I recently published “EMC Guide to VMworld 2012” with lots of information focused on EMC customers, partners and employees that might be at VMworld I’ll probably publish one more later this week with a consolidate list of “Tweetups” that you might find interesting. In the mean time, I thought I would follow that blog post up with my “VMworld 2012 Tips, Tricks and General FYI’s” focused on some of the other things you might want to keep in mind if you are attending VMworld 2012.
Tips, Tricks and General FYI’s
Our team got a little sneak preview of some of the VMware announcements that will be
taking place during VMworld2012. It’s mind blowing the amount of things that will be announced this year. To say you will need a couple of days to absorb this info is an understatement. Before you can absorb it, you first have to be aware of the changes 
Most, if not all the major announcements take place during the keynotes so for those that are in attendance, I would put that down as “Mandatory” viewing. For those of you that are unable to make it this year, the great news is VMware will be broadcasting the breaking VMware news as it happens. I would HIGHLY HIGHLY recommend you head over to the VMware NOW Site and register to see the live steaming.
#vHunt is BACK BABY !!! If you attended last years VMworld and you are somewhat active on Twitter you are probably familiar with the cool scavenger hunt that EMC and the
vSpecialist team put together. The gist of the scavenger hunt was the various vSpecialists that were participating would send out tasks to be completed, things like “Find vSpecialist X and tweet a picture of them with you with the hash tag #vHunt” If you completed the task your 
name was put into a drawing for cool prizes. We made it even easier to find the vSpecialist by wearing hats the stood out from the crowd!. I recently was told that we would be doing this again so make sure you fire up your twitter client on your phone and start tracking the #vHunt hash tag. If you are not familiar with how to do that, it’s okay because not everyone is a twitter nerd, feel free to leave your questions in the comments section and I’ll be happy to answer them. I’ve added some of the cool pict’s from last years event, special thanks to Martin and Josh over at www.ValcoLabs.com for the pictures and making it FUN last year !
Probably the most asked question I get in regards to VMworld is “Hey, where are the “Networking Opportunities” AKA Parties ! For those of you that have never been to a VMworld, some would say that next to the VMworld “Hands on Labs”, the real value to attending VMworld is the opportunity to network with peers at these events. Trust me, these events should be mandatory. The VMworld community has done a pretty good job of tracking as many of them as possible at this site: http://www.vmworld.com/community/gatherings – while this is not a complete list, it should get you pointed in the right direction. Also, use Twitter to help track down some of the ones that might not be on the list. As always, use the #VMworld hash tag to maximize your voice !
Various Other Tidbits
- The #vBrownBag Extravaganza. One of the really cool things I came across when I first got into Twitter was this really cool community of vNerds that make up the vBrownbag community. They will be giving cool prizes away in the community lounge as well as they published their list of “tech talks” that will be taking place through out the week. If you want to find a place to nerd out, check out: http://professionalvmware.com/2012/08/vbrownbags-vmworld-and-you/
- If you are looking for more ideas as to what sessions you should check out, I’d like to point you to Rick Scherer’s VMworld 2012 Itinerary located here: http://vmwaretips.com/wp/2012/08/03/vmworld-2012-itinerary/ . Rick is a rockstar and has a really great list of sessions he’ll be speaking at, and attending.
- The “Everything VMware at EMC” Forum site has a great collection of Sessions as well. You can find it here: https://community.emc.com/docs/DOC-17862
- The “Everything Oracle at EMC” community published their list of “Must see” sessions here.
As you can see, there is a ton of things to do at VMworld. My biggest recommendation is if you don’t already have a Twitter account and a Client to run on your phone, I would do so ASAP. Use this to help see real-time activities throughout the week. It’s really the best way to keep up to date on all things VMworld. Just start following the various Twitter Hashtags (Anything that starts with a # is considered a hash). The best Hash tag to start following is the #VMworld one and then I would follow that up with #vHunt
Check back here for more details about VMworld this week. I’m getting more and more great info sent over to me and I’ll pass that on to you as quickly as I can !
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