VMware CMTY Podcast #566 - VMworld 2021 w/ Allison Crooker, Amanda Johnson & Sandra Haan

[Music] recorded live good morning good evening wherever it may be across the nation or around the world once again you are listening to vmware communities roundtable podcast this is number 566 my name is eric nielsen and with me today i have my regular co-host matt longeth today is wednesday august 4th 2021. matt how are you doing today eric i am well you know as we talk about you know all things you know euc workspace work from home and whatnot there's sort of like that marketing pitch behind it right and then you come around and through some of the things that i've been able to interact with as far as the tam side of the house you actually see and hear about some of these deployments right so and these aren't small deployments either these are five thousand ten thousand i just was talking with a customer this morning that has fourteen 000 ios devices out there deployed globally and looking to add more so certainly that we've come i think a little bit about with you know this whole entire work from home initiative remote work uh working from from outside of the office and i think that extends to you know not only our current work environment but events as well and to that uh space into that particular topic we have the vmworld events teams with us today but before we get to those introductions sir as always how are you how are things out on the west coast and what is the color of the bay thanks thanks matt uh i would say that it's been a beautiful sunny day today in uh northern california the weather is perfect not too much wind so if you're if you're coming out to california expect a nice mid 70s 72 73 degree day if you get it in the morning and you have your coffee outside it's like only 65 70. it's beautiful and the color of the bay is just a nice smooth green so we've got a nice smooth dark green which is about as good as it gets sometimes it's brown and ugly but uh today it's actually pretty nice sunny and beautiful day so can't complain i'll throw it over to corey romero corey how you doing today and how's the weather in utah hey eric i'm doing great today uh weather in utah has been absolutely beautiful it's been a little hot which is great right i think we're kind of getting the the heat over from the california fires but uh that's just a joke um the smoke has disappeared from from uh california so which is great so we've got clear skies and um for v expert and vmtn i've got some updates for that um v experts were holding a webinar with cloud health secure state and that's going to happen next week also we were supposed to have the vmware um v expert awards go out on the 13th but i'm going to aim for earlier next week so don't have a specific day i just have to go through all of the denied applications to make sure that they're um denied for you know the reasons that uh fall into our policies and then i'll push the go button and the emails will go out and i'm excited to bring in all the new v experts um as far as vmt end is goes um our vm10 community platform communities.vmware.com has been updated for all of our email templates so if you've seen those and uh and and kind of seeing how they how they were versus our drive uh platform and they've been all updated for uh compliancy with vmware and our policies and sites and colors and graphics and they also the entire vmworld or vmt on site has been updated as well font wise uh to match vmware.com and it just looks much much nicer so uh yeah those are my updates for today all right thanks a lot corey well um and with that uh i will say that uh you know we're talking about online events and uh we're talking being online the masking r in california we're now re-masking uh indoors so i think we're all gonna experience you know the online environment as we you know go throughout the rest of 2021 and uh and i think that uh coming back to the vmworld online and the events team and vmware calling another online event i think that has made a lot of sense because uh clearly the globe and vaccination rates across the world are also kind of marching forward slower than we would hoped and so uh we're going to bring the events team onto the show today and talk about uh what's happening in the world and i gotta do a shout out to them before they even start uh and saying thank you to all of them because these guys this is their job to run the events right and uh i think they don't appreciate having to do everything online with digital platforms as i think they would love to go to a conference in a venue just like all the rest of us would matt uh don't you agree with me that like we do these online events and we're kind of sad because it's not going to be a real event but can you imagine the teams that have to work on this and which we have them here now to actually build all of this and this wasn't their day job either this is now a new footprint for them so i think this is a kind of we got to say thank you for actually doing all the work they do behind the scenes to just do an online event i i think in some way it's sort of like getting i mean maybe a bad analogy here but getting called up or interviewing to go uh teach let's say spanish in an elementary school and you end up once you you arrive you're going to go and speak or teach german to a bunch of high school seniors right it's languages and it's teaching but the execution probably gets mixed in the middle yeah of course i mean these individuals that we have with us today you want to talk about pivoting right and changing job and operational roles through throughout the last of course you know previous vm world event and then what they have to do for for you know this coming one that we have here in a couple of months i'm sure there's been some tremendous operational challenges as we've moved over from you know in person you know to this virtual platform and to deliver it at a world-class level as they do and i'm sure that we can we could dive into a little bit of that background but yes a tremendous challenge and they have well executed as as we've seen uh last year's event and i can't wait to hear about some of the improvements and you know just the overall platform of things to offer that we have coming up here at the beginning of october all right and final news thing before we start uh vmworld vmworld schedule builder opens tuesday september 9th so mark your calendars you can go in today content calendar is already open as we've discussed before so go check out all the sessions we've got a lot of vmware code sessions in there we got a lot of the brown