I thought I would sit down and make some notes for myself with regards to what I was looking forward to most at VMworld 2010, and then revisit them AFTER the show to see how rewarding it was, what I gained above and beyond expectation, and if all of my hopes and concerns were addressed.
Most of all, I'm looking forward to the Technology Exchange. Granted, all of us hang out on Twitter all day every day, but it's different when you put hundreds of vendors in the same big hall that all just want to geek-out about virtualization with you. I can't express enough to vendors how rewarding that is to us end-users and engineers out in the field.
I'm looking forward to the keynote addresses of the major players in the industry, including Paul Maritz and his vision of VMware going forward. These are also exciting times where new things get revealed, and then we get to run to the Tech Exchange and geek out AGAIN about the next best thing that's coming!
It's a whirlwind of a good time. From the informative sessions, tweetups & social media, fun and instructional labs, and wonderful after-party's hosted by our favorite vendors and resellers...not to mention the fact that we're in one of the coolest cities in the world...It's the best money that a company can spend on their engineers.
What am I looking forward to, content-wise:
*New books at the bookstore. Need some new reading material, and there's lots of new books out!
*NEW BACKPACK! I can finally retire the neon green for some gunmetal grey hotness!
*Optimization of Storage & Backups & DR. The never-dying topic of DR...
*NetApp NTAP 8.1 and the future of virtualized storage
*Cool new plugins and features for doing all of the things INSIDE of vCenter
*Last year, I met a bunch of wonderful people and hope to have more conversations with vendors and give direct feedback to problems I have faced.
*Meeting more of my tweeps and getting some face-to-face introductions!
*Promote #NAS4LIFE with proliferation of NFS-based storage!
*Maybe a free iPad or two from contests!
Looking forward to seeing you all in a week!
-Nick