Last week, Ombud sent two lucky representatives - myself and Traci Johnson - to VMworld, an annual conference for VMware users, for the first time. This post chronicles our days through pictures and highlights some humorous tweets from other attendees' shared experiences.
Monday: VMworld 2012 from our Office
What better way to kick off a virtualization conference than watching the keynote presentation live from the luxury of our conference room 1,000 miles away? Our trip to VMworld began before we left the office. Thanks to VMworld’s live stream, we tuned into Monday’s keynote presentation from Boulder, CO.
Kevin McLaughlin, Senior Editor of CRN, summed up the keynote in less than 141 characters.
At #VMworld, #VMware changes CEOs, kills vRAM, launches vCloud suite, shows R&D projects. Otherwise, nothing happened goo.gl/mS17t
— Kevin McLaughlin (@kmclaughlin69) August 27, 2012
Please keep in mind, however, our plane didn’t land at SFO until Tuesday morning.
Tuesday: VMworld 2012 from Moscone
We arrived at VMworld – now able to see people in 3D – just in time for lunch on Tuesday. We enjoyed eating outside in the San Francisco sunshine after a morning of travel. Theron Conrey, Senior Solutions Engineer at Nexenta Systems shared a picture of the seating situation – a rustic break from high-tech virtualization and cloud discussions.
At least #vmware providing seating for lunch outside in our backpacks! Thanks! img.ly/mztL #vmworld
— Theron Conrey (@theronconrey) August 27, 2012
We wasted no time hitting the expo floor, first talking to the lovely Kerri and Emily at Red Hat's booth. A red hat from Red Hat – I’m a fan of clever swag. The cheesiness factor is an added bonus.
Wednesday: Ombud live at VMworld Day 2
We’ve recently partnered with Virtualization Review (that magazine in your new VMworld backpack!). We had the opportunity to walk the floor with a few of their great sales guys and meet the exhibitors.
@jtroyer the free #VMworld mags were better than past years, good plane reading material.
— Jared Black (@JaredBlack) August 31, 2012
One of my favorite personal takeaways from chatting with exhibitors: I’m not the only one who has “street Chucks” and “dress Chucks.” That’s right. It’s officially a thing. Just ask Bluelock; one of their crafty tech guys keeps his looking like new with whitewall tire cleaner – brilliant!
Amitabh, Senior Product Manager at VMware, pointed out something that we noticed too… suits?
#vmworld is great, huge and very slick but has lost the touch of woodstock with suits replacing geeks amongst the crowd
— Amitabh Chakrabarty (@amitabhc) August 31, 2012
On the upside, we also talked with more startups than expected. Can’t wait to see where the upcoming year takes us in virtualization.
Amazing to see how many small storage startups there were at #VMworld. Who will shine and who will fail?
— Steven Bryen (@steven_bryen) September 4, 2012
Lessons from Sessions
Maybe these weren’t from sessions. They’re probably not lessons, per se, either… maybe more like “VMworld Words of vWisdom.”
“Storage is like plumbing” - No, network is like plumbing, storage is like a septic tank.#vmworld
— Dave Lawrence (@thevmguy) August 28, 2012
BYOD = SYOM (Spend Your Own Money) #VMworld
— Scott Lowe (@scott_lowe) August 28, 2012
Paul Maritz is on a roll : "Can't just sprinkle more management fairy dust on everything in the zoo." #vmworld @vmware
— Jeff James (@jeffjames3) August 27, 2012
It’s true. You can, however, sprinkle fairy dust on Bon Jovi to turn him into the lead singer of a cover band.
Wednesday Night: VMworld party
See what happens when you cut vRam, you get a Bon Jovi cover band :) #VMworld
— Dennis Smith (@DennisMSmith) August 30, 2012
It’s easier to forgive his Bob-Seger-cover encore when we remember violinist Lorenza Ponce’s phenomenal solo performance. Seriously, can we get another virtual round of applause for her? She rocks! Thus ends our first tour at VMworld and so begins the year of the “software-defined-datacenter” buzzword.
Overheard @ #VMworld:“What's your new company do?” “Can’t tell you yet, but it will be software-defined something.” :)itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/storage-soup/v…
— Mike Harding (@mhardi01) August 31, 2012
Additional Recap Resources:
- Congrats to the presenters of the 10 most popular sessions. Missed any? Check out the videos and slide presentations here: http://ombud.com/r/pa
- "vSphere 5.1 Storage Enhancements and future vision" by Ray Lucchesi, President of Silverton Consulting, Inc: http://ombud.com/r/pb
