What a great show this year.  7000 people, sessions and labs that you could actually get into this time, great conversations with VMware employees, users, and partners.  I wanted to make sure I said thank you to everyone I met.  I'm only sorry that I wasn't able to meet everyone.  Not knowing what people look like sure makes it hard to locate people on the show floor.  Maybe we need a 72 point font for our names on our badges next year.  Yeah, trying to find someone by name... it just doesn't work.  Haha. 

Book Signing

I'd also like to thank the gang over at the VMware Company Store.  What a great group of people working there.  The mob hit them hard and hit them quick, buying up everything they could get their hands on.  The store had to react quickly to try and replenish their stock, otherwise, Wednesday and Thursday conference goers would have left empty handed without their VMware items and all those great books (which were 20% off).  These guys worked extremely hard throughout the convention, and they made me feel quite welcomed during the book signing and each time I popped into the store.  Very personable people.  Kudos!

We did a book signing on Wednesday from Noon until about 1:30PM.  While the store sold out of all of their copies of our book by the end of the show, we were only able to sign about 16 copies in the hour and half that we were there.  For those of you that stopped by, it was great meeting you!  Interestingly enough, I was able to meet another David Marshall that day.  So all this time that I've been complaining about not being able to clone myself, evidently, I came close!  The other David Marshall was able to meet many of you throughout the event.  So, I'd like to thank him for helping me meet everyone.  I was also extremely fortunate to meet Dr. Mendel Rosenblum.  Shaking his hand, talking with him, and watching him thumb through my book for even just a split second was an absolutely amazing thing.

Thank you to everyone who purchased a book at the show.  It was satisfying to see them fly off the shelves.  And it was great conversing with each of you. 

Session

This year was another first for me.  I was able to participate in the show by giving two presentations along with my friend, co-author and work colleague, Wade Reynolds.  Together, we delivered two sessions on the Top 12 Ways to Tune Guest Server Performance under VMware ESX Server.  If you enjoyed the session, I'm glad.  If not, oops, sorry?  :)  It wasn't a session on rocket science, but we certainly had some great discussions with many of you during the QA section as well as after the session let out.  We appreciated everyone's attention, participation and enthusiasm.

Universal Studio Party

VMware's first challenge for the party was trying to get the 7000 attendees from their hotel locations down to the event at Universal Studio.  What a chore that must have been!  My hotel was the last stop on Route 1.  So every bus that showed up was partially filled already, and the line slowly boarded the bus one by one.  After about the 4th of 5th bus, I finally made it on and headed to the event.  Traffic wasn't on our side either that night, but what seemed like about a 45 minute bus ride later, we pulled into the studio parking lot.

Once ushered in, you could tell who hadn't eaten and who needed some entertainment.  Me?  I was ready to eat... after signing books, I missed lunch, but was ready to consume whatever was out there.  The buffet style setup in the streets really worked well.  There was food and drink to be had within every few feet.  It was quite a nice setup.

After eating and drinking, I took in the fun.  The carnival type entertainment was open, and since it was free, you didn't mind trying out the impossible carnival games that your kids usually make you spend $100 on trying to win a $5 stuffed animal. 

It was like having a fast pass, no lines to worry about on anything.  What a great way to actually see Universal Studio... seriously, there is no better way than this.  We walked right into everything.  The Back to the Future ride and the Mummy ride were great (although both seemed short, I wish the Mummy ride would have been longer).

If you missed the Special Effects Studio, you missed a great show!  We jumped from Backdraft over to this one, and I have to say, it was really entertaining.  The audience participation was great, watching people do the sound effects was perhaps the most fun of all.  Does anyone know the guy that played the Tinkerbell role?  "Weeeeee, I'm flying, I'm flying" - hysterical!

And speaking of audience participation, if you made it to the Terminator 2 event, and you didn't have some drunk virtualization techie screaming at Kimberly during the presentation... you must have gone to the show early before the "spirits" did their thing.  There is nothing more entertaining than watching a bunch of drunken computer geeks yelling and screaming nonsense at one of the shows cast members. 

And it was over just like that!  Back to the buses... and back to reality.  And best of all, sleep!