Archives for VMworld

Dell Storage Community at VMworld Copenhagen

Posted by  on Sunday, October 23rd 2011     

The Dell Storage crew was at VMworld Copenhagen last week. I would have done my normal live blogging and tweeting, but I had technical issues. So I did things the old-fashioned way….I used a pen and the notebook included in the VMworld backpacks.

Digital recap

Fortunately  Rafael Knuth of the Dell Tech Center in Germany was there, and captured the event. Check out his blog posts (Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3). Rafeal is also behind the Dell at VMworld Copenhagen site, which ties all of our activity together in one spot.

We’ve posted pictures of the event on the Dell Storage Facebook page (please tag yourself if you are in the pictures!), and there are more on the Dell Flickr site as well. And you can always browse our Twitter stream from the event to see what the community was talking about, and maybe even connect with folks who were there.

 Event recap

The European VMworld event is a much more intimate affair than the VMWare Vegas show was. About 19K people were in Las Vegas for VMworld, there were about 7K in Copenhagen. But no one does community like VMware – John Troyer does an amazing job of connecting people and making everyone feel welcome. Even though the event was small, the community spirit was palpable.Maybe part of that is due to the incredible success of the VMUGs - they said 65K people participate in those communities. I know I enjoy the NEVMUG events (the local VMUG to which I belong), and I’m hoping to visit a couple of other VMUG events that Dell will be attending in the next few weeks.

In addition to Rafael and myself, the Dell side of the Dell Storage community was represented by Jason Boche, David Glynn, Laz Vekiarides, Luke Mahon, Ganesh Padmanabhan, Charlotte Schmidt, Christian Hasner, and Nicolai Sandager. I’m sure I’m forgetting someone, please let me know if I left you off the list! And I know, some of these folks are technically Dell Virtualization people, but our communities are so entwined that I consider them part of the storage community. It was great talking in the booth about the conference, and all of the technical intricacies of supporting our customers as they embark on their virtualiztion journeys.

The external Dell Storage community was there as well. Bruno Sousa was there asking some tough questions, and of course Fabio Rapposelli was there, I saw him in the blogger’s lounge holding court with the Italian #vMafia. It was great catching up with these guys, and meeting other members of our growing community.

It was also great connecting with folks from the greater storage community as well. I attended fantastic sessions by Scott Lowe and Duncan Epping, and got to reconnect with Bas Raaymon and Simon Seagrave when I did some hands-on labs. When you’re at these events connecting with so many like-minded people it’s easy to forget how small our storage community really is.

Where will be next?

We’re not done with conferences and event this year! We’ll be at SNW Europe,  VMUGs in Atlanta, Chicago, Cincinnati, Kingston ON, and Kansas City; Dell Storage User Groups in St Louis, Seattle, Denver and Indianapolis, a European road show to talk about enterprise efficiency in Stockholm, Oslo, Warsaw, Brussels, Utrecht, Paris, Zurich, Milan, and Madrid; and a Dell Storage Briefing in New England.

Whew I’m tired just typing it out! If you need info about any of the events we’ll be at, just post a comment here and we’ll get you sorted out. We’d love to connect with you.

Of course our big conference will be in London in December – the Dell Storage Forum. We’re looking forward to connecting with our European community members January 9 – 12. Registration is open right now, and you can keep up with the most recent news about the event on Facebook and Twitter. The Orlando event was amazing, so we can’t wait to connect with everyone in London. Will you be there?

category: VMworld
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My favorite #cloudbunnies pic

Posted by  on Tuesday, September 6th 2011     

I’m still going through all of the amazing content that folks posted from VMworld. I love this pic that @wsellers posted, it’s my fav #cloudbunny pic!!

 

category: Uncategorized, VMworld
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Day 3 at VMworld

Posted by  on Wednesday, August 31st 2011     

I can’t believe it’s already Day 3 at VMworld here in Las Vegas. I’m blogging this during a session just to give readers at home a little taste of what’s going on here.

There are over 20,000 people at this show. I’ve run into just about everyone I know from the storage industry, and met lots of very interesting people. The conversations have been amazing, lots of VDI talk, visualization talk, and talk about business operations.

The Dell Tech Center guys have been blogging about what they are seeing at the show:

One of the biggest social events I attended was v0dgeball on Sunday. (read more about it here).

Here is the Dell Storage team:

Here is the Cloudbunnies team:

 

I’ve posted more pictures on the Dell Storage Facebook page. You can also check out the VMworld or Dell Flickr streams to see more of the action here in Las Vegas.

category: VMworld
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v0dgeball – get ready for the Cloudbunnies!

