It is almost here, 10 days until VMware’s biggest event of the year, the biggest virtualization event of the year.
The number of reasons to be at this event are countless, so I decided to create a daily post counting down (in no particular order) to the event, each day with a great reason to be at VMworld - and here is number one.

Reason #1 – Social Networking

Imagine, 20,000 people – geeks just like us, interested in the same silly things, that have their hearts miss a beat when they see a script creating 100 VM’s with a single command. That is the essence of VMworld.
I do admit that these are not the only people there, also press, vendors, analysts, they are all there but the majority are geeks just like you and me.

I interact with a great number of people on Twitter, email, Instant messaging throughout the day (mostly Twitter though). But this is an exchange of 140 characters back and forth – mostly a sporadic – albeit almost immediate conversation. The saying goes “A picture is worth a thousand words” and I would go further and say, “Meeting face-to-face is better than a a thousand email threads or video conferences”.

With the majority of the activity situated in the U.S. I do not get to come across very often, it is a damn long flight I must tell you.

The shaking of someone’s hand, having a beer (or diet coke) together, the informal conversations with the people that I have made connections over the past few years – is priceless. It builds connections that last throughout the year(s) and are beneficial to us all.