I would like to see even more interaction in the labs. Stuff like make / break sessions. Let people do troubleshooting with a couple of engineers along their side. Real, real indepth sessions that will make you brains hurt, both from a technical and business perspective. get the could pioneers, a bunch of them, in a room and let them do a roundtable session.

I think acheiving a target audience of 16,000 people is not going to be all that hard when you consider that way VMware has been growing a s company over the past year.  There are a lot of new customers just waiting to experience VMworld.  The problem to experience is attracting participants who have attened previous conferences and had a negative experience.

Here's my list of several things I experienced at Vegas 2008 that I'd like to see improved.

1. More labs, more often, with better prepared staff.  I'd like to see more labs be made available to participants.  I'd like to see them offered more often, and I would like to see a better prepared lab staff.  At the 2008 Vegas VMworld the labs sessions were booked solid with lines up people waiting for a seat.  Why not offer around the clock labs?  If labs were offered around the clock, participants could be invited to attend 3 or 4 labs instead of 1 or 2.  This could be easily pulled off with more staff who are better prepard to offer the labs.

2. Better classification system for identifying sessions experience levels.  Several of the 2008 Vegas sessions were classified as expert level but presentation was basically a watered down version of the Install and Config course.  Nothing expert about that.

3. Line ups.  Personally, I didn't have any problems with most of the line ups at Vegas 2008 but, if you're going to bring in an additional 6000 people, make sure that whatever people are expected to line up for, there is more then one line up.  The VMworld party comes to mind here.

4. Vedor trade shows.  I found it somewhat disappointing that the vendor trade show booths closed at 6:00pm in Vega.  Why not have keep these opened until 8:00 or 9:00?  After all, the whole purpose of these booths is for vendors to show off their products and generate revenues.  If you close your booth at 5:00 and hit the bars, it's your lose.

5. Lower the cost of the conference. Considering that the economy is not as well off as it was a year ago and that many companies are reducing their travel budgets, it would be nice to see you offer discounts to returning participants.

JD

Hmmm, starting to have second thoughts here. If people are already complaining about getting into labs and such and you're planning to cram 6000 more in I'm not expecting a good experience. If I have to pay all this money and NOT get into labs or sessions I need then this will be my one and only trip.

So, THAT's what you can do. Make all the offered content is available to everyone that wants it. I'm not travelling all the way there to attend some party.