As excited as I am that VMworld is only a few sleeps away a man has to keep the normal activities going. On Monday I am attending the Australian Architecture Forum (AAF) and on Thursday night is CloudCamp in Sydney.

Cloud camp is free so if you are in Sydney go an register and rock up. Its just for a few hours on Thursday night.

The main reason I am off to AAF is to hear Anna Liu again. She is giving the keynote. I have commented on her speaking on Cloud at a previous Cloud conference, back then she was at Microsoft.

Here are the sessions I am going to.

• Anna Liu, UNSW : Architecting cloud applications - the essential checklist
• Gianpaolo Carraro, Microsoft : Head in the cloud, feet on the ground
• Lincoln Cheung, Object Consulting : Cloud computing: everyone wants to be in it, no-one knows what it means
• Brett McDowall, Object Consulting : Cloud sounds great - but not at my company
• Matt Wright, Oracle : How to use App Grid to create a private cloud
• Tim Ruben, Oracle : Impact of the rise of the Cloud on Enterprise Architecture
• Radek Cerny, expanz : The ultimate cloud architecture
• Neil Belford, base2Services : HA and DR in the cloud

As a Cloud geek I am very keen to hear and critique the messages and ideas presented.

Be interesting to see what Lincoln presents for his session. The description is

“Cloud computing: everyone wants to be in it, no-one knows what it means”

• Gartner predicts that cloud computing is one of the top 10 strategic technologies for 2009.
• A recent paper published by ACM this year says that there are over 20 definitions of cloud computing on the Internet.
• What does cloud computing mean?
• What are the benefits and challenges for your organisation to adopt cloud computing?

That outline is very close to one of the presentations I give. This could go one of two ways. I am going to think its great and be able to borrow (okay steal with permission) some great ideas to enhance my messaging. Alternatively, I am going to be cringing at the wishy washy, difficult to catch, impractical messaging, without any concrete steps or metrics to walk away with.

You will be able to follow on twitter, follow @rodos or I will post on hashtag #aaf09. I will also try to write up a report with any really interesting stuff.