I am writing this post in a hurry as last night, I sat on the bed to check Twitter and next thing I knew, it was 06:30 in the morning! VMworld is great but it does take a toll on you as the week goes by.

Wednesday was a little more organised than the day before as you would expect. I got to the conference centre early and headed towards VMvillage. Unfortunately, it was closed again until 10:30. VMvillage for this year has been moved to where Solution Exchange used to be in previous years. While that’s not a problem at all, bloggers are forced to report the General Session from the hall. Most blogger’s prefer to attend the General Session from a place where their devices can sit on a desk, while they live tweet/blog the General Session. I realize that chairs in the Blogger’s area are classroom-like but still!  If I am asked what I would change for next year, it’ll be the blogger’s area to be opened in the morning for the General Session.

General session was pretty good, with announcements coming thick and fast. Second day is a traditionally a little thin on ground-breaking stuff so the Twitter-feed was also not as active. That said, many updates were mentioned in the areas of EUC, VSAN, vRA etc. There was a great moment when the HTML5 client was mentioned and it got roaring applause from the whole audience.

VMware is also giving out a free Fusion or Workstation license so if you are attending, make sure to claim yours by using your VMworld Europe 2016 app. Hopefully, you watched the General Sessions live but if not, click here to see the recordings.

After the General session I ran to the session INF7849 – “VMware Cloud in AWS – A Closer Look”. Given my interest in AWS, this session was of particular importance. Frank Denneman and Alex Jauch (who is the Senior Product Line Manager) delivered the knowledge on it. It was an excellent session which went into a more detail on the offering and addressed some of the misconceptions people have about it. If you missed it, don’t forget to watch the recording once it becomes available.

Then it was time for Solutions Exchange. As usual, I went in there and had a lot of chats with different vendors – too many to mention here. I keep saying this but this is one of the two major reasons I come here. Every vendor (big or small) put a lot of effort into talking to you and explain their technology offering. They know that most of the people attending are techies and so you can have a good technical chat with everyone and it’s very satisfying. Highly recommended you do that too!

This was a special day for me too: When the idea of OpenTechCast was floated, I wanted to join it straight away but family issues prevented me from doing that. Yesterday, I formally became part of it so I am very happy about that. Unfortunately for you, that means hearing a lot of me in the podcasts but I’ll try to keep it all sane and understandable. Do let me know if you have any feedback on that. As for Christening, I interviewed Josh Atwell, Frank Denneman and Christopher Lewis. You’ll hear them soon as part of our coverage of VMworld that I am sure Gareth is busy editing as I write this. It’s a shame that he had to leave for home early, due to work commitments. I can tell you: He is not happy about that!

Amy Lewis does Pop Up Tech talks in various conferences, including VMworld. I did one last year too. Having personal interest in what people do with home labs, Amy asked Gareth to do one in relation to what we’re doing with OpenHomeLab Wiki and OpenTechCast podcast. Hopefully, you’ll see it when it gets released.

After that, we were having a chat and talk of SolidFire Sock v3.0 came up. When it was released formally earlier in the year, I wasn’t able to download the new version and upgrade. Yesterday, I got to download it and finally, I’ll be able to upgrade mine to the latest version. I hear another version is in the works and will be released soon.

If you think I’ve gone mad, then have a look at the Press Release for it. You’ll see that nothing’s wrong with me. In the video, Josh Atwell nicely explains what’s best about that release which is why, I so badly needed it.

On Tuesday and Wednesday both, there was the “Hall Crawl”. This is when vendors treat all attendees with food and drink and it becomes a party-like atmosphere. It’s a very nice touch and everyone looks forward to it. Many thanks from me to all of the sponsors for making that happen.

The day went by pretty quickly after that. It was time for the “VMworld Customer Appreciation Party” or in short, “VMworld Party”. This year, the band was “Empire of the Sun” and it was very well received. I must admit: I’ve never heard about them but that could be due to my age. That said, I did like the music so maybe it was a good choice. Food was available in abundance and was served very efficiently. The mood was great and I am sure everyone had fun! I know I did with all these guys (I am on the far right)

VMware also arranged for buses for attendees to return to the city centre which is very considerate of them. I took advantage of it like pretty much everyone else and that was the night for me. You know what happened next!

Today, I am hoping to divide my time between VMvillage and Solutions Exchange and try to catch more people to chat to for the OpenTechCast. Wish me luck!