Posted by  on Tuesday, August 23rd 2011     

We’ve heard from some of the other teams (EMC vSpecialists, XaaS Badgers) and some of the fans (@sthulin, @mjbrender). Now it’s time to hear from the only vendor neutral v0dgeball  team at VMworld this year: the Cloudbunnies.

Who are we?

We are a group of women from six different technical companies. The idea came from Caroline Orloff, now of EMC Consulting. Instead of fretting that women are under-represented at big tech conferences, why not round up some ladies and wail some balls at their colleagues.

I stepped up to be team captain. One thing that really disappointed me was that I had a very hard time finding enough techie women to make up a dodgeball team. Per the rules, we needed at least 6 members and at max 10. To date, our team only has 8 members, even after a blog post, bugging all of my contacts, and all of our partners. Some women decided to play for their companies (ahem @friea), so the pool of available technical women was very small.

One takeaway: techie women just aren’t coming to these conferences. Maybe VMworld is hard for women since it happens right after school starts. Maybe women aren’t asked by their employers to attend these events. My friend Alistair Croll, who organizes many tech conferences (Enterprise Cloud Summit at Interop, Bitnorth, Startup Festival) pointed out that if companies would submit speaker sessions led by women they would have a greater chance of having the session accepted, in large part because conference organizers are looking to diversify their speaker profiles. Big vendors, you know you have some lady tech superstars, get them presenting at these shows! Do your part to change the ratio.

Why are we doing this?

I’m proud of our Cloudbunny team. I think our collaboration across vendor lines shows what can happen when we as an industry work together. I personally feel this work cutting through the bs and uniting the practitioners of our craft to work as a team is the real “women’s work”.

But don’t think for a minute we aren’t coming to play. We are looking forward to skillfully handling our balls, and dominating all other teams.

And in all serious, we are playing this game for a really good cause: the Wounded Warrior Project. My brother is a disabled vet from the Iraq war, so I am totally behind this effort! If you are at VMworld, come watch the game and cheer on the Cloudbunnies! A $5 dollar donation to the Wounded Warrior Fund gets you into the festivities (register here) – games start at 7PM on Sunday. If you aren’t coming to VMworld, please consider donating to the cause, and let them know the Cloudbunnies sent you!

The Team

Before I introduce you to the team, I’d like to give a nod to Christian Reilly aka @reillyusa. He is the one who coined the term cloudbunnies. We thank you sir for the inspiration!

Captain: Gina Rosenthal – Dell

Chris Weil – Centre Technologies

Caroline Orloff – EMC Consulting

Michelle Peterson – Dell

Annette Cormier – Dell

Laura-Beth “LB” Hatem – iLand

Liz Pierce – Acronis

Lindsay Sloan – iLand

Coach: Vanessa Alverez – Forrester

category: VMworld
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Tech women attending VMworld: we need YOU for our v0dgeball team!

Posted by  on Sunday, July 31st 2011     

Are you a techie woman headed to VMworld in August? We still have a couple of spaces left on the all-lady v0dgeball team!
What? You don’t know what v0dgeball is? Well here are the details:

      • WHAT:   A rules-based dodgeball tournament with an M.C. and referee.
      • WHEN:   Sunday August 28th 7pm-till its over
      • WHERE:   Sports Center of Las Vegas – 121 East Sunset Road, Las Vegas, NV
      • WHY:   To have some FUN! All proceeds go to the Wounded Warriors Charity
      • WHO: Right now the teams are:
        • EMC vSpecialists vSales
        • Juniper
        • NetApp
        • VMware
        • VCE
        • Dell
        • HP
        • Cisco
        • Tech Ladies

Caroline Orloff and I are leading the Tech Ladies team. Our concept is that the women know how to come together across vendor lines to collaborate and kick butt. If you are a techie gal, agree with our philosophy, and want to play v0dgeball, we have a couple of spots left. Please let me know, and we’ll add you. Similarly if you are a guy and you know a techie female co-worker who is coming to VMware please let her know about our team!

I will say, its pretty disappointing how few techie women are going to VMworld – from what I can find. Many of those I know about are either working on Sunday night, or they are on their company’s team. Please help prove me wrong…..maybe all the other women are just heads-down working too, but we need them on the team!

In the next couple weeks I’ll update you on our team. Unofficially we are the Cloud Bunnies…in a loving nod to @reillyusa. My daughter even designed a logo for us (still under review). If you have general questions about v0dgeball, @vcemonk is the mastermind – tweet him!

 

 

category: VMworld
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