Wednesday night (like most other nights) at VMworld is PARTY night!
However this night was the VMware Customer Appreciation Party night, where customers, vendors and partners can come together to enjoy free food, free wacky sunglasses and free entertainment (and most importantly feel appreciated).
It definitely had an old-school american theme/vibe with Hot Dogs, Burgers and Ice cream stand littered around the General Session hall.
A chance for those with hair to let it down and bond with our newly found friends in the spirit of the VMware Community!
Written by Christopher Lewis on October 24, 2016 .
To round of the off the first evening at VMworld Barcelona, I attended the very first VMworld Hackathon - Barcelona (#HackVMW) run by Alan Renouf ( @alanrenouf ).
Seven teams of disparate (or is that desparate?) individuals came together with one goal in mind: to complete (well nearly) 7 different projects.
I was lucky enough to be in Team 7 (AKA Team Anger Management), with Team Captain Mike Foley ( @mikefoley ), sub-team captain Duncan Epping ( @DuncanYB ) ,Myles Gray ( @mylesagray ),Cormac Hogan ( @CormacJHogan ), Paudie O’Reilly( @oriorp ), Dario Dörflinger.
Written by Christopher Lewis on October 23, 2016 .
The day started with the General Session where the pre-show artist was #awesome.
This was followed by Jean-Pierre Bruard SVP & GM EMEA ( @vmwarebrulard ) with the obligatory thank you to all attendees and sponsors and also introduced the vminclusion initiative.
Written by Christopher Lewis on October 23, 2016 .
VMware 2016 kicked off on Sunday evening with vRockstar 2016 - a social gathering at the Hard Rock Cafe in the Plaça de Catalunya, Barcelona.
I was lucky enough to get a ticket to this event as tickets sold out very quickly when they were released. The event was jam packed with people i’d spoken to but never met face to face. Not to mention, the food and drinks were flowing though out the night. #goodtime
Written by Christopher Lewis on October 23, 2016 .
Day 2 of VMworld 2016 was kicked off with the another General Session.
The opening act was a Blues Band, which were very cool and happened to have** Sanjay Poonen** ( @spoonen ) as the piano player. Totally unexpected surprise, but what an awesome way to start a keynote!
The EUC focused keynote started off with Sanjay Poonen providing an overview of the VMware Vision for Digital Transformation. In essence, the Any Device, Any Application part of the VMware One Cloud Vision which has been a focal point for the last few years. Which Sanjay suggested that Digital Transformation would be the fourth industrial revolution.
Written by Christopher Lewis on October 21, 2016 .
After the first day of full conferencing, it was time to head out to the vExpert party which was held at L’Eggs ( http://www.leggs.es/en) .
Unfortunately, I arrived fashionably late as I had to go back to my hotel to drop off my bags, and then get across town, which meant I missed the brief appearance of Pat Gelsinger.
The evening was enjoyable enough, the food (scrambled eggs, risotto and creme cataluna) and drinks kept flowing. I spent a lot of time getting to talk to all those vExperts that I communicate with via different social media platforms all the time but have never met in real life (which is a sign of the world we live in).
Written by Christopher Lewis on October 21, 2016 .
Following on from the awesome keynote, I skipped my planned session (VMware Cloud Foundation on Public Clouds) and headed on over to (probably) the most over subscribed session of VMworld, VMware Cloud on AWS (#INF7849) with Alex Jauch ( @ajauch ) and, the one and only, Frank Denneman ( @FrankDenneman) where it was clear that Frank was finally glad to be able to talk about what he’d been working on recently!
Written by Christopher Lewis on October 20, 2016 .
I had a fabulous 4 days at VMworld 2016 in Barcelona. I learnt a lot and not all of what was learnt emanated from the sessions. The outstanding sessions/events for me were the inaugural VMworld EMEA Hackathon (run by Alan Renouf), the two General Sessions (with Pat Gelsinger and Sanjay Poonen), and the VMware on AWS session (by **Alex Jauch **& Frank Denneman).
I take away more than just the knowledge I have gained, I have learnt that the actual benefit of VMworld is not (necessarily) the sessions, but the ability to talk to the experts, meet with the fellow VMware community (#vExpert) and make new contacts in the industry.
Written by Christopher Lewis on October 19, 2016 .
The first session of the day was A Technical Deep Dive into VMware Integrated OpenStack (MGT7751) with Pete Cruz and Santhosh Sundaraman.
The session started with Pete Cruz providing an overview of what VIO was and how the VMware story fits it. Personally I have kept well clear of OpenStack in my career (and after this session it isn’t a start of a new direction). With component names like Keystone, Horizon, Nova, Neutron and Heat I started to wonder if I was being told about a new Gladiators TV show or a even a new Marvel Avengers team rather than Openstack!
Written by Christopher Lewis on October 18, 2016 .
Monday was Partner Exchange Day and I have to admit the atmosphere was buzzing. I’m sure there is still people arriving but the halls all seem busy and the HOL section is consistently full.
My day a started at 0830 with Matt Steiner ( @Steiner_Matthew ) at the Automating Infrastructure and Application Delivery with vRealize Suite (PAR3698) Session.
As the title suggests, in this session Matt provided an insight into how VMware’s vRealize Suite can automate IT provisioning to provide real business benefit.
Written by Christopher Lewis on October 17, 2016 .
- Operating a Private Cloud - Part 3: Creating a Pricing Card in VMware Aria Automation
- Operating a Private Cloud - Part 2: Creating a Pricing Card in VMware Aria Operations
- Operating a Private Cloud - Part 1: Understanding Pricing Cards in VMware Aria
- Zero2Hero - Using Aria Automation to Deploy Multiple Machines with Multiple Disks - Part 5
- Zero2Hero - Using Aria Automation to Deploy Multiple Machines with Multiple Disks - Part 4