Disclosure: Pure Storage Accelerate 2017

This is one of my regular disclosure posts. You can read more of them here.

I attended Pure Storage’s Accelerate conference in June 2017 as a guest of Pure Storage, as well as the Storage Field Day Exclusive part, and this is my disclosure of the corporate largess I received.

Flights and Accommodation

Pure very kindly flew me business class from Melbourne to San Francisco and back.

Pure also paid for all but two nights of accommodation at Le Meridien in downtown San Francisco, which PivotNine (my company) paid for as I stayed longer in San Francisco to catch up with Bay Area clients.

Pure ferried us about in buses hired for the purpose, except for one time they called me an Uber because I missed the bus by seconds as the driver left without me. It was my fault for stopping to ask someone which bus I was supposed to get on.

All other transport around the Bay was paid for by PivotNine.

Food and Drink

Sunday 11 June

Breakfast was airport lounge coffee and nibbles at Qantas Club, followed by the really quite decent food in business class. I had cheese for dessert.

I got to the hotel around midday and availed myself of the free coffee while I waited for my room to become available.

Dinner was a club sandwich from room service.

Monday 12 June

Breakfast was a buffet at the conference venue, a dilapidated and rusty old warehouse at Pier 70 San Francisco. The vanilla yoghurt was really nice, and I had some fruity and a small pastry. There were some proper espresso barista people at the conference as well, so I had a really quite good latte as well.

Lunch was catered buffet food again.

Before dinner we were shuttled to Anchor Distilling, who make the Anchor Steam beer but also distill some gins and bourbons. I tried a little of their specialty gin but mostly stuck to water.

Dinner that night was with the Tech Field Day folks at Osha Thai, which was a short walk from the hotel. I had a green curry with chicken (my usual test dish to see if the Thai is any good) which was pretty good, though not as spicy as I normally like. I drank San Pelligrino sparkling water.

Tuesday 13 June

Breakfast was at the conference, another buffet affair, and the really nice vanilla yoghurt was there again.

Lunch was buffet stuff in the press/analyst area.

For dinner we were shuttled to Spin in San Francisco, which is a ping-pong place that does functions as well. We had a little function separate from the analysts (who went and did some sort of stuffy sit-down dinner) and had various nibbly buffet things that were really quite good, while playing ping-pong. I managed to remember a bit of how to play, and managed to give Arjan Timmerman a run for his money.

Wednesday 14 June

Breakfast was a quick espresso coffee and a croissant early at the conference before I interviewed Pure’s CEO Scott Dietzen, which I wrote up in Forbes.

Lunch was boxed sandwiches in the press area as I wrote stuff up for Forbes, and then did an interview with Pure’s outgoing CMO Jonathan Martin which you can listen to here on The Eigencast.

A lot of people were leaving that evening, so I had dinner with Tom Hollingsworth and Arjan at The Barrel Room. I just checked the menu to jog my memory and it all looks different. I think I either had pasta or chicken, but I’m not sure. I also had a gin and tonic and some water to drink.

Thursday and Friday

The next couple of days I was on my own visiting clients in the Bay Area for PivotNine before flying out on Friday night.

Dinner was airport lounge nibbles in the Air France lounge that Qantas uses at San Francisco International, and then business class food for the flight.

Swag Etc.

• Pure gave us a conference bag co-branded with Rubrik.
• Inside the bag was a special branded document pouch thing for holding our personalised itinerary.
• We also got a Google Home, which I have left in its box as I don’t want an always-on microphone spying on my household for some advertising company’s opaque benefit.
• Fidget spinners were all the rage. I picked up one each from Rubrik, Toshiba, and Actifio.
• At the analyst/influencer event at Anchor Distilling we were given a gift pack with a book on San Francisco cocktails, and the device you see pictured to the right. It’s a muddler, but that’s not what anyone thought it was at first.