Geekgasm

So far this week at VMworld has been fantastic.  VMware definitely throws one of the best industry events for us geeks that really want to talk shop.  There’s definitely a fair share of marketing fluff, but if you want to talk bits and bytes the sessions and people are here for you.  I’ve had the pleasure to meet several people I respect in the industry and hang out with several others I know.  That’s really been the highlight of my time here, some of the offline conversations I’ve had make the trip worth it all one their own.

The best part of the conference for me so far has been the hanging out answering questions at the World Wide Technology booth.  Shameless plug or not it’s been an awesome experience.  We have three private cloud architectures on the solutions exchange floor up and running:

• Secure multi-tenancy from NetApp Cisco and VMware
• HP Matrix
• vBlock from EMC Cisco and VMware

It’s phenomenal to have these three great solutions side by side and have the opportunity to talk to people about what each has to offer.  We’ve had a lot of great traffic and great questions at the booth and I’ve really enjoyed the chats I’ve had with everyone.  With all of that the part that has really made this a geekgasm for me is the experts that have stopped by to say hello and discuss the technology.  The picture below says it all, I had Brad Hedlund (@bradhedlund / www.bradhedlund.com) from Cisco and Ken Henault (@bladeguy http://www.hp.com/go/bladeblog)from HP having a conversation with me in front of the booth.

If you’re not familiar these guys are both top of their game within their respective companies and battle it out back and forth in the world of social media.  The conversation was great and it’s good to see a couple of competitors get together shake hands and have a good discussion in front of a technical showcase of some of their top gear.  If you’re at the show and haven’t stopped by to say hello and see the gear your missing out, get over to the booth, I’ll throw in a beer coozie!