Dave Barnett’s Post

As I sit at a British Coffee shop eating a French pastry in sunny Dubai having attended #GITEX I thought I’d reflect a little on my experience. Firstly this is a truly global event, in the west we tend to see vendors that are favoured by the west, here we also have Chinese, Russian, Iranian etc vendors. I think this is great. Politics aside we need diversity of thought, we need to see things from other points of view maybe even ones that challenge us. I don’t agree that someone doesn’t have value to add to me just because their country and mine don’t talk. I want to listen to them also it makes me better. I won’t be travelling to Iran anytime soon however people I met from Iran on our stand tend to love Cloudflare even though we don’t have a presence in their country they connect to our #dns systems elsewhere and we allow them to see the world as everyone else sees it and not through the filter of their politicians. I don’t know what most of the companies do, and that’s a good thing I’ve been learning a lot about other technology areas this week. We have a very diverse business and all of it needs securing, the only way that can be effectively done is if we collaborate on standards so our systems can easily talk together and if we try our very best to take a little extra time to build security in by design into our code. Adopt the principals of #zerotrust #zerotrust is a British (well Scottish) idea, made practical by the Jericho forum, popularised by Forrester and NIST - and now used by tens of thousands of companies around the world. Including I may add many countries that the west would regard as undesirable. I worry that by saying “we good, you bad I’m not listening” we are going to miss the next big thing, good ideas don’t have borders. You get my point about tearing down the borders and working together right? So thank you #GITEX I learned a lot this week and I get the point we have to come together as a global industry to move forward together for everyone.

THIS is how to run a major event - three locations in the largest tech event on earth - dozens of activities, thousands of visitors to our booths - amazing work Luísa Gobbo Tâmara Machado Dushala Agarwal and team

“The future belongs to those who can imagine it, design it, and execute it. The future does not wait. The future can be designed and built today.” Which embodies #GITEX This is a quote from His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. The Vice President and Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates and the Ruler of Dubai. It is written on the museum of the future which I can see from my hotel room right now. #inspiration

I watched Inside Out 2 on the flight over to Dubai which is my fav Disney series, and it caused me to reflect (I’m now old enough to embrace my inner Madame Nostalgia!). I’ve survived in this industry for 344 months. I say survived because I believe that there is no winning in this “game” - to survive is to win. Someone once said to be an “expert” you need to do something for 10,000 hours) I’m a little over that……however I’m far from being an expert. Along the way I’ve met some amazing people and to this day I learn something new everyday. The net:net of these nostalgic musings is that after a long time of surviving in IT sales my opinion is that I admire and aspire to…. Being humble and always open to change and new perspectives /discuss

The Cloudflare stand at #GITEX was buzzing today - some amazing innovation coming from the attendees enabled by our technology