#CXIParty at VMworld hosted by @CXI and @NexusMN – After Welcome Reception

First of all, let me say WOW.  Okay, and I’ll follow that up with a following WOW! :)

This blog post comes out less than a week after I published the invitation for #CXIParty!

Let’s take a look at at the statistics as it stands so far!

Attendance Figures for #CXIParty 7.31.2011

Those numbers when you count them up come to the metrics of 346!  Wow, and there’s only a handful of tickets left!   But that doesn’t mean it’s the end of the game… so be sure to get yourself on the wait-list when that opens up as well! There’s always opportunity to come on down one way or the other!

I’d like to thank my paying sponsors so far!   This list will update when I get updates from my OTHER sponsors :)

Nexus Information Systems of MinnesotaVirsto Software PHD Virtual EmulexSpousetivities

Special thanks to @StorageWTF for being the Bartender Sponsor!

#CXIParty at VMworld 2011 in Las Vegas - Attended by the Top Industry Experts in Virtualization, Security, Cloud, Applications, You name it!

While this is the slide which I tossed over to Chad (and he presented in his Chad’s Pre-VMworld Webinar) for those of you who do know what to expect, let me tell you the history of #CXIParty and give you a little idea of what might go down ;)

Earlier this year as I was preparing to attend EMC World there was an internal contest to win some ROCKING suite, in which all you had to do was produce a video to enter!  I wont be embedding the video because it is LONG {~9mins} and won’t submit you to that unless you’re interested in the VNX. It wasn’t a BAD video, just a long one.. but I did win!   And win absolutely I did!

If you read those earlier blog posts.. you’ll see I won this OMG BEAUTIFUL AMAZING SUITE.  I was effectively a ‘VIP’ as a result, and let me tell you something. I love things to be overly dramatic, massive in proportion.   But on the other hand, I absolutely LOVE sharing and I don’t need a lot for myself, thus if I’m going to be treated as a VIP… you’re ALL going to be treated as a VIP!   Thus was borne #CXIParty a VIP Party FOR the People, BY the People! [Enabled by my Sponsors who came together in the 6days I planned this whole event]  

#CXIParty wasn’t like some crazed and wild frat party where you won’t remember anything the next day and it’s all a haze.  It turned out more so to be like a group of your closest friends getting together to drink and be merry.   Unlike other Parties which go on at conferences, the relationships which come out of this are lifelong and permanent, yea baby that’s what I’m talking about! No, but seriously.  It was great, my bouncers didn’t have a lot of work to do and everyone had an absolutely amazing time!   

So, what you can expect from part deux to #CXIParty is something VERY similar, just with more people here at VMworld, oh and even BETTER VIEWS!     Yes the venue is going to be slightly bigger, and there’ll be one or more bartenders, but the logistics will be roughly the same [getting up to the room will STILL be somewhat of a hassle, if not less so than before] and there’ll be so much rocking fun you’ll leave in a daze of how cool this is!  Probably more giveaways too (I leave that in the hands of my sponsors… and respectively… sponsors funds ;))

While there are less Tickets available for #CXIParty today, there will be more opening up as we get closer to VMworld.  However for you hardcore guys you know I love you, I’m opening up a special batch of tickets for those of you who actually read this blog post, thus feel free to use the “I found this ticket on PKGuild” to register! – Also, please leave some comment in “where you heard about this ticket” just so I know you READ this ;)

EMCWorld Day 3 and TC Conf Wrap-up – Symm Cakes, StudioE Videos and Fun!

Wow… Oh and Wow… Look at me publishing this DAYS Later.  The first reasoning behind that is frankly.. I WAS and still sort of AM Exhausted! OMFG it was quite a tiring yet amazing experience! I believe the best follow-up quote I had (which I tweeted and just noticed it didn’t send) on my way home from the airport in the cab was… “I’m so tired I was wondering why it all of a sudden got dark and realized my eyes had closed!”  So, quite the great and amazing set of experiences.. oh, but don’t take my pre-fix word for it… get ready for the final coverage of the event!

Meet EMC's finest! (my coworkers)

Day three of the EMC World Conference also happened to be Day 1 of the TC (That’s Technology Consultant if you’re asking) conference.  This is a great event where our finest TC’s, TC Managers and some various other ninjas get together and well.. Learn stuffs together!   In the picture above you see a small sampling of ~1700 of EMC’s finest, all collapsed into a single room to learn together as one!   I wish I would have gotten more photos on the whole of day three (or four, or five) but my coverage was limited and I was focused on the events at hand.. so you’ll need to take my word for it!    This particular session/meeting above is what kept me.. well, for quite some time, so long that I missed the “Bloggers Lounge” group photo.  So don’t take the word of some of the bloggers that I apparently don’t exist because I wasn’t in the photo! It’s not true! :)

image image

We had the great pleasure of having a birthday here at the EMC World this year – the birthday of the wonderful @c_weil – As you can see by this beautiful Symmetrix cake above, there was definitely some planning which went in to it :) (I was so disconnected from things going on… I didn’t find out until I saw the cake! shame on me I say!)  It was great to finally meet her in person in this event of events where Christina was receiving an award as part of the Women’s Leadership Foundation (Please let me know if I’m bastardizing the name/etc :))

But that’s not all, right? I mean, seriously… how can that be all?!   I didn’t get many good photos to speak of later until we had our team dinner (but who wants to see photos of my entire team.. I’m not sure if they want that out there, so I won’t share :))   But I did get to have a great interview with a great organization!

