7 ideas to make Red Hat Summit Virtual Experience feel more like being there in person

You’re excited about hearing Red Hat's plans for the next year, product announcements and learning from other Red Hat customers, but feeling a little virtual fatigue? We get that, and we're adding some features and have a few tips to help make Summit much more fun. 

The Red Hat Summit is also the annual highlight for many Red Hatters, so we have a little idea of what Summit-goers might be missing about our in-person setup. We’ve incorporated some concepts into the virtual environment that might help. 

1) Ask the experts - With more than 30 sessions and dozens of experts from across the globe, if you’ve got a pressing question on navigating an IT challenge or a product feature, we’ll probably have an answer for you in our popular Ask the Experts sessions. In addition to Red Hat engineers, solutions architects, and more, we’ll also have several sessions featuring experts from our customers and sponsors. 

2) Practice yoga...for the eyes - Boston and San Francisco were the stomping grounds of Red Hat Summit in years past—places where you would expect to hit your step count and other fitness goals by lunchtime. We can’t guarantee the same effect from your desk to kitchen, but don’t forget to move around and stretch between sessions. If you do need some guided fitness activities, look for Eye Yoga and Fitness at Home in the Summit Lounge to help you recharge. 

3) Set some arcade records - Did we mention activities? We’ve got lots! Ever since events turned virtual last year, we couldn't take our Command Line Heroes Arcade cabinets to attendees. We gave them a permanent home by launching the Red Hat Arcade site in February of this year. You can find these games, built with open source tools, through the Summit Lounge as well. There will be thousands of open source enthusiasts joining the event, so let’s see if you can conquer the leaderboard between sessions...we dare you. 

5) Chat it up - New to tech? There’s a chat room for you. Working on a startup? There’s a place for you to chat about that too. Head to our always-open chat rooms to bounce ideas with open source community members and Red Hat Summit attendees from around the world and across industries. You might just leave with a new perspective to take on your IT challenges.

5) Tune in for Ben Folds, yes the Ben Folds - He’s released multiple solo albums and numerous collaborative records, performed with some of the world’s greatest symphony orchestras and currently serves as the first-ever Artistic Advisor to the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center. Folds will take part in a Q&A session and will be taking song suggestions that he will perform on April 27, 2021, at 2 p.m. ET.

6) Help end world hunger - Another captivating guest that will be joining us at Summit is Mick Ebeling, a producer and filmmaker, and now founder and CEO of Not Impossible. We’re excited to include a charitable component to Summit this year. For each attendee who watches Ebelings’s session between April 28, 2021 at 12:30 p.m. EDT and April 29, 2021 at 12:30 p.m. EDT, Red Hat will donate $10, up to $50,000 to Hunger: Not Impossible. 

7) Build your own schedule - There isn’t just one way to do Summit. Don’t know where to start? You can visit the session catalog to browse the technical presentations we’ve got lined up from Red Hat engineers, product experts, customers, and partners. Find content that works for your schedule and interests and add it to the My Agenda tab – that way, you can leave time for eye yoga and the arcade. 

Think about these and all the other pros of a virtual event. For example, you don’t have to contemplate how light of a jacket you need to pack for the unpredictable April weather in North America or worry about how to best balance your laptop, notebook and cup of coffee on your lap during keynotes—leaving you more energy to engage and make the most of the content.

Are you an Explorer, Adventurer, Discoverer, or Summiteer? You can earn engagement points and level up by asking questions, tuning into speakers, and downloading resources from our sponsors. The points will give you a chance to win a pop-up store gift card to buy exclusive Red Hat swag. A tech industry event--even a virtual one--is never really complete without the swag.

There’s still time to register for the virtual event. We’ll see you there.