bag the mtn sessions in there and then there's just a lot of other sessions so go check that out content calendars open schedule builder opens september 9th tuesday go mark your calendars um not that critical because obviously um a lot of the sessions are streaming but there are paid sessions uh that are out there you can get a package so go market calendars there tam day registration it opens on 0.906 uh and then tam day will occur october 4th and of course vmworld october 5th through the 7th go check that out go to vmworld.com and with that we will introduce our guests we have three amazing event people on the show today uh allison crooker she's director of event marketing amanda johnson director of event technology and sandra hahn senior director of events management so we got down all those three so we'll do the traditional tell us a little bit about yourself how long have you worked at vmware what do you do here and how many vmworlds have you been to we'll start with allison crooker ellison welcome to the show cool thanks for having me back um let's see this is yeah this is my fourth vmworld coming up and i've been at vmware about the same amount of time i started right after uh the 2017 event was executed so yeah i wanted to make one quick correction just so we get our dates right um the schedule builder feature of the content catalog is actually going live on september 8th which is a wednesday so yes you were thinking yeah so wednesday september 8th is when everybody can get in and start actually putting all of their favorites into their actual calendars because the content is available right now for you to favorite and start planning excellent excellent all right well perfect and uh listen to the vmware community podcast will guarantee to make you late right so make sure you mark your calendars at the 8th so let's move on amanda johnson director of event technology welcome to the show thank you um all right my intro i have been with vmware since the day of the airwatch acquisition so a bit over seven years and i've been to six vmworld so far and i too look forward to bringing in a new vmworld and a different virtual experience this year as well as returning to on-site someday so amanda what piece of the vmworld show do you kind of manage um so event technology so i actually moved into the event tech role in february 2020 thinking a better registration process was going to be my biggest hurdle so my team builds uh the virtual platform they handle all the integrations and we get it on there yes that's more like you're going to be teaching mandarin not even not even a language that you can even come close to understanding right like that's awesome well welcome to the show and then last but not least sandra hahn senior director of event management center welcome to the show thank you so much so i have been with vmware just over nine years which means that i have been to i can't actually count somewhere between 15 and 18 vm worlds when you look at both europe and the us um but for me i was usually attending um in a different capacity so this is my first full year um working on the event from the event side of the house i've usually been a stakeholder so it's been a really interesting ride i've learned a lot and um yeah i'm certainly you know looking forward to returning to imprisonment i've got a lot to learn when we do that as well so um super excited to be here yeah nice nice i know i'm i started in 2006 i think i caught the the 2006 like a week after i started here and then then if you add them all up i'm like i think i'm over 20 but i just lost count and like steve herrod said before he left the company a while back he was like i've been to soviet so many vmworld's like i just don't i don't know how many they are anymore and i don't know if i want to do any more so i quit so it was like that was that was his exit statement i was like he loves departed he's over at a vc now but he helps out helps out a lot uh okay so first thing on the agenda and uh maybe allison i'll talk to you because we talked last year about the vmworld event what would you say you know we can we can first say we've talked about the fact that covet isn't going away uh some of us grumbled when we heard that vmworld was going to be online again this year but it turns out based on the delta virus and just the the the slowness of international audiences getting vaccinated right like i know it's new zealand and australia they go these guys haven't even been vaccinated when i'm talking to community members so i think uh did you guys have a lot of pain in deciding whether to be online again this year um why don't we just talk to that maybe for a minute or two how did that play out and uh our i think right now we're kind of glad that it's turned out that way but uh what did you guys have to weigh when you're making that decision yeah and of course i'll do a sentence or two and then sandra and and amanda played a critical role right in making that determination as well we work pretty well as a great event senior management team and try to do everything as cross-functionally as possible but from a content standpoint you know there were some a couple of things one is um we are able to reach a larger audience right with with with a digital version so yes the pivot was great yes covid vaccinations are precluding us from being on site in many countries and in many ways and there is actually a really great benefit to being digital for a lot of our it admins who won their companies aren't going to send them maybe a you know as on mass again like they used to years back um so budgets are tighter uh so having a digital event that's more affordable is really a good thing our our commercial um as well who aren't i vmware it admins for 24 7 365. they also wear a lot of other hats and aren't going to necessarily come to an on-site event we saw them coming so there were a lot of benefits to the digital event which i don't think we want to just throw away even when we do move more and more to in-person um so from a content standpoint i also was like having that balancing act but from an attendee perspective as well as from a vmware um kind of perspective maybe sandra you can also talk to to that yeah you know these decisions are made long before we're ready to execute against them right and so as as we were looking at what was in front of us i think truth be told right there was probably more optimism about around where the world was going to go at that time but you're also making a decision with the world that you're living in as well right and i think um you know ultimately we we made the