WoodITWork.com

VMworld Barcelona starts off unofficially today, the day before Partner Day (Day 0) the Day before the full house start (Day 1) so, why not, I’m calling it Day –1! A shortish hop over from London landed me in pleasantly warmer Barcelona. I took the free shuttle from the airport which dropped me in the middle of nowhere which is precisely where the conference center is.

I headed off to my teeny apartment which turns out not to be quite where I expected (Fira geography fail, I should know better!) and is beautifully done in pink and purple. 🙂

Based on my preview post: VMworld Europe Preview: Differences + the DevOps Dilemmas where I talked about the differences between VMworld US and Europe and highlighted the cultural melting pot that is Europe, what better way than to meet up socially with fellow VMworlders from across Europe and beyond at the vRockstar kickoff gathering at the Hard Rock Cafe. This is a now yearly event organised by Marco Broeken, Patrick Redknap & team who put on a fantastic party.

I previewed VMworld San Francisco in my post: VMworld: Juggling and jousting, VMware’s battles for the future where I initially highlighted the recent people changes at VMware as well as the rough and tumble world VMware lives in while marketing and selling storage and networking. I also spent some time going though the changing face of application development which I’ll expand on in this post.

It’s different

VMworld Europe is the smaller sibling to the exuberant big ‘ol US VMworld that always seems to pave the way. 8000 attendees rather than 23000 certainly makes a difference although calling it more intimate would be taking it a bit far. All the big announcements and strategy crystal ball gazing is mostly done by VMworld US so Europe has historically been left with the hand me downs in terms of announcements. The focus for VMware is to re-use its US content in Europe 2 months later without it feeling stale and introduce just enough new information and provide the networking opportunities to make people spend the money to go.

Read more…