VMworld 2016 – Sunday

By | August 28, 2016

Getting to the show

The day started off really early: 3:40am. I woke up and couldn’t go back to sleep so I got ready, caught up on Twitter/Slack, kissed the wife and kids and went downstairs to wait for my ride. I actually set up a taxi to the airport, but I regretted it when I woke up earlier than I wanted to. I also saw John Mark Troyer successfully catch a Lyft

 

Lyft didn’t really show any cars near me, but there were plenty of Uber’s. I believe it would have been cheaper to go the ride-share route. Security line at Oakland Airport was short, flight was on-time and got me to LAS at 9am sharp. Went to the Terminal parking, level 2M and hailed a Lyft. Lyft ran promos for $5 off rides, and the ride was only $10 to start ($5 after discount). I like that Lyft lets you tip, makes you not feel shady.

Luxor wasn’t ready for me, so I dropped my bags at the bellhop and rocked the Cohesity bag (note the following bag is not mine, I just don’t have a pic of mine)

Everything is hella far

I walked from Luxor to Mandalay Bay to the conference center and it was just so far. Between some of the rooms is hella far. My knees are hurting. I used to complain about the Moscone West to Intercontinental or to the Marriott, but that is nothing. Also the rooms don’t all look the same.

TAM Day

I spent half of the day in TAM Day Sessions which included a keynote (which I missed), a couple of sessions on various topics with some nda futures mentions, a lunch, a session from Pat Gelsinger and Micahel Dell, a meet the experts roundtable (best part of the whole day), and some other stuff that I didn’t stay for. TAM Day and TAM Customer Central (TCC) are extremely valuable and is a great addition to just having a TAM.

VCAP6-DCV Design

I have another post here on my experience. I didn’t pass, but it’s not the end of the world.

Welcome Reception

The Solutions Expo opened up and was bigger and more confusing than ever. The numbers of each aisle you use to track where you are were hard to find, thus I got lost trying to find specific vendors for swag. I also didn’t see swag that I would enjoy. I purposely avoided shirts because I don’t want to lug them home, so I’m looking for toys or other knick knacks. Catalogic had a cool vMaester mug, Data Core had a vExpert shirt, but unfortunately Datrium did NOT have the Raspberry PIs that people pre-registered for. They tell us Tuesday. Cohesity had some more bags to give away to vExperts, but I got mine early :-). If I get more items from the expo then I will do another SWAG Haul review.

VMunderground

I tailed a couple of guys over to New York New York to take part in VMunderground. It was a pretty good event but I’m a pretty shy person so I didn’t really meet anyone new (except for the guys that I followed on the way over). Overall, a good event.

On the way back I took the tram from Excalibur to Mandalay Bay and then backtracked to Luxor.  I feel it was faster (and less walking) than cutting back through Excalibur and through Luxor.tcc

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *