VMworld 2010: Day 1 – Virtual Roads. Actual Clouds
Although the opening reception was not until 4 pm, the excitement was already building here at Moscone Center in San Francisco at 8 am. There were hundreds in line at that time, though it was pretty efficient: step up to a computer, type in your first and last name, step over to pick up your badge, then down the hall for The “Swag Loading Zone” and bag collection.
As in years before, VMworld is very “social media friendly,” and there is a “Social Media & Blogger Lounge.” My old friend from VMware, John Troyer, is setting up his list of experts. VMware will be streaming 6 hours of video a day.
The earliest sessions are around Partners. The Partner Super Session was huge; I’ll tell you about it in my next blog article.
The facilities at the Moscone Center in San Francisco are well organized, and there is free WiFi connection for all. However, the reality is another thing. Virtually everyone (no pun intended) here is carrying at least one and probably two WiFi devices, so the router access points were soon saturated.
The handhelds on hand (pun intended) this year look like this: BlackBerry, iPhone, Android devices. Auxiliary devices: iPad (which I’m writing this article on), laptops and kiosk Wyse terminals around the venue.
The Solutions Exhibition is huge. Cisco is front and center, flanked on either side by EMC and NetApp. In the center are several VMware booths with lots of other companies, both large and small surrounding.
This is the second-largest convention of its kind; only Oracle OpenWorld is larger. This week the number of attendees at VMworld:
17,021
This is my 4th VMworld; the show has been running since 2004 when there were only 1,400 attendees. Last year there were 12,500. This year, there are 85 countries represented.
Stay with me; I’ll be here all week. You can follow my Twitter stream here.
Thanks for coming along,
