My Personal Theme for VMworld 2015

VMworld is said to be the number one IT conference in the world. For the pass few years I was able to attend various technology conferences such as Interop, Citrix Synergy, Puppet Conference and OpenStack Summit.  But never to VMworld.


Ever since I got involved with VMware related technologies I have always wanted to attend this conference.  This year I was fortunate enough to secure a ticket and finally I am able to attend this conference.

Starting last week I get promotional Emails from various vendors with information about their booth location and/or any sessions that they are involved in.  One Email caught my attention. The title of the Email is - "Anthony, your tips for VMworld 2015."  Well first of all the Email subject is personalized and then it addressed one of my needs and that is tips for attending this number one IT conference that everybody is speaking of and wanting to attend.  Of course, it has the usual promotional information and then at the end it talks about packing light and to bring a comfortable shoe. There is one last item that prompted me to write this blog post.

• Get Out of Your Comfort Zone: Remember, VMworld is about new experiences, so make sure you meet new people and learn about new technologies from key sponsors, like Coho Data in Booth #1713.   

"Get out of our comfort zone" has been one of my career's guiding principle -

 

image source: http://www.abundancetapestry.com/photos/out-of-comfort-zone.jpg

Under this tip, the promotional Email mentioned that "VMworld is about new experiences - so make sure you meet new people ...". Wow, this also align with the suggestion that Cody Bunch (@cody_bunch) told me about what my objective should be at VMworld.  Cody told me (on Twitter) to meet 3 new persons and to help 3 persons.  Helping people can be as simple as point out where the nearest bathroom is at the Moscone convention center. Well I am hoping that I can do better than that.

My personal theme for VMworld 2015 is - EXPERIENCE

1. To experience VMware's technologies
2. To experience the people of VMware
3. To experience the VMware community

To experience VMware Technologies
There must be new announcement at VMworld about new product or direction of VMware and I predict that there will be announcement on VMware View.  Container will be another topic that VMware is going to announce on what they will expand on Project Bonneville.

On existing VMware technology, I am hoping to experience NSX and VMware Integrated OpenStack (VIO) in a deeper level.

To experience the people of VMware
Last year the attendance of VMworld 2014 was 22,000.  Who can or will I meet during the conference.  At PuppetConf 2013, I met Gabriel Chapman (@Bacon_Is_King) at a lunch presentation and he inspired me to start this journey to the cloud.  At this time I do not have a plan as to how to met people and establish connection.  To me just shake hand and say hi is not enough, I need to be able to establish connection and maintain contact even after VMworld 2015.

On Twitter, I got to interact with others from time to time and I am hoping that I can me them in person at VMworld.  I wonder if the conference will print out our Twitter handle. If they do, my handle is vCloudernBeer. I will be at the hang space more than going to the breakout sessions or Hands-on-Lab as those can be view or done online after the conference.

To experience the VMware community
There is the VMware User Group VMUG and I had been saying for a long time VMUG is the best place to learn, network and to share.  I will have booth duty at VMUG booth (VMUG has not given me the time slot yet) and I hope I can get more people to join this wonderful VMware community.  This is also one way to experience people of VMware. Come by and say "Hi" if you are attending VMworld.

Another strong VMware community is vBrownBag. We got to learn a lot from the rich content that vBrownBag offers not just on VMware but also on DevOps, OpenStack and other relevant IT subjects. I am fortunate enough to get a presentation slot at the vBrownBag TechTalk on "Micro-Segmentation - a perfect fit for Micro-Service security".  There are 2 reasons that I sign up for this TeckTalk.  The first is to improve my soft skills and the second reason is that I believe in sharing.  My motto is "I know some, you know some, let share what we know".  In this way we can all grow as a community.

Waiting to see what will happen
In 3 weeks, I will be able to blog about what or how I experience in these 3 areas so stay tuned.  For those who are going to VMworld and have read this post, let see if we can bump into each other and establish connections.

image source: https://nothingisclear.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/making-friends.jpg