vForum LiveBlog for Day 2 Keynote

If the technology comes together I hope to live blog the keynote from Day 2 at Sydney vForum.

Feel free to join the conversation.

Rodos

vForum Sydney Solution Exchange Booth Awards

In the tradition of social media we bring you the first ever (and possibly last) vForum booth awards. Success is based on a top secret criteria of awarding points in several random and sarcastic categories, as well as a little honest opinion.

Rodney Haywood and Alastair Cooke (@DemitasseNZ /www.demitasse.co.nz ) have dedicated minutes of their time to bringing you the best and worst of the booths, saving your the arduous journey through the crowds.

In no particular order, our awardees are:

Dedication to Booth Duty Award

Not a booth award, this is a personal award for the person who has shown outstanding effort above and beyond the call of duty.

David Caddick of Quest Software wins this award for still coming to, and standing, at the Quest booth all day, after requiring four stitches in his leg this morning. David’s enthusiasm for an early jog lead him to a lacerating encounter with the back stairs.

Well done David for not giving up and being there.

The Is There Anybody Home Award

This award recognises the booth that is there but fails to deliver a visible presence of life. Is there a positive message from having a booth with nothing to deliver your message?

Charles Sturt university wins this award for the apparent absence of life or anything informative (apart from a mobile Esky). The presence of cold beer in said Esky would have removed this booth from eligibility for this award, alas it was a case of a pub with no beer.

Thank you, come again.

The Puritan’s Booth Babe Award.

This award is inspired by Thomas Dureya’s annual effort to decrease the amount of clothing worn by vForum Booth Babes. Our puritan family values cannot condone the use of the scantily clad female form in a male dominated event as a marketing tool, hence our award goes to the Booth Babes presenting the height of puritan values.

The award goes to the VCE booth where the Booth Babes were covered from ankle to neck, along with modest head coverings. This is an excellent representation of Slip, Slop, Slap that would survive even a summers day on Bondi Beach.

We are very pleased to see a number of women on booths with excellent technical knowledge, not simply Booth Babes.

Show Me The Hardware Award

This award is to recognise the hardware vendor who has failed to show their product. Attendees are all interested in viewing and discussing your wares, which is hard if there is only a brochure.

The award goes to Dell, one of the largest server and storage hardware vendors, who only had a few laptops on their stand showing powerpoint. We were not the only critics to notice the lack of tin.

Maybe it’s all in the cloud.

Bravery Award

This award goes to a vendor that has gone the furthest and taken the risks. The unkind could call them cowboys, but we call them courageous.

The award goes to the brave boys at CoRAID, a new entrant into the storage market in Australia. With little local sales presence and only imminent VMware HCL support they nonetheless braved the big money vendors and brought actual hardware with blinking lights. Great to see them giving it a go in this crowded space.

Bigger and better next year.

Interactive Playground Award

This award is for the booth where the geeks got to play. vForum is for engaging and learning, this award celebrates booths that do this well.

The award goes to Cisco whose booth had a structured schedule of open briefings on their products, with excellent giveaways. There were a number of blades to touch and look at their insides, the hardware wasn’t just there it was there to be investigated. There were numerous technical people who sought questions to answer.

Geeks delivering to Geeks.

Buffet Award

This award recognises the booth with the broadest range of products and solutions visible. There needs to be something for everyone and the whole family should go home having had their fill.

The award goes to VMware who, despite being their event, showed an enormous range of products at a detailed level, every product was actually there to be touched and used. More than a dozen products were identifiable from distance and there were experts on them all.

No one trick Pony.

Most Appealing Booth Award

This award recognises the booth that stands out and draws you to it, with so many booths it becomes a blur. Something different must greet the eye.

The award goes to Trend Micro for their appealing Carnival theme, from a distance you could see it wasn’t your ordinary booth. With the space limitations and sundry restrictions placed by event organisers it takes effort to stand out.

Who says conferences are all a circus?

Thanks to all the exhibitors who make the event so valuable. Congratulations to the winners. All those that didn’t make this years list should be planning for next year’s awards.

Rodos and Alastair

Australian Storage Blogfest

Are you a blogger in Australia who covers a bit of storage? If so then you will want to know that SNIA Australia is hosting a blogfest with a range of storage vendors on Thursday November the 4th in Sydney.

Its a one day tour, face to face, with the major storage vendors IBM, HDS, EMC and Netapp.

Here is what SNIA have to say about the event :

• Bloggers benefit from a direct engagement with the key storage vendors to learn more about their technology and product strategy. With the increasing influence that bloggers have with customers it is important that authors are technically accurate and have a broad perspective of technology and the product/feature sets that differentiate the vendors. This is a unique opportunity to do a direct comparison across four major vendors in one day, at no cost other than an investment of your time.
• Sponsors benefit from a direct engagement with key influencers about their technology and product direction/strategy. Their participation in this session can ensure their technology is well understood by those who have the influence over customer perception. This is a rare opportunity to interact directly in an open, friendly environment with these key authors.
• The presentation sessions will be focused on technology themes determined by the bloggers themselves. The Blogfest is a one-day event with four 1.5-hour sessions. Each session includes time for technical presentation, hands-on activities and delegate discussion. We expect direct questions and feedback in return.

This should not be a dump of the latest product releases from each vendor. It will hopefully be a good discussion on storage technologies and the market. Moving from one vendor to another you can really compare and contrast on where each stand and their strengths and weaknesses.

Here is my personal recommendation for the topic for the day (which has not been accepted yet, its just an example).

“What new technologies in primary storage do you believe really gives customers better bang for their buck in the long term? What has your organisation seen and done in these areas in the last 12 months? Which new technologies do you think might not give customers the return they may think or are to risky to adopt in primary storage and explain your reasoning.”

I think there are many ways to answer that and it will be great to hear what IBM, HDS, EMC and Netapp's views are. Could be very telling. If you have an idea of a better theme or topic let me know.

The draw backs is that you can't work for a storage manufacture, bloggers must all be recognised independent writers on data storage related subjects working in Australia or New Zealand. You will need to take the day of work and if you are not in Sydney you will have to cover your own travel costs to the event (worth a flight I say). Travel throughout the day and meals are covered.

We really need to ramp up the amount of storage blogging happening in Australia and credit to SNIA and the vendors for giving this a go. Hopefully if this is successful we can get them to cover some travel costs next time around or hold it in a different city so that more people can be involved.

If you are interested, even if you are not a blogger but a person of influence in a community, then contact Paul Talbut, General Manager of SNIA ANZ with your details via paul.talbut@evito.net (or me). You never know, you may just get an invite!

I hope to see many people there!

Rodos