Recently Citrix Synergy was hosted in Atlanta, GA at the conference center in the heart of the city near Olympic park. Normally when I write about this event I cover the keynote or dive into some of the technical depths. This year I decided to take a different approach covering some of the events and activities that I was part of during the event. Let’s get started!
CTP Meetings
First this marks my 5th year in the Citrix CTP program, which has always been a true honor. This group is just one of the best around! 
The day before the conference we came together in person as a group week started with Citrix CTP meetings where we have the chance to meeting with some of the leadership, and sometimes the PMs at Citrix. Outside of that the day is NDA, so unfortunately my sharing ends there.
CUCG Pregame and Navigators Reception
This year after the CTP meetings anyone that is part of the CUGC community could get together and talk with other attendees and CUGC leaders is a laid-back networking format. After the pre-game I was part of hosting the Navigators reception. For anyone new to Citrix Synergy this is a way to network with others in an organized fashion to prepare for their week. Also a casual setting with appetizers and cocktails, it’s great to get guidance around how to navigate the week.
Both of these are a great way to socialize and connect with those that a ready and excited for the upcoming week of learning.
Other activities
One would think that the day should be rounding out, but there was another CTP gathering that evening and the ControlUp party. This meant for a long day, but it really was a great one. I was personally looking forward to Citrix Synergy the next morning!
Citrix Synergy
The next morning it was an early day as I had a planning breakfast for the Women in Technology (WIT) Lean in session that I would be hosting with my WIT mentee that evening. From there we would head into the blogger/Citrix CTP area of the keynote.
The keynote was very visionary and focused on Cloud. Everything from the modern workplace, to analytics, and security. While many customers are still on-premises with their deployments, vendors such as Citrix and Microsoft are making sure their cloud foundations are set for enterprises as they move into the cloud direction.
The day and entire event was full of great technical content to help Citrix customers determine how to plan their Citrix strategy going forward.
Other Doings
The ability to get involved in this event was endless. The first evening of Citrix Synergy the WIT mentoring program hosted the tough topic of Gender Bias. While I opened the event, my mentee Heather led the rest of the conversation. She did a great job and the overall event really uncovered some great conversation.
I also had the opportunity to lead a talk in the Synergy Solutions Expo about the architecture and cost considerations around deploying Citrix Cloud on Azure. It was a small fireside chat format allowing for some great conversation. I will do a follow-on post to go into this topic in greater depth here, so watch for it soon.
Last, but not least my employer Cohesity sponsored a private tour of CNN. The tour was very nice, and very interesting with a great group of people in attendance. 
If you are ever in Atlanta again I would recommend booking a tour.
Wrapping things up!
As you can see there was a lot going on at Citrix Synergy, and I wanted to share the non-technical side of what turned out to be a great event. The opportunities to get involved are endless. If you did not get to Synergy this year, I would recommend it for the future.
If you are interested in learning more about Citrix, here are some other posts where we uncover many different elements of the technology.