right decision which was to go with a digital event and as the world has played out um that's been the right thing to do but um you know you were talking a little bit about the attendance and those pieces right i mean i think we're also faced with some challenges right that we didn't face last year around digital fatigue and so um as we think about hosting this event in a digital format i think um you know as much as we would have liked to have said we're gonna we're gonna go ahead and we're gonna have an in-person event we we knew the challenges that that could present and so we made the decision for the digital one um but we're also faced with you know some of this digital fatigue right and so one of the challenges we accepted in making this decision is how do we um make what we did last year even better and how do we make it even more engaging because we are faced with a year of us sitting in front of zoom and a year of us staring at our machines and so how do we make this compelling content so i would say um you know from an event perspective um to your point earlier around the languages and the learning right i mean last year was certainly a learning but this year the learning too because we've got to look at things through a whole new lens so um you know it is interesting and it is challenging you look at some other vendors that are are attempting to go in person i'm waiting to see what announcements they may or may not make um as we are looking at the changing world right and so for some of these companies i think they they they were pretty bold and and it did cause us to pause and say okay gosh it's pretty bold but i think they may end up pivoting as well um you know there are things in the works to have small in-person events and so i i did want to put that out there that while we made a decision to go digital we also were very cognizant of um people's desires to come together and so stay tuned there'll be some more information coming out about around some small possible safe ways for people to come together maybe five or ten people to um you know consume some of the content so we are still being very considerate of um you know people's desires to to have that in-person element so that's a lot out there but i think yeah yeah all right and i'll i'll flip it over to amanda just to say so and we'll transition a little bit to like so you know they're telling you we're gonna do this again uh what did you learn from a technology perspective and what do you see that one of your some of your challenges were and then what do you see yourself excited about coming into this year's event i think the biggest thing you know we all felt last year um when we went online was maybe we didn't feel as connected to each other in our communities so that's really what we took as our biggest challenge coming into vmworld 2021. how can we make those hallway conversations part of vmworld how can we make people feel connected to each other rather than looking at the screen so this year we are bringing in a vmworld slack as well as something called vmware talk which is actually a really cool internal vmware built product that's like a clubhouse so you might want to have audio conversations you might be more into having text conversations on chat um however you want to connect that'll be available for you this year at vmworld yeah that's that's that's that's great i know that we tried to do a little of that in community last year and it's nice but it would be great if it was integrated into the show because there's just so many more people at the show that you get to kind of bump into people that really didn't plan on seeing and so i like that idea i like the idea of maybe having some place that you can go watch announcements in that chat world where you know there's like structured content that tells me what's coming next uh matt what do you feel about that let's talk about the slack integration for a second so how do we see that working would each particular session have its own slips excuse me sub slack channel where maybe where we could have that the you know uh participants join into the channel and then if it's a recorded session where the presenter could be interacting with um the audience if you will or or are we going to maybe also have you know broader topics uh you know euc devops or whatnot how do we see you know managing that the all those those channels and and who's going to be responsible for channel moderation and and whatnot what slack's such a great powerful platform but but how are we going to take that next step for the enablement for the event yeah and i'll i'll say allison jump in when you want on this one um but obviously at vmworld you know we're thrilled to bring hundreds and hundreds of sessions um there aren't going to be hundreds and hundreds of slack channels so every session though will tie to a slack channel so if you're in that the session details if you're watching on uh the live tv player you're gonna see what slack channel is most tied to that session as far as topics and then there's also you know some more fun and surprising channels where you might have some more open conversations that don't necessarily flow with the content right and and matt just to throw back in there um we thought we talked about this for the community stuff as well we had that idea then we realized that oh wait for every session there is a chat i think available for the session during the session play so we don't really have to have slack channels for every single session because if you want to go talk on a session i think there's a way to do that but maybe yeah on that one no you are right eric so we as you know we have a lot of different session types and we have basically three different platforms you know there's our simulive we call our simulive content it's broadcast via a player and it has a q a moderated q a section then we also have our zoom sessions which are a lot of session types within there those have your typical you know chat and moderated q a if you're a webinar so there are lots of other ways besides including slack that people can communicate that especially within each session i think slack was brought on to really help that across session kind of communication um happen right i know we're having a community slack channel that all the vmug and us and the experts will all be there so that way you know we can just man that and be part of the conversation people can drop in it's not session dependent it's more kind of like the village you know or the community booth space where you just slack ends up acting like the place that you can