Greetings from Day 1 of VMworld 2017 Europe – held in sunny Barcelona!.  This is my first ever VMworld and during my 4 days here, I will endeavour to do an update here each day of that day’s events, with a summary blog post as a retrospective.

Late Arrival

I was worried I was of to a bad start – my flight was delayed circa 3.5 hours due to bad weather in Barcelona – we were diverted to a nearby airport where we sat on the tarmac waiting for a new slot using a different runway (to avoid bad cross-winds).  Arriving at the hotel at 01:30 was not part of the plan!

I made it!

Needless to say though, waking up this morning I was really excited to get in and get started.  My colleague Bjarne and I took the metro into VMworld, using this knowledge from previous trips to make our way through to the checkin desk.

Presentations

Today’s sessions were targeted for VMware Partners (of which my employer, IBM, is one).  I followed a more technical track – attending a couple of keynote speeches, followed by break-out “meet the experts” sessions.

The keynotes were fantatic  Pat Gelsinger, VMware CEO, is a passionate speaker, speaking about the drive to “Ruthlessly Automate Everything”, and the collapsing of application security into the infrastructure.  He was joined by members of his team, including his global leader for the “Technical Account Manager” (TAM) programme.

For the breakout sessions, I met with technical SMEs for Log Insights, and also for VMware NSX.  It was fantastic to note that 2 of the team were from Cork, Ireland – such talent “just down the road”!

The TAM sessions were a timely reminder of the importance of continuing to grow my relationship with our own TAM Hans-Peter (another awesome guy!).  I’ve a mission to be the show-case success story for the TAM programme in coming years!

Después de las Presentaciones

To wrap up a great day, this evening, I was privileged to be invited to the SISO Executive Dinner, held at Salt Restaurant, the W-Hotel in Barcelona.  A beautiful venue, and delicious food.  But most importantly it was a unique opportunity to network with senior executives and technical leaders in VMware, IBM, and with other VMware business partners.  It was wonderful to make new friends and forge important strategic relationships with a key partner.

tl;dr

Today’s been an awesome introduction to VMworld and is, I’m sure, only the beginning of yet more interesting and invigorating sessions!

Check out Day 2 here!