VMWorld Day Four - Headed Home

It's been a long week and I'm tired of the conference.  I have a few sessions to head to, but I'm not really sure I want to do that either.  There was a new general session today called the Innovators and was exactly what I needed to get me through the day!

First up was Robin Matlock who would be introducing us to today's presenters.  

The first presenter was Jay Silver - Founder of Joylabz.com and is a Maker Research Scientist at Intel Labs

What is this white stuff?  Used a peeko sensors with LEGO pieces to collect the wind and temperature from a laptop.  People can see the invisible.  This guy took a piano wire and attached it to a circuit board and is able to create sound by attaching this circuit to different objects to create some amazing sounds.  The circuit is called the makeymakey circuit. He hooked up two bananas to the circuit to control the screen. Then hooking up this up to other people or anything conductive.  Makeymakey.com

This guy was very animated and you could see how much fun he was having and has had in making this product.  Watch a great video of him on TED.com below.  Quite informative.

http://www.ted.com/talks/jay_silver_hack_a_banana_make_a_keyboard.html

Keller Rinaudo - Robotics 

www.Romotive.com

Robotics is the intersection between humans and computer science.

Great kickstarter success.

'Romo is an amazing robot companion that learns while you play! (iPhone only)

A great way to teach kids (and adults) to learn coding - robot coding.

This guy was really good on stage too just not as animated or a showman as Jay was.  Still, through his vision of robots, you can see that more can be done furthering our mere human world.  Below is the link for his kick starter project.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/peterseid/romo-the-smartphone-robot?ref=live

3D Printer

Bre Pettis CEO Makerbot - 3D scanning and 3D printing

Creator of http://www.thingiverse.com/ They have a 55,000 square foot warehouse in Brooklyn where they make things. ( This got some great applause) NASA:JPL approached him.

Robohand - two individuals needed fingers on a hand.  Instead of a $10000 prosthetic, they were able to create this hand for less than $5 of material for printing.

Very passionate about kids

Kacey - is a set creator and now uses this printing for prettysmallthings.com who makes doll house sets.  Quite cool.

Bre was an art major and teacher - so he's been creating things for quite some time.

"The Cult of Done Manifesto"

http://www.brepettis.com/blog/2009/3/3/the-cult-of-done-manifesto.html

"The Makerbot Way"

This guy is the real deal.  Want to know more about him?  Just click http://www.brepettis.com/ or head over to http://www.makerbot.com/

Hard to get to him because many people wanted to talk to him.  Just a great mind to listen to. 

Well it's time to head home early today but not before I share these final pictures of a live mural going on.  I wish I had seen this guy earlier so I could have set up a photo opportunity as he progressed.  Oh well, maybe next year.

I was ready to hit the road, so there was no way I was staying to finish watching this guy.

VMWorld Day Three - The Big Party

This year was not going to be typical with a big name headliner another and then a less known named band playing the party.  Tonight we had the distinct pleasure of both Imagine Dragons and TRAIN.  First we had to head to the San Francisco AT&T Park.  http://sanfrancisco.giants.mlb.com/sf/ballpark/index.jsp

Plenty of food on the inside to go around!  Quite awesome and paid for.  How do you beat that?

With video games to boot!  Nerds and Geeks UNITED!

This is my ill attempt at a panoramic shot.

But then once inside, we were in for some cool sights.

 Not sure how long she was on these stilts.

Out on the field was a different story, there were tons of stuff to do!  Lots of games and such, too bad I'm not very good at these types of games.

Then to the stage for some much needed great music!

 First up...Imagine Dragons!

Man, these guys put on a great show!  Excellent musicianship!
Want to see their finale live?  Imagine Dragons - Radioactive


After these guys came train.  I know some of their songs, but was never a huge fan.  Apparently there were a few ladies (and their non dancing escorts) that wanted to squeeze between me and the stage which actually made me ready to leave completely.

On my way out I figured I'd grab a beer.  I was wrong.

So I hopped on the bus headed back to the row of hotels and enjoyed so lively conversation with a father of six (two sets of twins) from Idaho.  Great guy, great conversation.  Great night, glad it was over.

VMWorld Day Three

Today is all about connecting with others.  Sure, I've been talking with people between sessions and when we've been eating, I'd chat with a few folks.  But today I really wanted to strive to meet as many vendors as possible and reach out to folks that I hadn't talked to for a time.

Since there was no general session today, I met up and had an extended breakfast with a former boss and colleague of mine.  We spent nearly 90 minuets catching up on his new team, the ins and outs of working for a different company and of course where I see myself in a few months.  While I certainly won't go into the details here, it was awesome to relive some of our funnier moments over the years since he joined my current employer close to 9 years or so.  Afterward I headed into the hands on labs (HOL) to see the new setup this year since I know one of the principal architects of this completely revamped lab area.  Not only could you take a traditional lab with a two monitor provided PC, but you could also bring your own device or BYOD.  This is actually pretty huge in the tech industry.  Less upkeep for a company means more money in the bank.

 After my lab ended I made my way back to the vendor exchange to really dive into products and people.

Simpana/Commvault juggling act

 As  you can see, tons of pictures, tons of people and tons of products.  They all pack up at the end of day 3, which was 5 pm.