Hey Jen:

VMWare's success is both a good thing and a bad thing, and hearing about people not getting access to learn what they came here for REALLY rubs me the wrong way.

I'm glad to hear you're getting good stuff from the booths - I will be working at the EMC booth from 4:00 to 6:00 today if you want to search me out, and I will be glad to get you to learn about whatever it is the labs are falling short on.

Hope to see you there!

DP

Hi.  This is my second year at this conference and I am again disappointed.  I decided to give it another chance but am fairly certain I wont again.  I attend many conferences such as this (Oracle, Citrix, etc.) and this is the only on requiring pre-registration for attending sessions.  While I am sure their intentions in doing this are purposeful, it has in no way been beneficial to me as an attendee. After last year I made sure to register early and when i did i was put on a waitlist for most everything.  I didnt receive an email that those were cleared until Sat. before the conference. Only to find out on many of them after getting in registered line i was TURNED away to get at the END of the non registered line.  Then to make matters worse in one of the sessions I got into as a registered attendee, right before they were to let in other non registered the person tending the room became very rude about  where people were sitting (on edges of rows to get out easily) asking them to move in etc...which doesnt make sense that the registered people could not sit where they want.  I am really unsure of what they are trying to accomplish in this, but have to believe it is not working in their favor.  I have spoken with others feeling the same frustration. I do hope that all those frustrated by this give appropriate feedback on the conference. 

I have no idea why the first come first serve method isn good enough.  I definitely wont attend again if this is how thet proceed to organize the sessions.

I would say I would prefer Vegas.. it was just a bigger venue and less crowded. I'm not sure why they can't just open up the sessions to standing room.  I wonder if it is firecode...

I too stream sessions after the show, but would love to get more session access during the show.

Paul

I too am a first timer who is a bit disappointed.    I've heard all sorts of "excuses" about why the self paced labs have had so many problems.      Even the instructor led labs were a joke.    I did Lab01 and the instructor didn't follow the lab notes at all,  lab notes didn't match how the VM's were setup.    Poor planning.

I agree 100%.

The conference has been a waste of my time and my companies dollars. I can not recommend anyone to come to this conference until somethings are changed.

Every session I have sat through is NOT a 'technical solution' to a 'technical problem' or at 'this is how we slayed the dragon', it is a 'VMware rocks and this is why'.  Look I already drank the VMware koolaid, I bought the VMware products, I told the stories of success to anyone that would listen.  I do NOT need to spend $1500 + Airfare + Hotel + Food (read my other post for that fun) + Cab Fare (the shuttle is supposed to stop infront of the hotel but I have waited for an hour a day and only seen it once) just to hear the same old.  I need to be wowed and told here is a REALLY odd problem and here is how we made it right.  Or here is something that you can do... Or maybe here is something that we are releasing in 2 months that no one has heard.

It is truely disappointing to sit down to presentation on 'How to deploy x' and be told X is great and solves world hunger.  Where is the technical stuff?  If we choose to go to an advanced class, then treat us that way.  Dont dumb down the material cause you dont think we can handle it...  get rid of the Marketing guys and show us the nuts and bolts of it.  Serious.

I am sorry but I will not be back next year unless something changes.

By reading this thread it sounds like VMworld is crap and I would like to give a different perspective. It is my second year at VMworld and personnaly I am very impressed at how well things are organized given the number of attendees. Registration to sessions has worked fine for me, and even tough I could not attend all my first choices, there were still plenty that were available and of interest to me. Moreover, during the conference I went back to my schedule to find out that they were sessions that were full before and change to available. Being able to change my schedule during the conference is a nice thing.

Regarding the food, last year in Vegas it was hard to beat, however the sandwiches here are not so bad and it makes it possible to go eat outside in the park and enjoy the nice weather.

Of course nothing is perfect, but overall I am quite happy with this conference. The only thing that does not make sense is asking $275 for guests to the party, obviously I did not pay this amount to bring my girlfriend to this party and there is a lot to do around here for much less money.

JL

I've been back and forth on this myself.  There have been great times and there have been very disappointing times.  The SPL fiasco Monday was horrible.  My first instructor led lab was a disaster because of more technical back-end issues and being poorly organized.  I tried to pick the most technical sessions on stuff I don't know or need more information.  Most have been a letdown because they weren't technical enough or I already knew everything that was presented.  One bright spot was the one on SRM Tuesday evening and it was just plain amazing.  Plus the guy who led it was in the band Wednesday night.

LAB04, everyone's favorite scheduling problem, turned out to be destroyed by technical issues Wednesday morning.  The instructor said the lab was immune from all the problems on previous days, but no longer.  It was over an hour into it before we could actually touch the computers.  In the meantime, he gave a very informative presentation on performance issues.  I can't say enough about how great a presenter he was and how much he knew.  When things started working, my workstation kept resetting, so it was completely useless to try to do anything in the lab.  This was the one thing I wanted to do all week.

Once all the SPLs were working, I was somewhat disappointed with the upgrade lab.  On the other hand, as easy as it was, I don't think I have much to worry about when I go to upgrade to 4.0.

As for the food, I don't think it is as bad as people make it out to be.  The Subway sandwich I had in the airport on the way out here was worse.  The Italian sandwich Wednesday was pretty good along with the pasta side.  I've had some pretty bad free sandwiches, so they could have done a lot worse. 

I managed to make up for some of the frustration with good free beer at the party.

So the last session I have today is on the cool things about vSphere, and there had better be something I don't know already.  It can determine the overall impression of the entire conference being the last thing I see.