VMWorld 2006

I attended VMWorld 2006 for the first time. The show was held in Los Angeles, California. This worked out well because I have family in Pasadena that I could go and see while I was in the neighborhood. It’s been a while since I was in L.A. In fact, the last time I saw it it was smoldering from the L.A. (aka Rodney King) Riots. It looks much better now. I stayed in Little Tokyo in the Miyako Hotel with four co-workers. We each had separate rooms, so don’t even go there. Little Tokyo was a fascinating little area of downtown L.A. We were located right next to the Tokyo Village and a small Buddhist temple. We visited both in our free time. Isi and I also hit the $200 million Catholic cathedral, of our Lady of the Angels. And I found our way into the Mexican district in Old Los Angeles. It was a direct transportation into northern Mexico. All of if was very cool, though L.A. and area still seemed strangely out of touch to us foreigners. I didn’t get the feeling that caters well to those who wish not to be tourists and instead do as the Californians do. I used to live in San Diego and have spent some time in southern California, but I was lost at this new age in my life. Even though I don’t frequent bars or even drink, I still wish to find something to do in the night to entertain me. Especially if I’m on a business trip with no home to go to. Isi introduced me to karaoke, which the Japanese do well as you might understand. Our hotel had a quaint little karaoke bar in it which was mostly attended by Japanese. In these circumstances, my inhibitions were lowered and I was able to perform in front of people that were culturally separate and thousands of miles from my home. We hit a myriad of other sites including Rodeo Drive for some late night walking. It was interesting, but again with the late night activities…we just couldn’t really find anything to do.

The conference itself, on the other hand, was full of things to do. We were innundated with information in some of the classes. There were a host of presentations given by vendors of one sort of the other. These were hit or miss. Some were technology bashing agendas and others were truly valuable “notes from the field.” My role at the conference was to collect as much information as possible about performance metrics and tuning. There was plenty to talk about in regards to performance. I took reams of notes on the classes I could get into and will be able to download session material from those I couldn’t. If you’re interested in virtualization – especially as it pertains to VMware and their products, then you’ll want to hit VMWorld 2007 in San Francisco.