VMworld 2010 - v0dgeball – the epic 2010 battle :-)

One of the VMworld 2010 highlight for me was the v0dgeball match on Thursday night.   A great way to let off steam as VMworld wrapped up :-)

A great thank you to Christopher Hoff @ Cisco, who’s initial taunting and smack-talk was the trigger, and all the EMC people who helped make it actually happen.   I was AMAZED that the only NetApp uptake on Chris’ offer to throw balls at the vSpecialist team was to send hats.   The “always up for anything” volunteers from NetApp Vaughn and Kim are to be respected.   Kim in particular.  Man, she can dodge, duck and dive (throw, not so much – but seriously she was crazy awesome at dodging).   If it were me and I were in NetApp’s shoes I would have sent everyone… I guess they needed to go home cause it was late (ha ha, joking, joking!!!) :-)

Was classic… Last minute crisis was the VMware vGym suddenly became unavailble due to a scheduling snafu, and the best place we could find (which turned out to be AWESOME) was the Jewish Community Center in Palo Alto.  They were super hospitable considering the last minute notice, and the motley crew that showed up :-)   THANK YOU!

Here’s the busload of friends as we embarked on the journey to our battleground…

…And literally on our way there, we passed the VMware Express on the highway en route to it’s next glorious destination (along with some friendly ribbing – BTW, his off-camera rejoinder was much better than my prod)

Here’s a short, hyper-edited version (thanks Nick!) of the battle royal.  Nothing like watching a bunch of nerds throw balls at one another…

  

Here’s the post-game shot (thanks Jay Weinshenker):

So – what was the final tally?   vSquirrels 5 vs. vSpecialists 4.   A great game – loads of fun…

Beaker, I look forward to the our next face-to-face confrontation!!!!

Comments

[Mcowger]

Great videos!

1) GREAT music :)
2) The vSquirrel in black catching 3/4 balls is clearly a ringer! :)
3) Why wasn't the vSpecialist gorilla playing?!?

[RogerMoore]

No offense but u guys totally suck at throwing, u need to start hitting the weights! My highschool youthgroup throws about 10x harder than that.

[Christopher Wells]

Awesome post and awesome time Chad. I love my double-dragons in the pic at the bottom (in front of our fearless mascot). You said: "make it look crazy"; I went for mental hospital psycho, apparently. Hilarious and priceless. Hope we can do something similar in Las Vegas next year. Thanks again for organizing and showing us a good time ;)

[Jay Moore]

Nice job all of you guys, even the mental hospital psycho guy.

[Mike Foley]

That was such a fun night... Thanks to Chad and Hoff for pulling it off. And for Nick for keeping my one and only good play in the video! :) (when I bumped the ball up in the air)

[Chad Sakac]

@RogerMoore - you are TOTALLY correct. There were a couple of folks who could throw, but the majority of us really REALLY sucked.

But hey - that just adds to the ridiculousness of the whole deal :-)

[Jellers]

This was an amazing time. I made it out for the game w/ Lane and had a blast shooting some of the video. I just wanted to capture a few of the v0dgeball rule mods:

1. Taunting is encouraged
2. Headshots are fine
3. We play with more balls than most

Thanks to Hoff for the inspiration, Chad for the execution, and everyone for having so much fun and being great sports.

[Jay Weinshenker]

Who would have thought that you can't find a true squirrel outfit in San Francisco?

I'm sure if there is a v0dgeball at VMworld 2011 in Las Vegas that I can find any furry costume I need...