The last day of the show is always the quietest day. Some people are travelling home early, there’s less sessions around, certainly no parties after hours to plan for, the solutions exchange gets torn down and basically, everyone’s knackered. My Thursday was relatively gentle, as a reflection of all of the above. I did have a few sessions booked, but in the end, I ducked most of them, other than the mandatory TAM session, as everything is available online afterwards and there were still some vendors to see, some conversations to have, some people to catch up with, generally some time to be sociable.

AKA TAM day 2 for me, I’d got so many TAM sessions planned that it was going to prove difficult to keep the step average up! TAM 3842 – VMware Cloud on AWS Wednesday morning saw me wake up to discover a session which I did not have on my calendar when I planned my sessions, although I was rather pleased to see it there, given that it was about #VMConAWS.

This post will focus on the better part of the VMworld Tuesday, from both a time and an enjoyment perspective. Things didn’t start too well, I’d not gone to bed too late, but it seemed that I was party to Barcelona’s loudest ever relationship breakup which took place outside my window at about 4.30 AM, which meant that I failed to get to the vBreakfast for 7AM (sorry Fred, I definitely will make it one year!

Kicking off the conference in the best way possible is attendance at TAM day (or Partner day if that’s your thing). TAM day is a relatively structured day with a number of sessions and of course, that access to the other parts of VMworld which are open on the Monday. There’s a growing number of people arriving on the Monday who are neither TAM nor PEX attendees, but there’s other conference activities to keep them going too.

Not sure if this was day 0, day -1 or what, but this is where it all begins for a serious percentage of the VMworld attendees that I know. The normal approach for most people who are going to TAM or PEX things on Monday is to get in on Sunday and then head to the vRockstar party. This year I’d got an early flight out of Gatwick so was in BCN before the shuttle buses started running, but there’s lots of ways to get from the Airport to both the conference site (particularly via the new-for-this-year Fira metro station, which is on L9 Sud along with the airport terminals) and also in to town itself, usually by bus.

I attended my third UK VMUG Conference on the 19th of November (again at the National Motorcycle Museum) an event which is put on by the London VMUG Committee. As planned, I spent the majority of the day in the Community Track, lending my support to all the folks from this amazing community who’d come from near and far to present sessions. What with the vCurry and the vQuiz the night before, which gives folks a chance to catch up with old friends and meet new ones, the UK’s National VMUG conference is always a great event.

Rubrik The first thing I had on my agenda after the General Session was to take a look at Rubrik, one of the companies that have been getting a fair aount of buzz lately and so I took the opportunity to go and find out why. A hyperconverged type solution, a number of blocks (briks, obviously) a nice interface, dedupe, replication, all that seems to be the thing to do these days.

Ask people what their fears are and with the overwhelming majority, you’ll get to public speaking sooner rather than later. Most people would rather do almost anything else, so to go and present to a room full of technical experts and be judged by them all, when you could just sit back and listen to someone else, in blissful anonymity? Well, surely there’s no decision to be made? As a consequence, it’s no surprise that the erstwhile LonVMUG ctte.

In a move that I have to say that I did not see coming (but then I think no-one did) VMUG recently announced that subscribers to their VMUG Advantage initiative would also receive EVALExperience licenses for a number of vSphere related products meaning that these products are now available for use with a 365 day license which you can renew as long as you maintain your VMUG Advantage subscription .

It’s nearly time for the first #LonVMUG of 2015. As usual, a cracking line-up has been finalised for this all-day event, but for myself and 4 other delegates, this will be an extra special day, cos we get to present! Long-time LonVMUG stalwart Mike Laverick put together a #Feed4ward initiative in cahoots with Duncan Epping and Scott Lowe as an attempt to solicit more community content at VMUGs around the world by mentoring would be presenters before their big day in front of an audience.