Alas, all good things must come to and end – and that said, it’s time for me to say adiós to Barcelona.  A wee trip to hospital not withstanding, my 4 days at VMworld 2017 Europe has been amazing!

Geeking Out

So I had purposely reserved today to spend some quality time at the “Expert Bar” which was located in Hall 8 of the impressive Gran Fira venue.  This was an awesome chance to spend quite a lot of time with some of the best minds from VMware.  There were two topics that are particularly close to my heart at the moment:

• SCSI ID conflicts
• IO Multipathing for Oracle RAC in VMware

Honestly, this consumed a lot of my day due to the unparalleled chance to get not just one-on-one but also face-to-face time with the senior VMware engineers, but I did manage to squeeze in a few additional sessions on topics such as vSphere Storage Best Practices, troubleshooting performance issues.

Solution Exchange

The VMworld Solution Exchange was awesome, this was a chance for vendors to display their products and engage directly with customers – and it was an awful lot of fun doing so.

On Tuesday, when the Solution Exchange opened after the keynote General Session, the rush to get into the exhibition hall was like something I’ve never seen – it was a literal swarm as people rushed to get to their favourite booths.  Soon the room was filled with green carrier bags (good for holding loot, and exceptional for marketing), and wearing Red Hats from RedHat!

Today was more subdued.  The stands were all still manned, but the volume of people was less.  If Tuesday was a chance to get some awesome swag (and it was fun doing so), then today was all about spending even more time talking with the exhibitors.

I had a great time learning about the emerging and evolving products on the market. Analytics, Automation, and Security were key themes- as they should be.  They’re cornerstones to the Cloud conversation that everyone was having.

Today was also brought about another interesting experience… the power of a Brand!  Walking around the venue with the IBM name on it attracted exhibitors to me… me!  I thought it was supposed to be the other way around 😉  It was powerful to see how the brand of my employer opened the doors to some really interesting and exciting conversations.  Some which I’m already organising follow-up calls on!

To drone or not to drone…

There were also lots of competitions.  But, try as I might – I just couldn’t win that drone.  Partly my own fault, as the raffles from earlier days I simply wasn’t entered into (I would have had to be there when the draw happened, or

If anyone has a drone going wanting, feel free to send it my way 🙂 #foreverHopeful

Home Time … Soon?

Looks like I’m departing like I started … delayed!  My flight is delayed by 1 hour 38 minutes (thanks TripIt !).  It’s going to be a late return home, but plus-side … I got time to write this blog post – sooooo win:win ?!

In other News

In a previous existence, my wife Jenni worked as an event manager for GSM Association (GSMA), running their Mobile World Congress.  Having witnessed only some of the complexity of an event with 11,000 members I have yet again a reason to respect her … MWC was in excess of 100,000 attendees!

tl;dr

The end of VMworld is just the start of some more exciting conversations.  I learnt an awful lot, and expanded my professional and personal networks.  Time to rest, digest, and continue some discussions.  Oh … and RIP my Inbox !