50mu – about storage

Will this be the last EMC World ever? I can’t imagine that.

Some say this year will be the final EMC World. Ever. But then again, there might not be another Dell world either. Not in this format anyway. Will EMC World continue in another format, or will it be called DEll/EMC World? Maybe EMC/Dell World? Or just World? No, that doesn’t make sense at all.

Anyway,

let’s think out loud about EMC World 2016

What’s going on from May 2 to May 5?

Well, for me personally it all starts on Friday April 29, when I drive to Schiphol airport near Amsterdam. It’ll be the first time in 4 years or so I’m at that particular airport. Why AMS? Well: on my way to Las Vegas, I have a 1 day layover in Boston and the most efficient way to fly is from Schiphol. Normally Düsseldorf works for me, or even Brussels (Zaventem), but since I’m having this layover, it’s Schiphol this time.

I’ll have half a day in Boston, meet up with my friend Jorg and have dinner with a mutual friend of ours. Saturday the 30st the both of us will travel to Vegas.

Sunday May 1

The first full day will be a day filled with meetings, presentations and “death by PowerPoint”. Hopefully I’ll survive and I can relax with my friends afterwards. Oh: I shouldn’t forget to register for EMC World, so that includes bringing my ID, get the badge and bag and maybe I will run into people I know from previous years, which I’m very much looking forward too as well.

Monday May 2

THE big thing on day 1 of EMC World 2016 will be the keynote session presented by Michael Dell and Joe Tucci and is called “Modernizing The Industry”. Of course they will talk about the big merger, but David Goulden also has the stage, joined by Rodney Rogers (Virtustream). It’ll be about cloud technologies, Flash Gordon (again) and mergers, that’s for sure. And this particular session, you wouldn’t want to miss! Be there!!

There are some serious rumors that the EMC Elect have plans for the rest of the day, but that’s all very secret at this time. If there’s anything to report, you will notice when the time comes 😉

And for those that are anxious to become certified there’s 3 special Exam Readiness Review Sessions in the Practice Test Room, Casanova 506. The EMC Proven Professional Education team will be leading 3 Exam Readiness Review Sessions at EMC World. These sessions are intended to supplement the recommended curriculum for an exam. These sessions alone will not prepare you for any exam, but it’ll give you some food for thought. The session format is designed to discuss practice test questions, concepts and questions from participants related to the session topic. Registration for these sessions is free:

• Monday, May 2nd, 8:00-9:30 am: Information Storage and Management (E05-001)
• Tuesday, May 3rd, 8:00-9:30 am: FEHC Management and Orchestration (E20-266)
• Wednesday, May 4th, 8:00-9:30 am: Cloud Infrastructure Planning and Design (E20-020)

After 6PM there’s the grand opening of the solutions expo and this is again something you really don’t want to miss. It’s probably the most interesting 3 hours of floor time you will experience this week, with vendor sessions taking place all over the solutions expo, but also games, fun, food and drinks and lots of opportunities to do some networking with peers.

Tuesday May 3

This day is known as “Proven Professional Day” and there’s a lot to do to benefit from. Just like previous years, you can take free exams (EMC and VCE), VMware exams (20% off the regular price), but there’s also the labs. Like last year, you can even claim your personal engineer to guide you through 1 or more labs, which is great to build some experience with products that you haven’t unpacked yet, back home.

For me, I think I’ll try to take 1 or 2 exams, but it’s hard: which one do I need which I don’t have yet? The first attempt of each exam is for free, so even if you take 10 different exams, you’ll get 10 free first attempts!

So what about these guided vLabs? There’s plenty to choose from:

• Deployment and Management of ScaleIO 2.0
• Experience Smart Multipurpose Shared Global Storage with ECS
• Isilon OneFS CloudPools – Configuration and Tiering to ECS
• Experience the New VxRail: VCE’s Hyper-Converged Appliance
• Enterprise Hybrid Cloud v3.5 for Business and IT Agility
• Cloud Native Engineered Solution
• Blazing Backup to the Cloud with NetWorker and CloudBoost
• VMAX: Performance Analyzer for the VMAX3 Family
• Beyond VNX – Next Gen Midrange VMware vSphere Integration
• Beyond VNX – Next Gen Storage Management and Administration
• XtremIO 4.0 GUI Simulator
• Get To Know YOUR Service Environment With MyService360

Then there’s happy hour in the solutions expo from 4PM to 5:30PM. This is new to me (it is new, isn’t it?) and from 4:30 to 6PM there’s the annual knowledge sharing festivity with food and beverages in Daniel Boulud’s db brasserie, so that’s going to be fun!! I can’t wait to hear what the EMC Education department has to say. By the way: You must be wearing this year’s EMC Proven shirt to gain entrance.

Later that evening I’ll be going out with the Dutch Delegation. First for some sushi, followed by Cirque du Soleil. It’s going to be a pleasant evening for sure.

Wednesday May 4

I fear this day will be called studio day. Rumors are that there will be sessions with EMC TV, interviews, photo shoots and what not. And maybe even an “Engineers Unplugged” with Cisco’s very own @Lauren. It’ll be great to see her again!

And then there’s the EMC Community Appreciation Party in the bourbon room. In previous years this was done on Tuesday evenings, but now this event is extending EMC World a bit. It’ll be in the Bourbon Room from 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM. Register for this event on Tweetvite.

Later that day there’s happy hour again in the solutions expo, followed by yet another happy hour with the Dutch Delegation, followed by the famous customer appreciation event from 8 to 10PM. So far they’ve announced 1 of 2 bands to entertain us during the fabulous food, drink and network evening, namely: Duran Duran! Everybody knows their old hits, like Girls on film, the Reflex, Wild boys, Hungry like the wolf, just to name a few. Even though they weren’t really “my thing” back in the 80s (because my sister was really into them; that’s how it goes with siblings, hahaha), I am looking forward to their performance very much. It sure beats last year’s bands whose names I already forgot, who played way too loud and hardly played any known songs. Yeah, Duran Duran is going to be great entertainment!

And there will be an after party. It’s very exclusive at the moment, but I can say it will be flooded with EMC Elect people. I’ve heard rumors about private jets, helicopter rides to area 51 and long walks in the desert to get to some remote secret location, but it’s going to be fun in the end, that’s for sure!

Thursday May 5

The final day of EMC World: This day is probably the best day to catch that last few sessions that you couldn’t join in the previous three days. Some people might already have gone home, but the Thursdays have proven themselves to be valuable if you were a bit too distracted by the side events during the week. After the morning sessions, there’s lunch again and it’ll be all over.

Well…. the official EMC World event might be over, but the Dutch Delegation continues to provide excellent networking opportunities! After lunch they’ll be visiting the Las Vegas North shopping outlets, so there will be lots of new shoes, jeans, clothes and maybe Disney presents to be bought for the people back home.

Afterwards the Dutch Delegation comes to an end as well and a final happy hour with the Dutchies will end this fabulous week.

Friday May 6

The Friday is my traditional recover-day. In the last few years this was my “road trip” day and I must say it was fantastic to see the sights with some good friends. In 2013 there was the “Valley of Fire” with Mark Browne and Allen Ward, in 2014 Vincze Gijenes, Jon Klaus and I drove to “Zion national park” and in 2015 I drove through “Red Rock Canyon” with Mark May. I haven’t decided where to go to this year yet, but if anyone wants to join me, contact me!

Saturday May 7

Travel day. What can I say? It’s a very short stint from Vegas to Salt Lake City with just less than an hour of layover, but then it’s non-stop back to Amsterdam! for once it looks like I’ll be home earlier than previous years and I might even make it to lunch when I arrive back home!