VMworld – the first 24 hours (Day1)

Its been much busier for me this year than previous years. From vRockstar to vExpert.

After arriving yesterday, dropping my bags at my sister-in-laws, I headed out to the vRockstar party at the hardrock Cafe. It was a lot of fun. I ran into Eric sloop of ntpro.nl fame. Really nice friendly guy, actually that’s one thing I can say about the VMware community leaders, all really friendly and easy to talk to. Also caught up with Chris Dearden and the ever charismatic Mike Laverick. I manged to get out of there at about 23:30.

2015-10-11 23.25.35 vRockstar1

 

 

 

 

Waking up the next morning was a bit of a challenge. I did manage to make it to the conference center for 08:30 though to get a couple of labs in before the TAM day started. The Labs were top-notch as always. A slight lag, but it was a good experience over all. Word of advice though, best bring your own laptop if you can as it got filled to capacity very, quickly.2015-10-12 09.56.00

I manged to get two sessions in and one meet the vexperts today:

Session: Ask the Experts Lunch

This was quite a lot of fun. There were about 18 tables, each with a subject matter expert. This allowed you to hop tables and speak to the various experts about almost anything. Managed to talk about storage, cloud aware apps, EVO:RAIL and a couple of others. One thing that stood out was the enthusiasm of the experts for their technology.

Session: Streamlining Data Center Operations, Real World Experience.

Speaker: Colin Fernandes.

This session got off to a bit of a slow start in my opinion but was very useful. The speaker undoubtably knows his stuff. There was a big focus on Log insight. All but one of the real world example were very relevant, the one that stood out was the German health care provider who has a setup on the smaller side with about 250 VM’s but support 1000’s of mobile devices which has enabled them to make their doctors more productive. The session really showed the need for effective monitoring and log analysis.

The question asked was what is Operations really? Colin broke it down to Health/Risk/Consumption/Capacity.

Session: Workplace Transformation Through EUC Transformation.

Speaker: Brian Gammage.

The session was called as a quick talk and dealt mostly with strategy. Look at where you are and where you want to be. When putting together with a strategic vision you need to put in place flexibility. The landscape is constantly shifting and your vision needs to move with that. He gave the example of how long the different generation spend in their jobs. I have been in my current position for 7 years. This is considered a long time for my generation. Will my children even have the concept of a permanent job?

Evening Event: vExpert Reception

And finally the day was finished off with the vExpert reception at the Elephant restaurant and bar. Met some really interesting people: Zlatko Mitev and Thomas Findelkind to name a couple.

I also visited the vGiveback stand with my work college Dimos.

vGiveback

So that’s the first 24 hours. Tuesday looks to be a busy day indeed.

 

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