Tech Field Day - #VFD4 Experience

Last week I had the honor of being a delegate for Tech Field VFD4 (Virtualization Field Day 4) in Austin, TX. This was my first time ever being a delegate so I was not really sure what to expect. I arrived in Austin, TX on Tuesday 01/13/2015 and the fun began. We all met up for dinner that night and took some time to get to know one another a bit in preparation of the event starting the next morning. Dinner was awesome and everyone had a great time talking and introducing themselves. The event kicked off on Wednesday morning bright and early so we were all as ready as we could be. Wednesday kicked off with Simplivity, then Platform9 and finally VMTurbo. The day flew by and we were given just minutes to take our stuff to our rooms and be back down in order to take a limo ride over to our night activity which was dinner on a river boat. This was definitely a ton of fun in it’s own. So we were then set for the night and then it was time to settle down for the Thursday presentations. Thursday was full of information from StorMagic, Solarwinds and finally CommVault. We had some great Texas style BBQ for lunch and full day of great information from each vendor and again the day just flew by. Our night activity was visiting the awesome Alamo Movie Theater in downtown Austin in which we watched the first Star Wars, had dinner while watching the movie and again met many new great people. And once again our day was over and it was time to get ready for the last and final day of presentations on Friday. Friday was full of great information from Dell, Intel and Scale Computing. I must admit for me this was definitely the most exciting day in regards to presentations and new information on each Vendors products. We then capped off the night with a dinner with the delegates who were still there until Saturday and again had some great conversations and met again more great people. It was definitely a chance of a lifetime to be involved in such a great event. And none of this would be possible without the magical Stephen Foskett and Tom Hollingsworth.

The other 11 delegates were class acts and each and everyone of them full of different perspectives and knowledge. It was definitely a great time interacting with each of them and I sincerely hope that we each stay in touch in the future.

I will be publishing a series of posts in the next week giving my perspective on each Vendors presentation and my takeaways. So stay tuned.

DISCLAIMER: All meals, travel and entertainment was provided by Gestalt IT. However Gestalt IT nor the Vendor have provided any type of compensation to write-up any portion of this article. The information contained within this article are solely my views and take aways.