During VMworld Europe 2010 in Copenhagen I will be keeping a diary to show what a blogger’s life is all about.

Thursday 14 October 2010

 

 

6:30

Time to get up my phone is blinking with a reminder for the Zimbra breakfast meeting in the Scandic Hotel. The ritual stuff to be dealt with, washing, shaving and getting dressed. Damn it is early but everything for a good cause.

7:00

Alex and I leave the hotel to the metro station through a light moist dark morning. A lot of activity along the line. Erik and Anne Jan still firm a sleep. We arrive at the metro station in about 15 minutes. Just missed the one on the platform so just will have to wait for the next one in 6 minutes. I must say transportation is very good in Copenhagen. Yes the metro arrived and we get in along the line more and more folks from Denmark join in and get ready for work.

7:30

We arrive at Norreport station were we have to change metro lines to go to the Vesterport Metro station. This is close by the Scandic Hotel.

7:40

We arrived at the Vesterport Metro station now to get the map out to see were we need to walk don’t want to get lost again but it is daylight so much easier to get reference points. After some scouting around with our eyes we find the correct direction to walk to the Scandic Hotel.

7:45

Arrived at the Zimbra meeting, I recognize some familiar faces behind the desk  :-D Been a good party last night, a smile and a nod confirms that. After the registration is done I get my badge and take a leap towards the coffee machine.

7:54

Grabbing some breakfast quickly because they are going to start with the meeting.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

9:25

Great session about Zimbra and the road and vision they are following. I didn’t know they have a roll out with 20 million mailboxes. Also a lot of familiar companies on the business reference sheet, after working with Zimbra for the past few weeks I must say it is a great product and I like the way they are going and the goals they want to reach.

9:35

Time to get back to the Bella Center for the last day of  VMworld.  Mmmm so much things still to do and so little time left. I which I had a few more days to do some scooping, interviews, networking, labs and lots more… So will have to make good use of the time left today. Students are traveling with us on the metro station because the south campus of the university is a stop on the M1 line we are on traveling towards Bella Center.

10:00

After getting of the metro station we have to get across and around the construction area, which is a little detour. After entering the Bella Center we drop off our coats, before we can enter the solution exchange.

10:25

We cross the solution exchange on our way to the bloggers lounge to edit the photos and make a blog post about the great Zimbra meeting we had, it sure was early but I think it was worth it.  During a stroll we bump into Scott Lowe with the vWife t-shirts, he has two pink shirts for me. Thanks Crystal and Scott Lowe really appreciated by me and my wife. One t-shirt is for a good friend who was with us in VMworld in Cannes last year but couldn’t make it this year. At the bloggers lounge there is a little bit of a discussion and a problem around using VLANs and especially using the default VLAN 1 on a Cisco network in A VMware environment, which you better don’t use when doing VLAN tagging and VLAN routing. Always good to see the community working together to solve such a puzzles. After a few we get the confirmation that the problem seems solved, so all good :-D

11:25

Erik and Anne Jan just surfaced from the crowd in front and we decide to do a lap around the solutions exchange were we meet up with the Archie Hendryx also known as the SanMan. He is working for Virtual Instruments and invites us over for a little introduction.

We have been talking some time to the guys at Virtual Instruments about their products and solutions and I must say it looks very promising. Maybe can do a POC in the near future. Further been talking to lots of vendors and people on the solution exchange. Will deep dive into that next couple of weeks because there are lots of promising or just nice or cool things out there for the virtual and cloudy world.

12:30

Time for lunch, let’s not forget it this time. So Alex, Erik and I head over to grab some lunch in the adjacent hall. Anne Jan is too busy with editing the interviews already done today. Even some more on the schedule today so keep editing AJ ;-)

13:02

Back at the bloggers lounge Alex switches with Anne Jan so he can go grab a bite while the movie editing is still on full speed. We all start blogging and tweeting again.

13:25

Think I have done all the work that I wanted to do so back to the solution exchange for more talking and scouting still a lot of booths I haven’t visited thoroughly. Gotta get back to the bloggers lounge because will have an interview soonish.

15:03

Getting ready for an interview with Bart van Winden Sr. Pre-Sales Manager form Sense about their new product Scense 7.5. It is a product in the user workspace management segment. I have had the pleasure to play around with it when they released version 7 and must say I am curious what the new version is all about.

Scense 7 is an user centric desktop management and application delivery solution for MS Windows environments. It delivers workspace management in both physical and virtual environments, were by all complexity is eliminated within mixed environments by managing and delivering physical and virtual applications and desktops in the same transparent and elegant way. Users can work anywhere, anytime.

15:27

It is a wrap pweew was nervous a lot. I haven’t done this types of interviews yet, but will do some more next coming events when asked. Good practice and I like doing it. Thanking the people at Scense for their time and will meet up with them next time.

16:00

The solution exchange is closing down a lot of booth personal is already gone to catch their flight out of Copenhagen to go back home. Lots of people get on the floor to disassemble the solution exchange and lots of lorries and small forklifts race out on the floor.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

16:35

We close our last scouting lap by thanking John Troyer and his crew for having us this year and wish them a safe flight back home.

17:10

Picking up our coats and leave the Bella Center for the last time. We wave some people goodbye and get on our feet to the hotel.

17:20

After some consult together we decide to get ready and drive home tonight instead of tomorrow morning because of lots of road constructions ahead in Germany.  I feel very sleepy and exhausted after having 2 hours of sleep last night. So after packing my bags I lay down a bit on the bunk bed.

18:30

Everyone packed his bags and we think it is time to get some food in so we move to the mall next door where they tend to have some restaurants, none of the crew wants to go into town because we all feel empty and exhausted. Also the feet hurting after a few days solution exchange strolling. ;-)

20:46

Checking out of the hotel, have to wait for Erik and Anne Jan to get down think they are busy editing videos again on the hotel room, will call them quickly so we can get moving and hop into the car to drive us back home.

21:10

All done with checkouts and the car is back in front of the hotel. Anne Jan attached the car magnets so we are ready to go. Erik will drive us out of Denmark for the first few hours. Think the trunk is completely filled can not even see the rear window anymore but it still fits in.

5:15

Back home parking the car in front of the house. I feel really tired but also very satisfied with a great VMworld 2010 visit. Thanks to you the reader of all this, the rest of the VMGuru crew, VMware with special thanks to Richard Garsthagen, John Troyer and Maurice Riksen,  my employer Imtech ICT Infrastructure Services & Solutions for supporting me and of course my fabulous wife and kids I had to miss for 5 days.

Hope you liked the diary.  Signing off for now, time to get some large chunk of sleep.

The Diary of a VMworld 2010 Blogger – Tuesday