Jason Buffington .com

Not all conferences are created equal. Here’s what DRJ Spring 2026 gets right—and why it matters.

video transcript

How much cyber preparedness and AI can you squeeze into one disaster recovery conference?  That’s what DRJ’s event planners likely had as their personal challenge.

Folks know I’m a fan of [LOGO] DRJ-type events, starting with I like a diverse expo floor!

• When you go to an IT conference, there’s a lot of backup, lots of storage, a bunch of cybersecurity, and some other vendors that often wrap around one of those scenarios.
• When you go to a DR conference, you still see some each of those — but you also see some managed services, some alerting, some orchestrated workflows, some planning, some professional services, etc. – a much richer ecosystem-centric approach to helping organizations achieve resilience.

From a content perspective, DRJ does a pretty good job of blending case-study style sessions delivered by practitioners and leaders — alongside educational sessions that are delivered by thought leading vendors, while not being product pitches! Frankly, not all conferences do that well. Some events allow their sponsors to use sales decks to ‘teach’ where the industry is moving, but coincidently, that approach is only available from the vendor who’s speaking. Really!?

The best part of DRJ is the community = authentically sharing solution expertise … career advice … best practices … and commiseration … among a group whose core meets biannually and stays connected online in between.

You can check out DPM’s blog for more insights from the DRJ mainstage, breakout sessions, and my expo hall discussions. [DRJF logo & DPM-STAR-logo] DRJ Fall 2026 will be on September 27-30, which is especially exciting since DPM will be revealing the results of our AI-enhanced Resilience research insights.

I hope to see you there