I’d like you to meet StudioE! They’re the folks who the customer/community of EMC’ers are able to leverage and other magical mysterious stuff.. I’d say watch the video to find out more, as well as visiting their website.. I’ve talked with some others who are in StudioE and from what I hear, it’s a great program to be a part of, makes me wish I were a customer!

EMC Community NetworkLinkedInFacebookTwitter

Being that they have Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and the new ECN… well, to tell you the truth, I dragged/stole the icons off of their site! Makes my work easier! :)

And on the final-final day I got the opportunity to attend what was a HIGHLY and HEAVILY attended session of the VPLEX Labs! (What does highly attended mean? After each lab session.. there were HUNDREDS waiting outside of the room ready to pile in to play with VPLEX.. I consider that to be fairly heavily attended :)) I heard there were similar things happening for the Unisphere demo labs as well, but hey… I like new juice and VPLEX is new! :)

What did I learn from the VPLEX session, well.. I learned… I’ll find out soon if (via access to the lab) whether I can expose some of the internals and share with you far more than you’d normally typically see! Oh, and be excited about some other things to come.. I talked with some groups and there will be some amazing things coming on the horizon over the next several months, which will equal a win for people all around!

So, in wrap-up, let me break down the high-lights of this past week and over the events of everything encountered!

  • Counting Crows put on a rocking concert, and apparently I do not remember nearly as many songs of theirs as I thought! (++)
    • I believe someone in my hotel at Colonnade stole my Counting Crows Concert glow cup, WTF?! Yea, no idea there, but it WAS in the room! (-)
  • EMC definitely knows how to put on a Bloggers Lounge! OMFG that was amazing and really a shining beacon for the community as a whole! (+++++)
    • EMC really has no idea how to coordinate the unique requirements of Vegans and Gluten Free folk, I wonder how Halal and Kosher is handled (—)
    • The Partner Pavilion was populated by the best of breed in industry who really knew how to engage and take care of the customers in attendance! (++)
      • VMware is a real stickler with their SWAG, making me ‘listen’ to their presentation and answer a question to win a T-Shirt #advertisingfail ;) (null)
      • (Disclaimer… I merely hovered nearby at the end and knew all of the answers they were positing, I told them I could run the preso if they wanted)
  • Labs, Labs, Labs – Wow, people could not get enough of these! Every one in attendance was a clear winner who got time with those (+++++)
  • I lost my voice by the third day.   Imagine me barely able to speak, well, an extremely distorted version of my voice total suck (null)
  • Boston as a city took care of us, with numerous highlights and an accommodating Public Transportation (T-Line) (+++)
  • The Red Sox put on a great game which we had the opportunity to be a part of an amazing ecosystem of characters, they’re real family the fans. (+++++)
  • Brocade put on an OMFG great event the likes of which were unparalleled the whole week, well done!  Yes they were strict on attendance but they made sure me and my people (you people :)) were taken care of, so I commend them for that, and a special shout out to @charleshood of charleshood.net! (+++++)
  • Emulex put on a good event too, but I didn’t show up until the end, so I cannot really speak to the full character of the event but I heard good things from other attendees, so champion for Emulex (I do like Emulex, and they’re not paying me to say this – and I don’t drink nor eat food at events, so it’s not like they’re convincing me somehow :)) (+++)
  • Beantown Bash was pretty good, I did spend a fair amount of time trying to get my customers who forgot their badges into the event, so… that should have been communicated to them a little better of the importance of the badge (That, and find better ways for me to circumvent your security to get them in, and yes Security does not stop me from getting what I want) (null)
  • The TC Conference was by far the most amazing employee focused event I’d ever been to.  The care and attention and access we were given, both to our needs, driving us technically and enabling us as individual leaders, and not to mention the sheer number of our leaders who turned out to talk with us (not to us) including Joe Tucci, it’s no wonder this is one of the best places to work for (often not recognized outside of our walls).   If you were ever looking for a good reason to work with these rock stars, this event certainly shines as an example – Just let me know and I can get you in touch with hundreds of others who will tell you their take!

So in final… I’d like to thank EMC, the Partners and other Vendors, but most importantly the Customers which made all of this possible.   If not for you, well, there’d be no cool technology to be solving problems… and I’d have no reason to go out to Boston! :)

I hope you find these summaries and break downs useful, I know I will go back and reference it and probably end up getting yelled at about the SWAG (Hey, it’s for my customer! And it’s true, it is!   Don’t you dare tell me I can’t get my customer the little trinket you have, or you’ll find yourself staring down the gaze of an upset @cxi and I don’t get upset ;))

I hope you all had a great time, and I’d love to hear your take, experiences and more, and how to make the next one just as successful! (Anything you share I’ll be sure to communicate it upstream to people who will not only listen, but even take action!)

EMCWorld 2011 will be in Las Vegas, so that’ll be quite a unique experience… :)

In closing.. it’s good to be home with my family, and my dogs! I wish you all well and get ready for the onslaught… the technology is only getting better! :)