The Diary of a VMworld 2010 Blogger – Sunday

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

Sunday 10 October 2010

7:54

I am awake early today. Maybe because it is the day to go on a vRoadtrip to Copenhagen with the VMguru crew J Time to check my e-mail and twitter flow to get up to speed. More and more bloggers, speakers, partners and VMware personal is moving towards Copenhagen. Just follow the flow of tweets…

8:30

Time for a shower and shave I reckon. Ahh that feels good fresh and fruity! Packing my bag with cloths and such I will need next couple of days. Now time to gather all electronic gadgets I will need. AC  adapters, network cables, laptop, mobile phone, business cards and an alarm clock. The bag feels heavy.

9:00

My lovely wife Wendy made some nice breakfast that will digest easily while driving for 8 to 9 hours towards Copenhagen. Opening my e-mail again still have some unread product announcements from a few exhibitors I want to read and maybe follow up on the solutions exchange on Tuesday.

9:34

While checking the vmguru.nl post stats my eye falls upon the car door magnets on our American fridge, I mustn’t forget to stick those on the car doors, better to do it right away.

So now to get the bags into the car and to say goodbye to my wife and kids, while waving I turn the corner on my way to the first stop.

10:05

First stop: picking up Alex. Brr it is chilly outside better to wait inside the car.  Morning Alex, ready? Yeah ok let us pickup Erik then as our next stop in Meppel. It is quiet on the motorway so we can get their on time.

10:32

Arrived at Erik’s house somehow he thinks we are driving by truck, so many bags  with equipment, cloths, food and much more are being stuffed in the trunk.  Now to free  Anne Jan from the seals in the north.

11:35

We just rounded the corner in Kornhorn and honked the horn in front of Anne Jan’s house. The trunk is now filled till the roof but fortunately it all fits.

11:50

We are On Our Way!!!!! I am driving the car with some nice speed through Groningen into Germany. Good we can accelerate now through 150, 160 , 180 past 200. Now we are making progress on the 800 km trip.

13:20

First stop to vMotion the driver to another seat and get a new driver in place. Feels good to sniff some fresh air and to stretch the legs for 10 mins. Alex is taking over and driving us further into Germany towards our goal.

14:25

We just rounded Hamburg and we pass it on the left side following the road going to the north towards Denmark. Our physical road to the virtual cloud ;-) After several road works and Alex crying out loud that he wants drive faster than 70 we stop for a second pit stop.

15:35

After making some room in the bladder Erik is getting behind the wheel and will be driving us into Denmark. We arrive at the Denmark border where lots of flashing lights awaits us. A big police control is happening or maybe they are looking for Erik already ?

15:59

We just passed the border of Denmark without any trouble and even without being pulled over.

16:18

We stop at a parking place to stretch the legs and get some video footage for the VMworld Start video. After some rounds on the parking place Alex en Erik are completely trained to switch the driver within 20 seconds. Now to get the correct video footage and photos for the making of.

18:25

65 Kilometers from Kopenhagen we do our last pit stop, show some VMware love and change the driver once more, Anne Jan will take us into Copenhagen and deliver us at the front of the hotel.

19:10

Yeah!!!!! we arrived at the Cabinn Metro hotel in Copenhagen. Now let’s check in fast, so we can drop our luggage in the room and parking the car on the nearby parking lot. Let us find the Bella Center so we can register and get our badge. After almost breaking my neck because of a well-placed statue we arrive at Bella Center.

19:50

We are being welcomed by a charming lady who escorts us to some registration booths. At the booth they do not have any clue what bloggers are and which badges and belongings we should get. Erik, Alex and myself we got our things very straight forward and with some help from some more people behind the booth it all worked out. Anne Jan on the other hand they were still looking for in the system. What can you expect with such a shady figure :D

After all we got our badges to enter VMworld tomorrow as a blogger.

20:30

Time to get some dinner, on the way to the Bella Center we spotted a Japanese restaurant called VISA ASIA so let’s try there. The beer and the food found its way down in good order after a long day.

22:30

Back in the hotel it is time to get some work done. We decide to grab our gear and go sit in the hotel bar with free wireless access to do our thing. After a few minutes we bump into some familiar faces Egbert and Arjan our colleagues and my ex-colleagues from Centric ITS.    After some chit chatting and cutting and pasting video images with sound it is time to go back to work in the hotel room.

23:30

Alex, Erik and Anne Jan are busy with compiling and getting the first video ready for upload. Time for me to get the first photos ready for upload. Copying them from the camera to the laptop and resizing, cropping and renaming them at the moment.

1:15

The photos are ready for upload and I push them to the website, oh boy an error occurs, some sort of plug-in missing. Anne Jan and Alex know how to fix it quickly so I can continue with the photo gallery.

1:35

The video is ready for upload and gets pushed towards You Tube for publishing in the meantime Erik types the accompanying post for the video.

1:50

It is getting late and it is time for bed the video is upload and the post is ready, the photo gallery is loaded with day 0 photos and I am closing my tweets and Zimbra suite to get ready for bed.

2:10

Time for brushing the teeth and jumping into the upper bunk bed. Now let’s hope I don’t drop 2 meters down in the middle of the night.

2:15

Lights out, good night all.