NOTE: correction EMCworld hashtag is #EMCworld, **not** #EMCworld2011
Ok – we are 4 days away from EMC World – and it’s already the biggest EMC World ever. We have more than 10,000 attendees.
Here’s my preview, and recommended event calendar for customers/partners/and EMCers attending.
BTW – I did a cloudcast with Aaron Delp of VCE and Brian Gracely of Cisco, along with the always awesome Nick Weaver (vSpecialist), which gives a peek preview also, you can listen to that here.
Chad’s unofficial EMC World 2011 FAQ:
Q: Can I follow online? A: YES. We’ve made a good (IMO) call – there was an internal debate about opening up all the major content at EMC World wide open, transparently, and gratis. Most conferences put the stuff online, but with delays, and sometimes only to registrants. But, not everyone can come even to the coolest conferences. Don’t get me wrong - the biggest value at any conference comes from the person-to-person networking, connections and dialogs. Of course – the only way to get that is to be there. But we are going to be broadcasting all the keynotes and a LOT of the content. you can follow on twitter using the #EMCworld hashtag, and if you go to www.emc.com or our facebook page http://www.facebook.com/emccorp, and the facebook page for EMC World itself: http://www.facebook.com/emcworld
Q: Will EMC be making big announcements? A: HECK YEAH.
Q: Will faces be melted through all the sheer awesomesauce? A: YOU KNOW IT.
Q: Will there be no net demos – some that will work in spite of having no right to, and others which flame out on stage in the most horrific way? A: YES. GO HARD OR GO HOME.
Q: Will the parties be good? A: :-)
You have 3 days left to register!
Ok – in all seriousness, here’s what the calendar looks like, and key things I would recommend checking out. Read on for details, and I can’t wait to see you there!
To me – there are 4 MUST SEE things:
- The keynotes (knowing what’s in them, will highlight what I would make sure to see)
- The parties (hey, let’s be honest, events like this are about new cool stuff, and networking with friends, colleagues, and firming up the customer-engineering relationships).
- Social City (a great place to network up with people)
- the EMC, VMware, Cisco and VCE cloud-powered vLabs (what you want, when you want it)
In the spare time windows – hit the breakouts, and the Birds-of-a-Feather content – they all rock. If you’re an EMC Technical Consultant, or a vSpecialist (who isn’t suppporting the hands-on-lab), the EMC TC conference is running in parallel – so obviously you’ll be there.
1) Ok – here is a “key” to the keynotes – with enough of a “preview” for people to figure out what will work best for them…
Mon 8:30-9:30. Joe will open the event, and the opening will include not only the big picture, and where EMC is going, but also sets the stage for all the keynotes, and makes some announcements that will have people starting to fire up their iPad blogging software and tweetdeck :-)
Mon 11:30-12:30. Pat’s keynote is SO FULL of stuff, it’s going to be crazy. He will be doing the EMC product deep dive – and will include major announcements across the FULL GAMUT of things we do. It has so many high-risk demos in it, if we make it out alive it will be a miracle. Yes, I have been conscripted as one of the demo dudes. There are records that will be broken – both technical and non-technical. There will stunts on stage that will have people oohing and aahing (and hopefully laughing). It will include the Big Data awards – and the nominee’s stories are amazing. It will close with a preview of something we are working on that will change the landscape in important ways.
Mon 2:00-3:00. Isilon and Greenplum are two VERY cool new technologies in the EMC portfolio. Yes, each will have BIG announcements at EMC World. Sujal and Scott are also awesome presenters. Good people + good content = goodness.
Tuesday 8:30-9:30. Paul Maritz opens day 2. His keynote is, as Paul’s often are, very interesting, and very eye-opening. Where VMware is today, and where they are going next is fascinating stuff. There will be a discussion/demonstration of something that will be announced at EMC World that I think is a very cool example about where enterprise software is going…
Tuesday 10:00-11:00. Jeetu Patel. Jeetu is a new exec at EMC in our IIG team – and what they have done in the last year and will be annoucing in detail is fascinating. If you’re in the business of managing information (and who isn’t) – it’s going to be worth your while.
Tuesday 11:30-12:30. Brian Gallagher. Not only does his team make great products, Brian is a darn good sport :-) Brian will covering the VMAX updates (and there are doozies), VPLEX updates (and there are doozies) and managing storage at scale updates (and there are doozies) – and he’s doing it with lots of funny video and demos.
Tuesday 2:00-3:00. Rich Napolitano. VNX and VNXe are selling as fast as we can make them, and customer feedback has been awesome. Yes, we aren’t resting on our laurels :-) Big announcements, awesome records, and interesting insights on where EMC’s midrange and SMB is going. I don’t want to give it away, but as a thought – on planning meetings, we’ve been discussing “where do we play the ‘Ride of the Valkyries’?”
