The event was organized by the VMUnderground crew.

The idea here was to have an activity – community driven – to give people who were interested in something to do on the day before VMworld – Sunday. Yes you could mess around and go sightseeing – all of that is fun – but most of us are techies at heart – and we need our tech fix, so unless you were part of Partner Day or TAM day, there was not much you could do today. So many of you turned up at the City View at Metreon where there were 6 sessions you could choose from, all with panelists.

I volunteered to act as a panelist on the Architecture and Design – the panelists were

• Matt Liebowitz (@mattliebowitz) moderator
• Melissa Palmer (@vmiss33)
• Phoummala Schmitt (@exchangegoddess)
• Mike Preston (@mwpreston)
• John Arrasjid (@vcdx001)
• And little old me - @maishsk

So of course there was an incentive for people to come – because they wanted to get in on the best party WUPaaS (Warm Up party as a Service) a tradition over many a VMworld. If you ask anyone they will say that this is most probably one of the best evening events throughout the week, again I think because it is community driven. Yes there are sponsors, quite a number of them actually, but the event is not driven by any single vendor. And of course – it is for the community. Cost is minimal (yes you have to pay to get in) but I personally do not mind spending those $10 to support the wonderful people of our community
(I am thankful that the majority of the costs are covered by the sponsors – so we can continue to enjoy this event)

We were the third and last session on the roster, so I assume that the crowd had warmed up with asking questions and interacting with the previous panels, so they were not shy.

Question were asked, it was a great flowing discussion and as always I learned a lot (and I hope the audience did as well).

Embedded below is the session recording and the full playlist of all the sessions can be found here.

More VMworld posts to follow.