come in and say hello and meet meet the people not based on topic but based on just community itself so look at that eric i think you nailed it with that vm village comparison if you've been to vmworld in the past hopefully it feels a lot like that yeah and i wanted to also point out on the staffing part of it and sandra correct me if i'm wrong here but we are looking at really kind of coordinating um so so the the staffing part of this in session is taken care of a lot by our franchise leads of the speakers you know there's a pool of content technical experts that will be staffing those in session methodologies chat q a um and for the slack channel i believe we're looking at the demo personnel in the pmms is that right sandra that's correct so we're looking at bringing in the demo zone captains as well as yes pmms to be able to staff and answer questions and we'll have some surprise and delight in there as well so um but yes we're definitely going to be looking to have our our experts across across the company joining us in this live channel yeah that's the one thing that i have seen just watching you know sitting back through covet and watching zoom and everything mature that that the events that i have been through like speaker events or just you know all hands or things like that people have gotten actually good at having kind of like surprise and kind of music or slides that kind of or comedians that drop in and do things between the events so i think the the event you know narrative where it's not just a zoom call a zoom call a zoom call but they actually try to do surprise and delight stuff has made the kind of the the all hands and kind of things i've been to that have been organized from a bigger perspective pretty nice and a nice experience so is that what you guys are trying to do along the surprise and event kind of like surprise and delight experience yeah i mean i think you know slack is obviously one of the elements for networking but when you're talking specific to surprise and delight um there is a lot underway um there'll be some announcements coming out here in the next week around um you know some speakers to be looking forward to but um some things i'm not going to share right we need people to to register and join and there will be um gosh a a variety of surprise and delight i think i would just say um it's not the vmware you expect to see that's that's fun i know matt that we've been talking about what we can do with the experts and the community members just to give them something to do midway through the session so last year for vmware code sessions for instance we had 25 000 people sign up for the vmware code sessions we're really excited we're like oh my god this is going to be five times bigger than we've ever had you know for the for the code stuff uh but then when we actually looked at actually how many people came and watched the whole session and engaged right it was the two to three thousand which we would have normally expected right and so what we've learned is that there's one thing to register and sign up it's another thing to like open up your zoom and come and engage and fee feel compelled and feel excited about another day in front of my computer right and so i think that that stuff is important right and i know that we've been focusing on giving away random stuff so we put some budget around uh the vendors that we can auto ship things and then coming in and asking some questions in slot chat and just kind of going hey great we're going to send you a shirt or we're going to send you stuff so that there is this way to feel like it's more than just sitting through five hours of zoom calls right i mean i would say to amanda's earlier point right the biggest challenge we gave to ourselves was how do we make people feel more engaged right how do we provide that um networking opportunity the ability to to bring it as close as possible to an in-person event so um i think that people will be surprised and you know hopefully um delighted right by joining the event this year and just the ways that we're able to connect with one another and the ways that we're able to have some fun together right all right well we'll switch gears and matt you can jump in here but this kind of goes towards allison i think because allison you still kind of managed a lot of the sessions and track stuff uh tracks this year you want to just run down what the tracks are for people if they're listening and then anything interesting about tracks that might have changed this year or maybe it's very similar i know where we pre-recorded everything last year they were well received uh what's happening with tracks this year yeah so we are coming back with most of our tracks from last year there's some tweaks to the names but still the same so we have our vision and innovation track which is where our office of the cto content um is being offered during the simulive and on demand as uh we're also in that vision and innovation channel having our general session our solution keynotes that we're working on that we'll see if we're able to uh offer but we are working on some kind of larger cross-solution keynotes um we're working on them so hopefully we actually get to execute on that vision and innovation is the first channel then we have multi-cloud and app modernization we have end user services which is our vdi kind of it's the more technical kind of content we do have anywhere workspace content mostly in the vintage vision and innovation channel but a couple spread out through other channels so that's vision and innovation app modernization multi-cloud end-user services networking security my missing and we have a new channel called inspire change and inspire change is where we're having our professional development our diversity equity and inclusion content as well as our environmental social governance kind of content so we have a full lineup of simulive content under that as well if i missed anything amanda or sandra tell me uh but there are eight channels and this year those eight channels those eight tracks are how you can find your content within our content catalog you can also this year look at our topics so aligned across tracks are some more story lines that we're hoping people identify with there's you know we've worked a lot on trying to bring the outside in strategy instead of just aligning to what our product structure is here at vmware we really want our attendees to be able to identify with the problems that they're facing and just look for the solutions to those problems as opposed to you know i'm a vsphere person and i want to