In my mind, the three tweets displayed above are a really good gauge on how our February 27th Toronto VMUG full day user conference panned out. Throughout the day I strolled around and seen lots of people engaged in some deep conversation, whether it be about something they are having difficulty with at work or something that they had just learned about during one of the sessions. People were collaborating, with the presenters and with each other. In fact, during the ‘Ask The Expert’ session there were many a time when people were raising their hand not to ‘ask’ but to further comment on a question that was already answered. All of this collaboration and discussion is in my mind the true value that anyone can get from a VMUG – and it was great to see it all come together in Toronto!
As for the day it all went off without a hitch. Angelo Luciani ( blog/twitter ) kicked it all off with a brief intro of what was going to happen throughout the day. From there, Mike Roy jumped right into by delivering a keynote on vCHS which was completely awesome and very well accepted by the crowd. He went over what exactly vCHS is, how we can leverage it, and topped it all off with some awesome use cases that he has seen from being “in the trenches” with vCHS. Props to Mike for getting the day off to a great start.
From there the sessions broke out and the vendor booths opened! Everything from Veeam to VSAN was covered in the breakouts, which seemed to at some points be at capacity!.
Then came the highlight of the day – the lunchtime keynote with Chris Wahl ( blog/twitter ). Chris was kind enough to come all the way from Chicago to help educate us on how to “Stop being a mine sweeper” and get automating tasks within our environment. It was a great presentation that had everyone hanging on his every word – and judging by the tweets had Toronto thinking twice about how they are doing things inside their environments.
The conference ended with an “Ask The Expert” session that prompted a ton of discussion around VSAN, NSX, Thin Provision space reclamation, and vCO. From there, the drawings were had, the sweet homelab was given away and everyone headed down the street for a great vBeer sponsored by Veeam (unfortunately I had to pass due to the 3 hour drive ahead).
As you can see from the tweet above, the place was packed. 503 of the 700+ registered attendees stepped through the doors making it our most attended event EVER!!! Props to the other Co-Leaders Angelo Luciani and Eric Wright (blog/twitter) who honestly carried this event on their backs in terms of planning and organizing! As well as a huge hats off to VMUG HQ who kept us all in line! If you were at the event, please consider coming back to one of our local quarterly meetings where the discussions and content are just as awesomesauce as this one. Also, to keep informed about future events and get all of the material from this one, be sure to follow @TorontoVMUG on Twitter or keep checking back to www.tovmug.com.
