First let me say - Yes!!!!!!!!

After a back and forth - and some uncertainty - I can finally say that I am going to be at VMworld next month. Copenhagen was out of the question for me this year because it falls smack bang in the middle of the Jewish Holiday of Sukkot.

So how did this all come about? It all started with small item I saw on Twitter

Thomas Jones put together a small bloggers contest - a reality show of some sorts. Now I sure hope that I will not need to jump off any buildings - nor have a camera strapped to my head the whole time in Vegas - it is actually a lot more conservative and simple than that. Out of the number of bloggers that applied there were 8 chosen (in no particular order)

Matthew Norwood (http://www.insearchoftech.com/)
Michael Letschin (http://thesolutionsarchitect.com/)
Luigi Danakos (www.nerdblurt.com)
Matthew Brender (http://itechthereforeiam.com/)
Phillip Sellers (www.tech.philipsellers.com)
David Hurst (http://thesuperdave.com/)
and yours truly..

Over the course of the next few weeks we will all undergo some training sessions - on different topics related to Networking, Storage and Cloud. After each of these sessions we will all post a blog about what we have learned. This can be a written blog or a video blog - I think I will be sticking to text - due to the fact that I suck at video - and I don't think you want to see my ugly mug on your screen anyway.

About how this will work - I will describe in another post next week.

Besides the amazing fact that I will now be able to come to VMworld in Las Vegas, I see this as a great opportunity to get to know a whole new crowd of people. Not all of the above listed are virtualization bloggers - and most of them I had not even heard of before this contest. I have met and spent some time with Matthew at TechFieldDay #5 this last February. It will be great to meet up again!

It will be highly interesting to see the different points of view each of have on the topics above, and how each one addresses the information from these sessions.

This is a contest - and the winner will win a (not-yet-disclosed) prize. But for me the biggest prize is already in the bag, and that is the opportunity to go to VMworld, to network with my peers, sleep far too little - and to spend time with 15,000 other geeks like myself.

People who understand that VM stands for Virtual machine,
and not Vascular malformation or VM (nerve agent) or Variola major or Virgin Mobile or Veronica Mars.

Who knows maybe I might get to sit next to Paul Maritz again…

I would like to especially thank Thomas Jones who made this all happen,
and to thank HP and Ivy Worldwide for sponsoring this whole contest!!

On with the show!!!