VMworld 2016 - Day 3


VMware VMworld VMworld 2016 Barcelona

Published on 25 October 2016 by Christopher Lewis. Words: 519. Reading Time: 3 mins.

The last day of VMworld came along sooner than I expected.

I decided to drop most of my sessions and just chill out in the hang space. Why did I drop the last few sessions? because I’d finally realised I’d been doing VMworld all wrong…

It dawned on me that whilst over the last 3 days the sessions I had attended re-enforced by knowledge, it didn’t (on the whole) enhance it. I’d chosen the wrong path. On the whole, I had chosen sessions on topics I already had in-depth knowledge on in the hope that some new information/wisdom would be imparted during the sessions. It suddenly dawned on me that actually, the majority of the sessions were not really geared towards the #vExperts or Consultants who do this for there job day in and day out, but for the VMware customers who wanted to know more but didn’t know where to look. In an average 1 hour session, I found maybe 5-10 minutes of useful information. Which wasn’t a great return on my time investment. The sessions I had attended were (on the whole) great, but the vast majority of the sessions I could watch on playback either from VMworld US or VMworld EMEA after the event.

The penny had finally dropped and I had wasted some very important networking time!

So with that in mind, I headed to the only session I decided to keep for the day VMware Chief Technology Officer Panel - Trends and Futures (CTO9943) with Paul Strong ( @pauldstrong ), Joe Baguley ( @JoeBaguley ), Shawn Bass ( @shawnbass ) and Ray O’Farrell ( @ray_ofarrell ).

In this session, the panel (moderated by Paul Strong) talked about various topics before taking questions from the floor. They covered Innovation and R&D - how innovation doesn’t work just 9-5, Cloud, Device Proliferation and a few other topics. The key point for me came from Joe Baguley where he said (and I am paraphrasing) that at VMware, the innovation culture is such that when someone want to try something new, then you are encouraged just do it. Don’t ask permission (within reason), ask forgiveness (if it goes wrong) and be able to justify it to your peers.

After this session had concluded I headed back to the hang space where I was lucky enough to record an interview with the team at www.opentechcast.com about the experience of my first VMworld.

After the interview, I decided to chill out for a while in the hang space before heading for a final tour of the **Solutions Exchange **where lots and lots of the vendors were giving away the freebies that in the past few days had required significant participation to obtain. After all - who would want to be stuck with shipping costs of lots and lots of swag!?! :)

At about 15:00 - I decided it was time to leave my first VMworld behind and head to the airport. Where for some reason I had decided to get the last flight back to London Heathrow (big mistake). I finally arrived home at 01:30 UK time #knackered but #happy.

Published on 25 October 2016 by Christopher Lewis. Words: 519. Reading Time: 3 mins.