It was a very hectic first full conference day so thought I should “(b)log” what happened. It started very early as vBreakfast was on the agenda and I wanted to get there by 7 AM – its start time. It’s an event organised by Manfred “Fred” Hofer and is a great way to meet up, before the conference starts.  I met a great few people there, Steve Flanders, Steven Viljoen, Katarina Wagnerova and Abdullah Abdullah, which made it a very enjoyable breakfast. Such events are also a great way to meet someone for the first time and Gareth Edwards, who also participated in the Virtual Design Master event with Katarina, got that chance too.

… and I didn’t even get the photo credits!

After breakfast, or just coffee in my case, Steve, Gareth and I headed towards VMvillage but found it closed! This was surprising and after some debate, went to the hall. General Session started on time and as expected, there were a lot of announcements. I did my bit too and here is a link to my main post:

What’s new in vSphere 6.5

Plus, vBrownBag has got great links on the subject mentioned here.

As there are great and many changes in vSphere, I wrote separate posts addressing the different areas and links to all are in that one post. Steve (Flanders) was frantically tweeting the whole event so I am sure you saw most of what happened. There was a sense for the past few years that by the time we got to VMworld Europe, there weren’t any new announcements to share. This year it changed. I am pretty sure everyone in the hall (and watching remotely) felt very satisfied with what they heard and hopefully, this trend will continue for future conferences

After that, I headed towards the VMvillage. First, I went to the Education and Certification booth as I wanted to get my certification pin. If you’re at VMworld and have VCP or higher qualification, don’t forget to get yours:

It was time for me to panic after that. In all the extreme busyness of recent days, I couldn’t prepare for a quick vBrownBag session I registered for. So, I quickly start to put together a handful of slides for “Work/Life Balance for the Elderly IT Professional” – just a quick, non-technical talk on what I try to do to keep updated with tech, while not compromising my family life.  Have a look here, if you’re interested.

That was pretty much lunchtime. After that, I headed towards “Solutions Exchange” and visited some vendors. Especially on my list was Cohesity and Rubrik. Had great chats with Frank Brix Pedersen and Chris Wahl about their products, respectively and will write something up on both great products soon. I spent the rest of the time, just visiting the various vendors and look at their tech for this year – a techie’s dream!

In the evening, there was the vExpert Party. Met lots of fellow vExperts there and had lots of chats with them. The party is obviously hosted by VMware and we all appreciate the commitment to the community and the give back in this way.

After enjoying the food and chats, I returned quite late in the evening and after a good night’s sleep, I am looking forward to today’s activities.  The session is about to start so I better run!

See you tomorrow!