hear everything that's b sphere related uh so we're trying to balance that with our new new new um attendees as well as our kind of the experts and the people who are tried and true uh product focused so we're offering all of that as a way to to get to the content so little little tweaks but pretty much what how you found our content last year you'll be able to find it again this year so allison we talk about content right and half of the world vmworld presentation for me or that vmworld experience is that keynote from from those executives and obviously we've had a change in leadership here with ragu now at the home so how has that been different for this team as far as interaction and planning and maybe a little bit different of strategy uh as how things were handled with pat obviously past season vm world veteran out there on on keynote on day one and whatnot but ragu this i wouldn't say that he is you know not new to the vmworld experience but definitely new to to the role so to say so how has your been your interaction and the team's interaction been with him and is there any insights that you can give us as far as what and how he might be delivering his keynote this year well i i mean i'll say from a content standpoint um and also even from a production standpoint the generals you know ragu is a seasoned executive right so it's very much very similar to working with um pat and from a content standpoint the development of the storyline you know how we're going to include customers because that's very important across all of our session types this year is really a focus on the use cases so we have a lot of customers coming to talk with vmware experts this year and and by themselves about how they use and why they use vmware to solve the business challenges they're facing but the general session in specifics you know once again it's 55 minutes long so it's a pretty tight concise execution across the storyline very high level similar to what pat would do as well i don't i really haven't seen a lot of difference there there are some obviously uniqueness they're different people so there there's a uniqueness to the general session this year that i think everybody will want to tune in to see both from a production standpoint we wanted to turn it on its head a little bit as well as from a content standpoint because ragu has his own directives um but i you know i think that really it's been very very kind of the same process a thoughtful process as to what the messaging is going to be for his debut as ceo on the vmworld stage so we talk about the external theme right the external theme this year being imagine that and you had brought up you know how we want to incorporate customer stories into some of these executive narratives and whatnot so that they're linking regardless across bus is there more of a general theme as far as the internal cons for the executive staff that we've tried to be focused on or or just something that we're trying to push above and beyond how we're looking at you know customer interaction and customer stories this year you know as we try to to showcase these new products and and and platforms that are out there across bus i mean i would this is i i would say that vmworld always has been and this year is no different an opportunity for us to share our strategy and and direction right it's an opportunity for us to bring thought leadership to the market so i would say as we think about regardless of what the theme is that's always been the intent and so i would say there's no change this year to your question specific to customers we've always had a tremendous customer representation at vmworld i would say what's changed this year is how do we let attendees know what to expect before they get there right because we do we have incredible customers we have incredible brands that join us and tell our story and i think sometimes it's a you've got to show up to find it and i think one of the things we're trying to focus on this year is how can we let people know who they can expect to hear from before they get there but i would i would say that the focus on customers um has always been there you know what we're finding is we just have more and more that are willing to stand up and tell their story and so you're seeing that come through uh in the content in the way that we're doing it but um we've always had incredible customer representation and that won't change if anything like i said you're just seeing bigger brands and and more more people willing to come forward and tell their story yeah yeah yeah it is an interesting topic um because i've been here a long time right so i was here when diane and mendel were on the keynotes right and there was a there's a theme of diane and mendel like diane would get up and do the business stuff but then mendel would get up and just geek out right like i mean he i i'm surprised he'd just sync it up and start coding while he was on on the keynotes because he was just just super geeky then we went to palmeritz and palmer it's kind of like a microsoft what company are we acquiring kind of thing then we went to pat and pat was like a nice blend of that right but it's very high level kind of you know vision pat was always the vision you know and i see ragoo is this kind of like this customer what are customers buying what are they using how are they using it and let's get excited about what those customers are actually doing so having worked for ragu for a few years i find him you know refreshingly kind of geeky like mendel but very customer focused so i think it'll be exciting to catch the kino register and come watch this if you haven't been you know this is a vmworld you should check out because i think i think raghu is a very very considerate caring person but he's also kind of like this nice blend and i'd put him a little bit more towards the customer and geeky tech side of the house than pat would have been which i think would be fun for a lot of the people that are listening to this show so uh i i like that uh that that's my impression and it sounds like you guys are saying for very similar so allison thanks for addressing that and giving us a little bit of insight i know you can't can't say much but i i do i do i do think that ragu will be good for our geeky audience all right uh with that um i i want to go back to amanda on the tech side of the house before uh before we we continue on um when we're talking um i look at social media mana and uh last year hols kind of trended down uh keynotes trending up right because if you think about it i can do hols online you know we have hols online