Tell Us About Your VMworld Experiences

What was your first VMworld like? What was the strangest thing that happened to you at a VMworld event? What do you like most/dislike most about VMworld?

I'm putting together an article for an upcoming edition of Virtualization Review magazine, and I'd like your feedback on these things. It's a remembrance-type of piece on VMworld, which started pretty small and has grown to be the single biggest event in the virtualization industry.

What I'm looking for is your stories. There's no limit on what you can discuss. Here are some ideas:

• How has VMworld changed for you over the years? Has it gotten better or worse?
• What surprised you most about your first VMworld?
• What was your favorite keynote speech, and why?
• What was the craziest thing you saw on the show floor?
• What was the best swag you ever received?

Those are just some ideas; you can pick any VMworld-related memory you want. If you'd like to contribute a reminiscence or story, here's the process.

• Write up your piece. There is no length requirement -- long or short, it doesn't matter. But when you're done writing, get away from the article for an hour or a day, and then come back and edit it. You'll be surprised at how many mistakes/errors you find in it. In other words, please make sure your copy is as clean as possible. It saves me work, and also ensures that your story is clear to the readers. You may also want to include your job title, but this isn't required.
• Save it as a Word file, either a .doc or docx. If you don't have Word, you can dump it into the body of an email. If you do that, make sure you still do an edit pass over it before hitting Send.
• Include your name and city/state.
• Email it to me as an attachment. CRUCIAL: Put in the Subject line "VMworld Submission." If it doesn't say that, your story will be deleted unread.
• Attach a high resolution (at least 300 d.p.i.), clear headshot of yourself. Note that this is optional. You don't have to do this, but your chances of having your article appear in the print magazine are increased by including a headshot.
• Send your contribution to me by May 16.

I'm at kward at 1105media dot com.

If you have any questions about this, use the same Subject line, i.e. "VMworld Submission," to guarantee that it won't go into my spam filter. One final note: VMware employees are more than welcome to submit.

I look forward to hearing your stories!

Posted by Keith Ward on 04/15/2016 at 9:07 AM