Humbled and grateful, I have the privilege to visit Citrix Synergy for the first time. For me this will be my event of the year and it will start in around just one week! One week full of – high-level deep dive tech sessions, breakouts sessions, labs, demos, keynotes – to get informed of all the latest technology innovations and strategies of Citrix.

The event will be taken place in Orlando, Florida, USA in the Orange County Convention Center. The convention center is not the first time for a Citrix event like this – Synergy and Summit where already being held in Orlando the past.

Hopefully I will meet all the MyCUGC Community people/CTP and Citrix employees in person, that I’ve have spoken on all the social platforms in the past year and of course all the new people that I caught up for the first time – at the event. Maybe I’ll can meet up Kirill Tatarinov (President and CEO Citrix) or maybe Brad Anderson (Vice President Enterprise Mobility Microsoft), that would be awesome!

The event actually starts on May 23, but I already fly on the 20th of May to take full advantage off the event by making use of the extra Instructor-led Learning Labs pass, with this pass you are able to attend 3 hands-on labs that are given on Sunday and Monday. I’ll will use those to get more hands-on feeling on the Unidesk Application Layering and Citrix User Environment Management (WEM) software, so I can compare and use to implement them for future Workspace projects!

I will share as much non-NDA information as possible during the event, but most of the sessions will also be live streamed, so if you aren’t in Orlando, you’ll can watch them on you’re PC, please check out this link to schedule your sessions remote!

If you aren’t go to Synergy and still want to get informed? Please check out my blog or follow me on Twitter @Brinkhoff_C to get informed during Synergy 2017!

So, the countdown starts for me now, really looking forward to this event! When you also attending, maybe till next week!

Vision Keynote

The events starts on Tuesday morning with the opening  Vision keynote, given by President and CEO Kirill Tatarinov, Tim Minahan Senior Vice President CMO, Karyn Jeffery Head of Digital Workplace Fujitsu, James Noga CIO Partners Healthcare and Roland Cloutier Staff Vice President, CSO ADP. The focus in this session will be on the strategy, innovation that are powering the workspace of the future and enabling organizations to leverage digital for business value. I’ll also personally think that the partnership with Microsoft will be increased more and more, so maybe there will be announched some great new Azure and Citrix products!

Technology Keynote

In the afternoon the technology Keynote starts, with the following speakers – PJ Hough – Senior Vice President of Product, Tim Manahan Senior Vice President CMO and the (awesome) Brad Anderson from Microsoft from the Enterprise Mobility section. In this sessions Citrix will take you on the journey of the digital transformation, with a deep dive in the Citrix innovations that are upcoming for the next year(s)! Think about the transformation to Public Cloud environments or multi-cloud, and everything that is in between! One session I really look forward to.

Sessions

All the tech-sessions at Synergy will be given by internal Citrix employees / external professionals or by Citrix Technology Professionals and Citrix Technology Advocates. Sessions driven by passionated Community people are always great, some of them I would like to highlight, just to mention when u are still searching for some sessions.

Most of them are already full – so be fast to preserve your seat!

• SYN301: XenApp and XenDesktop Tech Update: May 2017 edition with Dan Feller (@djfeller)
• SYN103: Citrix App Layering with Ron Oglesby (@RonOglesby) and Chris Midgley (@cmidgley)
• SYN305: Citrix provisioning survival guide with Martijn Bosschaart (@bosschaart) and Paul Murray (@slowtraintodawn) from Nutanix
• SYN406: The great SD-WAN bake-off: lessons from the field with Al Taylor (@NetScalerTaylor)
• SYN304: Comparison: delivering virtual desktops with XenDesktop 7.x or Horizon 7.x with 2 CTPs Jarian Gibson (@JarianGibson) and Eduardo Molina (@molikop)
• SYN401: Fireside chat with IoT experts about automating Citrix with Octoblu James Bulpin  (@JamesBulpin) and Ingmar Verheij (@IngmarVerheij)
• SYN309: Blueprint for easy, fast and cost-effective branch office setup with Ruben Spruijt (@rspruijt) and Tarkan Kocoglu (@TarkanK)

Check out all the sessions on this nice write up by Nicolas from Citrix-Guru.com

Citrix User Group Community Pre Game

If you are attending Synergy and you have some time left on Monday afternoon/evening, please come to the free CUGC Pre Game event in the Hyatt Regency hotel (next to the convention center), that starts on 4:30 PM till 6:30 PM local time. Registration to this event is limited, but there are some seats left. Please check out this link to register and maybe we’ll can meet up there?

Dutch Citrix User Group meeting

I also been invited for the DUCG meeting on Monday evening @christiaanbrinkhoff.com the Howl at the Moon bar, the place were all the dutch Citrix Professionals that also attend Synergy, will catch up to have some drinks and do some tech talk at the same moment. Hopefully I’ll get the change to get to know a lot of new (local Dutch) Community people!

Final night party

Next to all the sessions is there also time for a lot of thrill and fun. On Thursday, the last day of the event, Citrix hold the Final Night Party at Universal Studio’s theme park! Attendants will have the whole evening access to the Universal City Walk for a great diner and to access all the rides and attractions of Islands of Adventure.