most of the time now so um so i see hols trending down but then keynotes and you know watching the keynotes do you get nervous when you're talking about having 20 000 people come in and click and start watching a live stream how are you guys managing to keep everything live and are there other things that from a technology perspective keep you up at night there's nothing that keeps me up at night more than making sure i mean we're testing for a hundred thousand that's what we test for uh over and over again um anytime something changes with our setup we're going to test it again and yes what is my biggest nightmare even like a five second glitch um i my heart would break right right all right well at least you're experiencing that um are you comfortable are you guys confident we will be confident we i'm never gonna say that who am i i'm someone who's uh very risk averse and you know uh we're not gonna say we're confident until you know the second we're going live and i would i would add to that just quickly from you know we are offering a ton of different types of content like no i don't think anybody really realizes we have seven over 700 zoom sessions going on you know like it is a huge live event um we focus on the broadcast and the and the simulife which is very important as well but there's this like other monster right this beast with code and partners and press and some people you know very specific programs for specific groups and then all them meet the experts and now we have tech plus tutorials which are deeper dive live sessions um so when you say hol's trended trended down i also i think i also think it's also because there's so much more going on and like you said you can kind of get a guided workshop experience ish online already so and they're also small they're only 100 people each so we can't fit 10 000 people taking guided workshops either so so there's just these different parameters i think that come into play um that hits another point that i meant to ask which is globally right we're doing us we're also doing uh europe uh and then apj or i think it goes us apj then then europe right so you also have to worry about that and there are a lot more live sessions this year and we should touch on the fact that last year we had a lot of the community sessions uh behind the paywall right where this year all of that stuff is going to be uh live sessions but outside the paywall which is a different mix now right which would which has to deal with more higher volume and then the three different geos that have to happen as well right yeah yeah all right sorry i don't know amanda we'll go back to amanda and say yes right like you have to deal with it yeah we're you know i want a hundred thousand people in one minute tested in every single place that we're connecting you so that's what we're gonna test for we pulled it off last year we were ready for you um there are absolutely no problems i want to repeat the same nice nice yep so i think that's that's something to call out as the community stuff um i don't know i i think i should probably hit sandra but maybe this is allison you guys have to decide this question which is there's a lot of there was vmware underground last year there's a lot of the ancillary events that are happening um do we want to just do a shout out on some of the kind of classifications of things people should be looking for this year i know we have the expert party we're going to do an ancillary zoom event for the expert party are there other things that are out there that we should just do a shout out to yeah i mean from uh how people engage this year i think we've made um some changes right i think last year given it was our first time putting on an event like this we kept it pretty true to its core and as we look at this year we're bringing in a lot of additional programs into the platform so in the past where you may have gone off platform to participate or engaged there's a lot more bringing into the platform this year so you know once you've joined the event you're going to be able to touch a lot more audiences and people in different ways always there's ancillary programs that are happening and we're well aware of those um i think we're still finalizing on some of those programs i think eric for this community you've got a pretty good handle on the ones that they're interested in but um we're always looking at what are the things that don't make sense to happen in the platform and how do we you know make sure we've got awareness of those but i would say um last year to this year people are going to find a lot more of it happening within the event i'm trying to bring it back to or closer to that feeling of when you're on site so i think fewer ancillaries more of that taking place in platforms so once you've joined you know amanda is ready for the 100 000 we've got all the the programs to um to accommodate it all right uh follow up with that is there even is there a paid offering i'm sorry i should probably know the the answer to this but uh sandra is there a paid offering this year and what does it have sure so and alice can finally speak a little bit more to what's behind it but similar to last year we do have um a paid opportunity this year it's the tech plus pass um it's coming in at 299 usd and it is a lot of that one-to-one expert engagement and i know allison you know you're managing this with um you know to the detail you can probably speak to all of the opportunity behind it but yes we are offering another paid pass this year yeah and uh specifically go to vmworld.com to see the full list of all what that's being offered but generally it is our as as sandra said are one to few so our meet the expert um program is part of that uh where you get to hear about the new features and changes that are being done to our products and ask directly to the engineers about the whys of of the changes being made or the whats you want to have changed we also have our one-on-one consultations with gss um going on again where you can really have this time 30 minutes last year it was 15 minutes but that wasn't long enough so now you can get 30 minutes of one-on-one interaction with the gss support to ask your specific questions so our tech plus pass holders who are generally our users right our heavy users can actually come in and have that private engagement that they really need to to move their specific issues forward uh we also have the new session type their tech plus tutorial so this is our longer form more kind of interactive demo heavy uh sessions where people can see a demonstration and ask specific questions and