your cloud hosting infrastructure. Specific topics include: (more…)

Don’t miss Cloud Connect Event 2010, the first event to bring together executives, IT professionals and developers to explore and define the cloud. See the latest cloud technologies and learn from thought leaders in Cloud Connect’s comprehensive conference and expo . March 15-18, 2010 http://cloudconnectevent.com/

GoGrid is a sponsor of this premier Cloud Computing event and will have a booth there. We hope that you will come and visit us to discuss your Cloud Computing plans. Our staff there will be available for infrastructure consultations, demos and general discussion about the Cloud.

Also, Justin Kitagawa, Senior Technical Lead at GoGrid, will be part of a panel called: “Writing Code for Many Clouds” which is on Tuesday, March 16 (1:30-2:30PM). The panel details are as follows:

Writing Code for Many Clouds

Tuesday, March 16 1:30 PM–2:30 PM

(more…)

We are excited to announce a new event for GoGrid and WebsiteSpark which will be taking place on Tuesday, March 30 from 10am to 6pm Pacific Time in the San Francisco Bay Area. For those of you who are new to WebsiteSpark, it is a powerful program designed to help Web Designers and Developers drive new business opportunities through connections and customers around the world. I posted some detailed information about the WebsiteSpark program and how GoGrid can be your preferred hosting partner in this program.

In order to help educate you on this outstanding business opportunity that can save your startup or small business literally thousands of dollars in licensing & hosting costs, Microsoft and GoGrid have teamed up with an event called “WIN with GoGrid & Microsoft WebsiteSpark” that will be taking place on the Microsoft Silicon Valley Campus. Wondering if you should attend? Please take a look at the bullet points below to help determine if this is a good event for you:

Are you a Web Professional…

• Interested in free software and support to grow your web development business?
• Who needs help getting your customers’ websites to the top of the search rankings?
• Looking for tips and tricks to design and develop next generation web experiences?
• Looking to make your web development business more profitable?
• Looking to streamline the way you design, build and deploy websites?
• Looking to mix the best of Open Source with the best of Microsoft in your customer’s websites?
• Questions on how to deploy Microsoft infrastructure in the Cloud?
• Learn about Windows Azure Application Lifecycle Management on GoGrid!

But wait! There’s more! All attendees of this event are entered into a drawing to win one of the following: (more…)

I’m pleased to announce that we have a new StartUp SF (version 2.2) coming on Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009. This event is just around the corner (I’m just so “good” about planning in advance) so be sure that you register now and share this event with your friends and co-workers.

For your learning pleasure, we have none other than David Weekly, founder of PBWorks (“online collaboration that just works” – formerly PBWiki) and Founding Director of Hacker Dojo (a community center for hackers & thinkers to meet, discuss, learn and create).

David’s presentation is titled “Give Your Ideas Ex-Lax“. Just the title alone is intriguing! He describes the theme as “you should find an uncomfortably quick way to launch your idea and iterate on it instead of building grand designs.”

Ticket are now on-sale! Scroll down for info and GoGrid blog readers get a special discount.

Date: Wednesday, December 2nd
Time: 6-9pm
Location: Microsoft, 835 Market Street, Suite 700, San Francisco, CA 94103
Cost: $10 (online) or $20 (at the door)

As with every StartUp SF, our goal is to help startups begin, grow and become successful. The format is simple, for an hour, you network with technology peers, entrepreneurs, VCs, and other like-minded professionals, then you hear short “elevator pitches” from a few select Demo Companies. After the pitches, a Guest Speaker gives you first-hand experience on the Do’s and Don’ts of kick-starting your startup. Once the speaker has finished, there is a Question & Answer session and then more time for networking. We provide food, drink and engaging conversation.

(more…)

Sys-Con’s 4th International Cloud Computing Expo is next Mon-Weds (11/2/09-11/4/09) and GoGrid is exhibiting there. Come join the thousands of registered users who will be attending this event at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA  as it promises to be information-packed about the Cloud and all of its benefits.

Keynote speakers are:

• Richard Marcello (President, Systems & Technology, Unisys) – “The Time is Right for Enterprise Cloud Computing”
• Shelton Shugar (SVP Cloud Computing, Yahoo) – “Accelerating Innovation with Cloud Computing”
• Richard Sarwal (VP of Development for Oracle Enterprise Manager, Oracle) – “Cloud Computing and the Enterprise”

There will also be a Cloud Computing Bootcamp led by Alan Williamson. I attended a few of the bootcamp sessions last year and these were among the most packed rooms of the conference.

