What an entertaining and edifying day! I’m a fan of the services that Cloudflare deliver and after today run the risk of being a little infatuated. That said when Cloudflare launched I trialled their service and found it to be lacking but I was intrigued by the idea and that was enough to re-visit the trial stage about a year later. Since then our relationship, albeit a little one-sided, has been cemented. Unrequited such as it is I love their entry level price point (free) and the flexibility it gives us and our customers. Never before has DDoS protection, a Web Application Firewall and content caching been so readily available.

Yesterday’s event at Tobacco Docks was their biggest yet but I’m sure next year it’ll be much bigger. They had a wonderful mix of speakers and eschewed the typical large tech event format by making mini panels of experts on a range of related topics. Well, inasmuch as the Internet was a common theme; Investment in Africa, Social Media: It’s not all bad?, UK Cyber Security, the role of tech in democracy and Serverless operations. Eclectic and entertaining, not always easy to pull off.

Prince and his Cloudflare on stage team did a great job of coercing and asking probing questions of their panel guests and didn’t avoid asking the difficult questions the audience were thinking.

I’ve been left with a warm feeling that other people are working for the greater good too, that there is a wonderful community who share concerns over the future of the internet.