VMWORLD

So yesterday I got the chance to go to VMWORLD up in San Francisco, which is the virtualization industry show that we put on. Lots of companies, lots of people, lots of free t-shirts. I didn't get any free t-shirts because I didn't have the right kind of badge. I got to go with an employee badge, which pretty much let me do everything except get free stuff.

The show was pretty fun, if just a little overwhelming. When I first got there I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing. So the first thirty minutes was spent wandering around looking at all the flashing lights and computer monitors. Luckily one of my managers spotted me and let me in on all the secrets, like how I could just walk into any of the sessions. This made killing time a lot easier. Plus there was free Mountain Dew and cookies scattered around. This made killing time a lot more sugary.

I worked the booth for our product for about three hours total. I was supposed to work for two, but with people filtering in and out and there not being enough people to really work the booth I stuck around. It was a lot of fun getting to put my marketing face on and talk to customers. I think overall it was good for me to meet people that actually use our product and hear what they had to say about it. A lot of good things and a lot of suggestions.

Below are a few pictures from the show that I was able to snap with my phone. [Click to make them bigger.]

The first two show the big blackboard that was setup that had two artist drawing (usually) comedic representations of key words that we use in the virtualization biz.

The third is the stairway leading to the event. You actually came down these steps to get to the event. Going up them means you were leaving. So I took the pictures from inside the event. Makes sense? Good.

The fourth picture is the vmware booth.

The fifth picture is the actual booth that I worked at. The monitor to the left was the one showing off our product.