The conference consists of the keynotes (listed above) as well as 7 tracks with a large assortment of speakers. Each speaker track is compartmentalized by category: (more…)

GoGrid is pleased to be a sponsor of this year’s FailCon 2009 which is a 1 day conference where you can find out how NOT to be one of those nine companies that fail when starting up. FailCon is a forum where you can ask those questions you were always afraid to ask, and the people giving the answers are successful founders, investors, designers and developers. GoGrid is offering a 25% discount on tickets to FailCon so read on!

It’s not easy being an entrepreneur and it is practically impossible to be a SUCCESSFUL one. In fact, having some battle scars from a failure or two will make your next endeavor more successful (hopefully). Have you had a #FAIL tag assigned to your brand? You probably can be a speaker or an expert at FailCon. But the goal of the conference is to help you move beyond the failure and on to the next success!

Some of the questions that will be discussed at FailCon are (from the FailCon site):

• What variables do VCs watch for to preemptively prevent a company going under?
• How do you financially prepare for the possibility of failure: legally, fiscally, and in your team?
• What have some of the leading executives today learned from their past experiences?
• What are you watching out for with the current social web and rising companies?
• How do you layoff or fire an employee or partner?
• How do you save a failing company?
• How do you recover from a failed product or marketing campaign?
• Early team communication and where it can break down.
• What ruins viral campaigns.
• How investors handle failing companies.
• How to handle a client if your service fails to deliver.
• Classic UI and design mistakes.
• Common online marketing mistakes.

Speakers include: (more…)

It’s with great pleasure that we announce the guest speaker for the StartUp SF (version 2.1) event coming on June 4th, 2009. (StartUp SF is a San Francisco Technology Meetup co-hosted by GoGrid/ServePath and Microsoft BizSpark.)

Loic Le Meur, Founder and CEO of Seesmic, has graciously agreed to do a presentation titled “How to Launch a Product with your Community.” Learn first hand how to use various community building techniques to build your product, service or brand from the ground up.

You may have seen Loic and Seesmic Desktop mentioned in the New York Times site.

Seesmic is Loic’s 5th business so he definitely has lots of experience under his belt. Some more information about Loic:

Loic is the Seesmic CEO. He founded the company in 2007 with the goal of turning online video into a powerful medium for threaded, interactive video conversations.

(more…)

GoGrid was an exhibitor at the 2009 Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco last week. It’s a show devoted to Web 2.0 companies and technologies. We host many Web 2.0-ers on GoGrid, mainly because it’s an ideal environment to set up a dynamically scalable infrastructure, billed on a pay-as-you-go basis. Perfect for that boot-strapped company or business that are really watching their IT bottom line and don’t want huge capital expenditures hitting their already tight budgets.

Here are some photos taken by GoGrid’s Tim Wayne.

(more…)

Tomorrow is SF New Tech and GoGrid will be there handing out “free servers!” The theme of tomorrow night’s event is “Wine, Women and a Whole Lot More!” Companies doing the 5 Minute Demos are: Nirvino, Zivity, Razz, MyMeemz/Skollar and Ribbit.

The event is at Mighty (119 Utah Street @ 15th) from 6:30pm to 11:00 pm PT. Tickets are $15 in advance or $20 at the door. The schedule of events is as follows:

6:30 pm – Doors open
6:30 -7:30 pm – Schmooze
7:30 – 9:00 pm – Demos
9:00 – 11:00 pm Schmooze

GoGrid will have a table at this event so be sure to come by and ask us questions about GoGrid. You will walk away pleasantly surprised!

Attendees of the inaugural meeting of StartUp SF, a new meetup for technologists, developers, entrepreneurs and startups in the San Francisco Bay Area, were given a great GoGrid gift, $100 off their first GoGrid account. But the value went further than just that including a valuable CD-ROM from Orrick containing helpful document templates useful in launching your own startup. Attendees also learned some important tips on how move their company “from concept to company” as delivered in a presentation by Jonathan Cobb, CTO and Founder of Kiptronic.

StartUp SF is an event that is co-hosted by Orrick and ServePath designed to help “kick-start your startup” by providing a venue, topics and experts, as well as food and drink to facilitate the process.

More details on yesterday’s event can be found here and here. We were even lucky enough to get Pete Cashmore (of Mashable) to pose with Paul Lancaster (of ServePath) in one of our stylish GoGrid hats.

More photos can be found on our Flickr photostream and the StartUp SF Facebook group. Don’t forget that GoGrid now really helps you get your Facebook app up and running FAST with the Facebook QuickStart Server Images for Windows and Linux!