VMworld Europe 2017 Wednesday

VMworld Europe 2017 Wednesday

Ah, VMworld Wednesday, the show is in full swing. Get past the second morning keynote and the messaging will slowly change to focus on the VMworld Customer Appreciation Party with the Kaiser Chiefs playing. Keynote? The VMTN Community area was once again my first destination of the day, to get settled before the keynote started. However, a conversation with a bunch of the people who had also gathered there meant that during the keynote itself, I wrote 2 words, neither of them in this post.
VMworld Europe 2017 Tuesday

VMworld Europe 2017 Tuesday

So the day has come, the great and the good of the VMware community are all gathered in Barcelona for another VMworld Europe and as much as there’s been a whole bunch of chat, beers, sessions, training, exams and catching up going on (including PEX and TAM Day), the keynote marks the transition from all the “preliminaries” to the actual show proper. More on that soon, but first, the vBreakfast!
VMworld 2017 Tuesday General Session

VMworld 2017 Tuesday General Session

Settling in for another stream from the VMworld.com site. The day 1 General Session came with a whole bunch of new announcements, plus some that didn’t even get a mention, so what will today’s bring? Here comes Pat Gelsinger to tell us. A brief intro and then the introduction to Michael Dell, who is, in case anyone didn’t know, Chairman of the Board of VMware, for some live Q&A.
VMworld 2017 Monday General Session

VMworld 2017 Monday General Session

Rock and Roll! VR drawings and a Rock/cello mashup before Pat comes out to tell us that we should really be there in person. Well, I’ll seeya in a couple of weeks… A good touch to talk upfront about Hurricane Harvey and asking those watching to consider donating. The intial part of the keynote sees Pat talking about science fact in general, exoskeletons, “teleporting” atoms into space, Genetically modified organisms, driverless cars, even designing your own shoes online.
TAM Customer Central at VMworld for #vDM30in30

TAM Customer Central at VMworld for #vDM30in30

So this is a post that comes on the back of a promise made in Barcelona this year to spread the word about TAM Customer Central, an easy promise to keep given that I think it is such a great resource. First off, what’s a VMware TAM? Well, he or she is a Technical Account Manager who is dedicated to your Enterprise (this is usually a big company thing) from 1 to 5 days a week, depending on what support level/cost you engage at.
VMworld Europe 2016 Thursday

VMworld Europe 2016 Thursday

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.
VMware Europe 2016 Wednesday

VMware Europe 2016 Wednesday

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.
VMware Europe 2016 Tuesday

VMware Europe 2016 Tuesday

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!
VMworld Europe 2016 General Session, eventually

VMworld Europe 2016 General Session, eventually

I’m looking forward to the General session today, it appears for once that there is more being announced in Europe than we got from Vegas. Given the early release of some training courses, the forthcoming general session is known to contain the release of vSphere 6.5 (and hence VSAN 6.5 also). The recent announcement of the #VMWonAWS setup, using vSphere Foundation, has also garnered massive interest (there’s not enough sessions on this and VMware are scrambling to put more on to satisfy the clamouring from the masses).
VMworld Europe 2016 TAM Day

VMworld Europe 2016 TAM Day

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.