Wednesday 8:30-9:30. Sanjay Mirchandani. Sanjay is not only one of the best CIOs I’ve ever seen (our IT has leapt forward), he understands the core of the business. Under his guidance, EMC IT has become one of our most transparent sales tools (www.emc.com/emcIT), and many of the IT staff spend a ton of time with customers. But, perhaps most impressively – he’s a great, dynamic presenter on top of all of that. Expect this session to cover what we are really doing with our own tech, how we are accelerating our own journey.
Wednesday 11:30-12:30. BJ Jenkins. If you do backup (and who doesn’t) you owe it to yourself to check BJ’s keynote out.
Wednesday 5:15-6:15. Chad’s World, which should be the silliest, most fun (and perhaps coolest) thing you get a chance to see at EMC World 2011 :-)
I promise you this – in exchange for you coming to Chad’s World: i) Wade and I will make assess out of ourselves like we have never done before; ii) every demo we do will be awesome, or at least TRY to be awesome :-) We have pushed the envelope hard. They are all live, no net, some involve fire-extinguishers, some involve literally destroying the thing WHILE we’re demoing it. We will have a whole bunch of great customers joining us on stage, and the beers will be flowing – we have more than $50K worth of Molson Canadian for all the attendees. Oh, and it will open with an absolutely stupid, silly gag. Hopefully people understand Wade and I are hamming it up more than a little :-)
Oh – one more thing… I’d encourage you to start this impromptu drinking game (since we’re the opener for the Fray) – print this out, and anytime I say any of these “Chad’s World Buzzword Bingo” words – chug!
2) Parties. There are a bunch of really good parties planned. The opening reception is always fun.
Attendee Welcome Reception
Sunday, May 8th
7:00 pm - 10:00 pm
Attendees are invited to kick off the week at Tao and the Venetian's roof top pools. Conference badges are required to attend; Guest passes are available for purchase. Must be 21+ to attend. Government issued photo ID is required for entrance.
The next thing is the Grand Opening Reception in the Solutions Pavilion
Monday, May 9th 4:30 pm - 8:30 pm
After Chad’s World on Wednesday, it’s the biggest party… the Customer Appreciation Party/concert – and here are the details.
EMC World Customer Appreciation Event and Concert by The Fray
Sponsored by EMC World's Elite Sponsors
Wednesday, May 11th
7:30 pm - 10:00 pm
3) Social City. Every year, the social community becomes more and more important. Last year we had the Bloggers Lounge (which was great). This year, we’ve dialed it up to 11.
You can find the Social City in the “Village” – and is a great place to meet people. If you’re a blogger, you need to register here to access the blogger’s lounge, but other parts are open to all.
4) The hands-on-labs…
VMware VMworld GETO team (the team behind the awesome VMworld hands-on-labs) consider yourself on notice – we’re now competing with you for most awesome scaled real hands on lab at a major conference event :-)
The EMC Cloud runs in our next-gen datacenter in RTP, NC. It’s all on VCE Vblock.
For perspective – here are some of the stats:
- 19 separate labs – representing almost EVERY SINGLE EMC product (and yes, this means we have VSAs galore you can play with).
- using about 2000 VMs
- consuming 4.9 TB of RAM
- 10K vCPUs in total.
- 300 Wyse terminals, all using VMware View 4.6 to access the infrastructure
This is a crazy “Inception style” environment – ESX on ESX, powered by VSAs in VSAs, all fronted by a self-service portal. In the run up as we stressed the environment – creating and destroying thousands of VMs per hour.
What you can see is that EMC World is going to be EPIC. Grab me if you see me – I want to hear your story, and you’ll find me at the craps tables in the evenings :-)
Chad,
Your enthusiasm rocks! To see your passion it truly does inspire others to be as passionate and you see that passed down to your team! I look forward to checking out the vLabs and having my face melted!
Luigi
Posted by: NerdBlurt | May 05, 2011 at 06:38 PM
Hey, I know Chad and I've also seen everything we have in store for EMC World.... If you haven't signed up yet, there is still time. And YES, Chad and I will be doing seriously crazy stuff on stage, and of course having all kinds of Demo-licious fun the rest of the time. Hope to see you there! Wade
Posted by: Wade O'Harrow | May 06, 2011 at 05:08 PM
Looking forward to watching some stuff live. Wish I could be there but glad I can still feel like a part of it. Good prep for next year when I plan to attend in person!
Posted by: SecureGirl | May 08, 2011 at 08:58 PM