The Wait at #VMWorld

VMWorld, best as I can tell, consists of four distinct parts: the sessions, the vendor expo, the parties and gatherings … and the waiting.

As I previously mentioned, throughout the week hundreds of different sessions are being offered here at VMWorld and you must electronically register for every session you wish to attend. This system is not without frustration. Many sessions filled up quickly, weeks before the conference even began. If you were approved to attend the conference on short notice (like I did) … well, sometimes beggers can’t be choosers. Don’t get me wrong; I am getting some great information and attending some terrific sessions, but there were more than a few that I simply couldn’t attend because they were full. Imagine showing up as a college freshman on the first day of school and trying to register for your classes that day. With an iPhone. It’s a lot like that.

All the sessions I’ve attended have been just under an hour in length, with some of them starting on the hour and others starting on the half hour. One of the sessions I really wanted was being offered at 9:30am, which meant I had to drop my 9am and 10am sessions. My 8am session ended around 8:45am … which meant I suddenly had 45 minutes to kill.

Five of those 45 minutes were spent riding escalators at the Venetian. VMWorld takes place on five different floors, so the mob that fills the escalators in between sessions is quite impressive. On each floor there are small break areas that seat about a dozen people, and there are various benches, padded cubes, and other bits of furniture in the hallways for another dozen or so people to sit on. Most of the sessions take place on floors 2-5, so (and this is just a guess, probably a poor one) there are around 100 places for 20,000 to sit. It is the most impressive game of musical chairs you’ve ever seen.

What this means is that, at some point during VMWorld, you’re probably going to find yourself sitting on the floor. There are people sprawled out everywhere, covering every bit of available wall space. Most of them, from the overheard cell phone conversations, are performing tech support “back home”. (IT guys never “really” go on vacation; goes with the territory) There are guys with laptops, guys with netbooks, guys with tablets and guys with cell phones, many of them with headphone ear buds in their ears … all working while waiting.

Sitting inside the session rooms waiting for your next session is not an option, by the way. That 9:30-10:30 session I mentioned earlier? I had another session scheduled in that same room at 11am. I had hoped to just stay put in my seat and get caught up on my e-mail, but we were informed by event staff that we had to leave, re-scan our cards, and come back in. Reluctantly we shuffled out of the room, only to find that no one was manning the scanning station yet.

Hi-diddly-dee, a slice of carpet for me.

If you’re a social creature you can do a bit of networking during these breaks. Conversations quickly migrate from “Hi, what do you do?” to “How are you doing it?” Yesterday, after attending a session on running Active Directory on virtual domain controllers, I quipped on the way out that we are running 3 times as many virtual domain controllers as were cited by the presenter. This led to in impromptu conversation with a couple of guys who are getting ready to do what we ourselves did three years ago. This has happened a couple of times, although usually it’s the other way around and I’m the one gleaning information from other IT folks.

Here are a few pictures I snapped yesterday while “waiting” at VMWorld.

This large area in the front of the vendor expo area was converted into a makeshift park, complete with fake grass, trees, and volleyball/badminton/basketball courts.

Here’s a shot of the dining area I mentioned yesterday.

Five minutes away from the meeting area is much more soothing decor. I walked out and sat near this waterfall a couple of times when I had a few minutes to kill.

Finally, here’s a picture I took of one of the larger session rooms as people were leaving. There were 3 sections, each with 35 rows of 10 chairs. That’s 35×10 (350) x 3 sections for a total of 1,050 chairs.

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