we also have live demo sessions this year so in addition to going to the demo zone uh where you can go check out our vmware products along the same eight tracks that i've mentioned before we also have these live demo sessions that you can go to uh this is not behind the tech plus plus i'm sorry i'm just i just weaved out uh quickly out of the tech plus pass but i it's a new session type that i'm very excited about because people will be able to not only have a tech plus pass and ask specific questions about a specific product but also outside of the tech plus pass we still are offering these live demo sessions throughout the day where you can ask a specific question about the specific product so we're trying you know tech plus is really a great place for you to get that technical uh education that you want and you're used to getting from vmworld and we also wanted some of our maybe new users to also not totally miss out so there are a couple of ways you can do it even in the general pass path yeah i know that last year uh i did host you know technical sessions on raspberry pi's and esx on raspberry pi and it was 20 people in the in the in the room so people could ask questions and engage and yeah 15 minutes would be kind of short we did 45 minute ones but it is your chance if you want to spend that extra money to go and actually engage with real people and get time with them and you know work along birds of a feathers type of there's other people that have similar problems that come join that to that's expert session so not only do you get to hear from the expert but you also get to hear what other people have experienced in that same space if you've got an nsx problem or you got an ns6 challenge you have that you want to resolve or you're architecting for the next year you can come in in that session and people are having conversations in chat and you might even actually meet and create relationships with people that are working on that same challenge much like you would do if you went and saw a session but i actually think you you get a chance to chat a little bit more directly with everybody versus in live events you'd be in a session room with 100 people and at the end of it two or three people stand up ask maybe a couple questions where with that with with chat you can actually actually get to know some people that are doing the same type of stuff you're doing so kind of useful to have that uh matt uh i know we're coming up at 12 50 we got about five more minutes with our guests anything that uh you would like to ask so i'd like to go around the panel and ask the following the obviously that our guests here know all the facets of the the site and the program and what's out there and they probably might know those individual little unique features and events and venues and you know functionalities or or things that are out there that might not be utilized to the event to the capacity that they should so again i'll go around the panel and i'll start out with allison what is something that you think that that's out there that doesn't get the credit that deserves and it's a really neat functionality or really neat offering that that's out there this year that doesn't necessarily get the attendance or the visibility that that it should for for its uniqueness and offering to the community i'm going to go back to what i said which is our our live program our live offerings our what we call our zoom base right offerings we offer a lot of content um in that program so the higher level business strategy sessions you know that are simulive and broadcast on the player are great but if you're a part of the community right you're a v expert you want to be a v expert you should really look at that tech plus pass because there are 700 sessions you know kind of behind that that really speak to what our community needs i think what the v expert community is really looking for and sandra over to your your thoughts on a a facet that might not be utilized to the extent that it should be or or something out there that needs a little bit more visibility than it currently has you know yeah i don't know that it's a facet as much as i don't think people are aware and alice and you've touched on this a little bit how robust the program actually is um when i came to the team i was shocked i i described it as i said this is this is the in-person event but it's online like i think every element of what you can expect to find on person is presenting itself in the platform in some way shape or form so whether it be the networking whether it be the you know the one to few allison that you talked about whether it be the caliber of speaker or the breadth of topic it's when you look around what you find is that we have taken the in-person event and brought a piece of it to this digital platform in some way shape or form and so just um really the the robust offering is what is most surprising and people probably don't realize when you just look at it surface level you have to dig in and realize there is something for everybody and whatever you did on site short of a sandwich i can't deliver you a sandwich in a digital platform but whatever you consumed on site you're actually able to consume through the way we've presented the program so sure absolutely taking the time to go through that content catalog seeing what's out there what we can do to fit into to those particular elements and amanda i'll show you how to get you you know beer and a sandwich digitally right we'll just we'll take that as our challenge 3d printing to the next level it's coming right we just need it it's going to be that the beer and sandwich fling i can see it now from the office it's happening yep it's in progress i'm going to hold you to it when we have this conversation next year sandra excellent over to you what what's that technical element that may you may have seen or that you've been working on with your team that doesn't necessarily have that visibility out there on the homepage that you think is really unique and you know that next level thing that we've offered out there for this year that people should be taking advantage of so i'm not going to say it's necessarily next level but there's a point between you know people register people come to the event i think there's an experience to be had if you come back to your profile page log in before the event there's some things that are added you might see a poll up there you might find an opportunity to weigh in about what happens at vmworld um now you can add your photo that you might use in slack uh like they were saying you know you can plan