Thank you, Chicago!

The final SWUG of 2024 has officially wrapped. We had a great time in Chicago networking, answering questions, and sharing insights for SolarWinds. The Chicago Westin Lombard was a great venue with great staff – special shout out to Patty and our own Val and Kristen for making sure we didn’t run out of Diet Coke!

Thanks to our speakers for sharing phenomenal insights, information, and demos for our attendees. Our keynote, given by Jeff Stewart, shared the company and product strategy while other staff speaker sessions ranged from the bulk of our product portfolio (including new product information) to demos, career insights, Academy training, user experience sessions, and more.

Thanks again to all our staff speakers: Jeff Stewart, Kevin Kline, Kristen Piña Flores, Sascha Giese, Carley Cousineau, Radmila Stangova, Cheryl Nomanson, Bradley Sisson, David Russell, Brian Radovich, and Emily Coleman.

We had two THWACK MVP speakers who came to share their experience working in SolarWinds self-hosted environments with some tips and tricks for maintaining and managing them. Special shout out to Jake Muszynski and Marc Netterfield for joining us on the SWUG stage!

At this event, we also tried out a few new things to SWUG, and I think they went over well. We had a session dedicated to helping each other solve problems with Problem Hot Potato – crowd-sourcing resolutions like on THWACK but on a much smaller scale and in person. We were also joined by a Spotlight crew and SolarWinds’ own Carolyn Plantin, with whom some of our attendees graciously shared insights for Gartner Peer Insights and Customer Testimonials. Thank you to all who shared their thoughts with us!

The networking reception was, as always, a blast. We love getting the chance to get to know our attendees a bit more and hang out. We talked about family, costumes, wine, tourist sites, and more while we ate, drank, and made merry. Kristen walked around with the Instax camera and snapped some fun Polaroids as well (see the photo dump at the end for a couple.)

I can’t leave the hangover post without a special shout-out to Val Rivir, our events coordinator, without whom nothing would run as smoothly or be as fun. And to Chelsea White who helped wherever she was needed at her first SWUG.

Most of all, thank you to our attendees without whom we wouldn’t get to do SWUG events. We had a ton of first timers, and I can’t wait to read your feedback on the event. Cheers to another great year of SWUG, and on to the planning for 2025!

My favorite sign from the staff room.

Silly Evangelist things 

Required food pics – first time for me trying the Deep-Dish Pizza – it was good!