To set off this post I figured I would give you a little insight on myself. I have never been to VMworld or let alone any other Technology convention. So needless to say this would be my first ever experience from a large manufacturer. I will be giving my breakdown of what I did and that's it. I will not be doing much tech reviews since you can get that elsewhere.
DAY 0
I live in Oklahoma City, OK so it's a little bit of trek getting to San Francisco. After many delays and sitting around in OKC and LA I finally arrived at 5pm. My company booked me a rental car and I was less than thrilled with this. I don't really care to drive in these bigger cities if I don't have to but I saw it as a challenge and I accepted. I stayed at the Marriott Marquis just one block from the Moscone Center and it was s great location. Needless to say with many one way streets and not being able to use my Galaxy S for navigation due to Californian laws it took me about 1 hour to go 20 miles and arrive at my hotel. Next time I will definitely get a car service and I highly recommend that to anyone. Uber was recommended to me by my brother who is a frequent traveler to San Francisco. That night I met up with my fellow coworkers and ate at Ozumo very good but have an deep pocket.
DAY 1
This day started off early for me since I wasn't able to register on DAY 0. I had breakfast in the hotel provided by VMworld and it was good to get you going, nothing special. I registered at Moscone West and got the backpack with all the swag inside. Nice backpack but I bought a new one right before this trip.
Now off to Moscone North for the keynote. The keynote is good and I enjoyed it. I won't talk about it's contents since this blog is not talking about keynotes but my experiences. You can find the keynote on youtube anyways.
Keynote was complete now I am off to the View 5.1 reference architecture. This class was okay but I was hoping for more technical talk than just a high level overview.
Now my next session I went to virtualizing Exchange 2010 and best practices. This was a very good class and helped me get some ideas on where to get information and what to look out for.
The next session I went to was "What's New with Networking." This was a really good session for me since I am no network guru. It helped wet my appetite for the VXLAN session the next day or 2.
Lunch was good and in the park over by the Moscone nice weather.
After these sessions I hit up the hall crawl for all the vendors. 250+ vendors was pretty overwhelming but it was very neat to see it all. Lots of contests, t-shirts and flyers. You couldn't walk down an aisle without getting your badged scanned. This wasn't to horrible but it was unexpected.
After all of this was done I met up with a friend of mine and he took me to some cool San Francisco places. We rode the trolley to the wharf and ate at Boudin. I still don't like sourdough bread.
DAY 2
Had the same breakfast and went off to the second keynote at Moscone North. Good talks and you definitely can tell the direction they are going in the DC or vDC.
First session was VXLAN Deep Dive. I highly recommend anyone administering VMware learn this.
The next session was vSphere Performance Best Practices. This was not what I expected it was to much on readily available documentation that VMware has everywhere for people to get. A lot of it I thought was understood material.
I then hit the hall crawl again and met up with some people who were customers. We went to China Town and ate some good food and explored the city. I really can see why people like it out here.
DAY 3
Same breakfast again and off to my first session over vSphere Replication. Cool stuff I think and is very good for any size customer.
Now the next session was the Big Data panel. I attended this hoping to hear more information on how to define the concept but it left me still wanting more. Big Data will be everywhere just like the "cloud" so watch for it.
The next session I went to was the SRM and it was still a little to high level for me and I just required some more information.
Hall Crawl here I come again. I won and Intel 520 120GB SSD on their gamshow they had. So that was really awesome.
The VMware party was cool dinner wasn't that great just finger foods but I had a lot of free beer. No one like Budweiser for some reason? So I stocked up on that. Also Bon Jovi as the headline wasn't great he only sang like to Bon Jovi songs. Everything else was a cover.
DAY 4
Same breakfast again and I then got some souvenirs for the wife and kiddos. I met up with some other VMware nerd colleagues and talked then off to the airport.
So to sum up I learned a lot about what not to do and what to do. I hope I get the opportunity next year but only time will tell. I now know what else I can do to maximize this experience for 2013.
- Find the vendor parties and other VMware get togethers. I didn't go to any of them so I missed out on a lot of socializing and networking.
- Bring comfortable shoes you don't need to be fancy all the time.
- If you want swag bring a big suitcase.
- Bring plenty of business cards.
- Sign-up for meet the experts.
- Have a portable charger for your phone. I bought an Anker.
- Don't just stay in and do nothing. Get out and talk to everyone you can.
- Less sessions for me I totally missed meet the experts.