your schedule so there's more that you can do to make your event experience better if you just go ahead and come on back a little pre-event um and then one little nugget during event um if you're a fan of emojis you might find yourself using those this year fair enough so to not only get in the registration early but then stop back in a couple of times prior to the event to put your voice out there get your profile set up and look at sort of you know setting the direction for the event and giving feedback to the team from what i'm hearing eric i'll throw it back to you any quantum questions for the team uh not really i think i'm excited i kind of getting warmed up to this i i think we'll have to make sure that everybody gets to listen to this because thank you guys for doing all the work you do and um i'm i'm just getting excited to hear about what ragu has to share customers uh go look at uh been doing the paid i like the idea of actually getting to say hello to people and engaging so and i know we're going to be on live sessions as well so and we're going to be doing the red bull staying up you know for i think it is 48 hours last year because when you're doing these across the across the globe you do have to stay up and i tell the team it's it's no worse than taking a red eye over to europe right where you have to sit in a plane for 18 hours or whatever it is by the time you travel from airport to airport so it should be fun and it's always good to see everybody and i get to say hello to everybody which we don't get to do regularly so yeah that's it i think so matt i think we can uh transition to v barbecue and just get everybody thank you for listening all the way to the end of the show you can go to v bbq uh youtube.com and uh give us a like and a follow if you want to because more people will see the show uh and with that we'll talk the bbq so i guess we'll go around the room first with our panelists you get to tell us either what's your favorite barbecue shop in your area do you like barbecue and do you have a favorite barbecue recipe one of those three is fine allison will go with you okay i'm getting ready to move from california to north carolina and my favorite barbecue in north carolina is steve's in graham nice very nice well that'll be a that'll be a shift another one leaving the bay area i've i watched i think it was um one of our one of our tech people in the digital team moved to i think to north carolina she has a monster house now and it's like oh my gosh i'm so jealous like like you're living in castles over there versus california so sandra what barbecue do you like i'm sorry i have a follow-up we can't just let that go now if we would happen to be in graham in north carolina allison and we're at steve's what are they known for and what should we get off the barbecue menu you got to get the collard greens you got to get their mac and cheese and you got to get their vinegar base slow roasted barbecued ribs oh that sounds good that sounds good yeah that is a that is definitely a south vinegar based barbecue right there in the north southern california we got the we got the rubs right uh texas they got their sauces uh and then in the east coast you get you get some weird stuff like vinegar-based uh barbecue sandra what's your story yes well you know little known fact allison and i are pretty much neighbors so allison if you haven't been to hazy okay yes so hazy barbecue over here in the east bay is my go-to barbecue joint and uh i love the cauliflower they do this grilled cauliflower with turmeric and and it's delicious and so it's not i know it's not the meats i do love the meats we always get the family platter so i get everything but hazy bbq east bay that's my place allison you have to go before you leave barbecued cauliflower fantastic amanda all right i haven't had good barbecue in a really long time i left the south six years ago i used to live in georgia and north carolina and i live in colorado um so the last good barbecue i had was a visit to atlanta fox brothers barbecue fox brother barbecue so no good barbecue colorado they're they're they have cattle in colorado you should be you know they i just don't think they understand how to do the sauce i'm not sure what it is it just it doesn't work out here we are going to hear from our audience now i know i actually put that out there and i was like oh yeah i pick on texas all the time but that's okay i don't think anybody listens to the end of the podcast anyway so it's all great uh guys thanks a lot for coming on the show we will promote and uh please let us know if you have questions hit corey romero if you have the expert questions go register we are tracking registration and it does help us understand what extra budget we can apply to it if we get a lot more people registering uh that's good and then secondly if you can help us if you're a v expert and you got a blog we want to talk about why to come during the show and actually go to the sessions that you've put in schedule builder or at least start using schedule builder because again we got 150 000 people register i think we had 80 000 come to the show last year we'd like to get 150 000 people to register and 150 000 people to come in and say hello and engage with us so help us out uh corey's gonna be asking for blogs uh we'd love to get um the push on not only registering but also coming and engaging and having fun and finally sandra i know you can't answer this answer this but uh who's gonna be the the the party guest this year you know like and uh or you know comedian can you get at least is it gonna be a rock star a comedian or any kind of anything it's gonna be a lot of everything so um we we aren't gonna have a band this year we are to have instead a lot of guest speakers a lot of names that you're going to know and stay tuned because we announced our first one next week and so there'll be um lots of speaker names that you recognize we're going to be dribbling it out between now and vmworld but our first name drop comes next week and you're all gonna know them you're all i think gonna love them so keep your eyes out for that one that's super cool i like that that's a great strategy with that we're done we're gonna go have our lunch it is one o'clock p.m in california so it's time to go eat some barbecue matt allison sandra amanda thanks a lot for being on the show we'll be back again next week thank you

Channel: VMworld

Views: 188

Rating: 5 out of 5

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Id: _6CpHObAAv4

Length: 54min 9sec (3249 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 05 2021