How was it?

The Conference was different from years past even if the design and marketing around the venue was reused. It was the same footprint, but the expo hall definitely seemed to lack a lot of familiar faces. Even in general attendance I definitliy missed a lot of faces that you have seen in many years passed. I went back and reviewed the general session on information regarding attendance and did not find anything in the re-watch. It was told to me between 5000 - 6000 people and later heard a more defined number of 5200, but that is all rumor based. I can tell you it felt smaller. Normally 100-200 vendors and there were 45 vendors according to the list in the VMware app.

How was the food?

Conference food for me has always been eh due to my stomach condition. I only had 1 day that I had to pay for lunch elsewhere due to just the risky business of the food for my own personal reasons. Breakfast was a nice reoccurring Eggs, Bacon, some sort of turkey sausage, pastries, yogurt and fruit. Hot oatmeal was also offered at a separate station. Your typical OJ, Cranberry juice, water, coffee, and tea were offered with breakfast as well. The meals are always a good place to sit at a random table and strike up conversations with anyone that may sit. You meet some fascinating people and a wide range of skill sets. This is honestly a more valuable time for me at the conference for networking.

The every year complaint of mine

The community area, community session, and VMware code area is TOO small. This area so much knowledge is transferred and driven to grow the product use. Users of all skill levels come to see these sessions and honestly are some of the most important sessions of the entire conference. These sessions drive conversation and innovation for all environments big and small. I am not saying customers don’t trust vendors, but your community is out here freely pushing your product because they believe in it and a customer/potential customer is a lot more likely to listen to a customer of that product over sales, marketing, etc. When you see 10, 20, 30, 50, 100+ people standing on the outside of the theater to watch because it’s full you can’t tell me that session isn’t worth being stuck in a real room where it’s quiet and easy to see. Give them a couple off shoot rooms for their bigger sessions. It costs space which in the grand scheme is a small number compared to money spent on marketing and has probably a much higher return.

My opinion currently on Broadcom

You have seen my complaints above, but I am not here just to complain. I wanted that out of the way, so I could talk about what I did like. Hock Tan (Broadcom CEO) made me feel reassured on sticking with the VMware product line even with the cost and force of being pushed to subscription licensing. In discussion and presentation he showed he is committed to making the products better by tearing down the silo development style VMware had previously and bringing the products together to work more effectively. It’s already being seen just in bringing authentication under 1 SSO domain. That is huge in my opinion and hopefully is just evidence of the good Broadcom can bring to VMware. Hock Tan also seems to have a dedication to keep the community alive and flourishing. There is what seems to be a case of the dust settling and I think once that happens a lot of those kinds of people paused right now might come back to the side of VMware after taking a hard look again. Fingers crossed for a bright future for VMware under Broadcom.

Sessions

The session line up this year was great and fulfilling. I attended a few, and they were well put together. I did notice the sessions in big general rooms were put together by the business units. I attended the following sessions

All the sessions were excellent and full of rich content and demos. They all had ample time and were ready for questions following the session. I do wish the session times always lined up as it seems community sessions and regular sessions would have some weird overlap times. I suspect this was because of them balancing just the sheer number of sessions. The sessions were recorded, so I will definitely be hitting up videos of sessions I either couldn’t get into or had conflicts due to vendor meeting, ended up presenting, or got engrossed with conversation with surrounded technical individuals.

Overall

I would attend again and looking forward to next year and hoping that the conference grows back to its former glory. There is still plenty of useful information and networking to be had at a conference like this, and it outweighs any other conference I have attended.

Bonus Pics