GestaltIT TechFieldday 2009 starts on Thursday 12th of Nov, 2009, so today has been one of those travel days for everyone coming out to this event.

As for all the people attending, there are a total of 15 Bloggers coming from all parts of the world for this event.

4 Bloggers from the UK,
1 Blogger from Germany,
1 Blogger from Australia,
1 Blogger from Canada,
8 Bloggers from the US.

As for the expertise these bloggers bring on the table

7 Bloggers focus on Virtualization,
2 Bloggers focus on Cloud Technologies,
1 Blogger focuses on Networking,
5 Bloggers focus on Storage.

Though these days its very hard to define or differentiate between a lot of overlapping technologies between Storage, Virtualization, Cloud and Networking, there are many on the list that work with multiple venues of the above technologies.

So for me, the day started mid morning to drive out to EWR airport. Though I thought I left home early, it was barely 35 mins before the departure time that I made it to the airport, and it turned out I was the last one to board the flight to SFO.

Landed in SFO mid afternoon and took a ride along with the Brits (Simon Seagrave, Chris Evans, Nigel Poulton) to the hotel.

Though we were the early ones to arrive, the schedule is so that everyone (All 15 of us) make it to SFO by the end of day today, so we start early morning tomorrow with the sessions, etc.

Claire Chaplais is the event organizer for the GestaltIT Techfielday 2009 and has done an amazing work to co-ordinate all the aspects of the events in terms of booking buses, flight reservations, time co-ordinations on arrivals, limo service, the scheduling, dinner arrangements, GestaltIT party and the rest of the events that are scheduled for the next 2 days. With all the work she put into this, it will surely be one of those flawless and amazing events.

As time passed by, more bloggers started arriving in San Jose where we will be staying for the next 3 days. As part of the check-in at the hotel, we were all handed an agenda and the schedule for the next 2 days and “MAN it’s HECTIC”.

Started meeting up with the folks at the bar, lots of techno geek talk expected over the next two days.

Dinner officially kicked off at around 7 PM, with more folks still arriving. GestaltIT organized the Haiku Door Prize Exchange, We were all given different Haiku’s to solve and that decided what gifts were were taking home. There were things like the iPOD nano, Kodak Camera, Flip Camera, Access Point, Noise Cancellation headsets, etc, etc given out tonight. The idea is every person walks away with a door prize.

You can imagine what happens when you throw 15 bloggers with storage, virtualization, hardware, software, cloud, networking experience into a room and have them talk. The table cloths and napkins turn into white boards with people either taking pictures or recording these techno-geek talks. Just amazing to see how everyone here so motivated and driven in the relevant fields they all work in. But there was one common theme, everyone has very high expectations with this event, though everyone feels proud that they have been invited to an event like this happening for the first time.

People tonight talked about Storage, Virtualization, Cache, FCoE, FC, Brocade, Emulex, 3Par, EMC, HP, NetApp, FAS arrays, HP-EVA’s, Lefthand, vBlocks, Symmetrix, Acadia, Vmware, SpringSource, Cisco, UCS, future of storage/virtualization, consolidation, power, work experiences, etc, etc…. “MAN it was AMAZING”.

So its now time to hit the bed, early morning (7:00 AM start to go to Vmware tomorrow). The day will be very busy with visits to Vmware first and then 3Par. Looking forward to seeing some known faces in the industry tomorrow.

Here is a list of all the bloggers attending. There were a lot of pictures taken today, videos, some stories will be floating on various blog sites over the next couple of weeks.

Stay tuned for more updates on GestaltIT TechFieldDay 2009 on this blog along with various other blogs.

GestaltIT Mega Blog

Name: Rich Brambley

Blog: VM /ETC

Name: Carlo Costanzo

Blog: VMware Info

Name: Chris Evans

Blog: The Storage Architect

Name: Greg Ferro

Blog: EtherealMind

Name: Robin Harris

Blog: StorageMojo

Name: Rod Haywood

Blog: Musings of Rodos

Name: John Hickson

Blog: Studio Sysadmins

Name: Greg Knieriemen

Blog: Storage Monkeys

Name: John Obeto

Blog: Absolutely Windows

Name: Devang Panchigar

Blog: StorageNerve

Name: Nigel Poulton

Blog: Ruptured Monkey

Name: Bas Raayman

Blog: Renegade’s Technical Diatribe

Name: Ed Saipetch

Blog: Breathing Data

Name: Simon Seagrave

Blog: TechHead

Name: Rick Vanover

Blog: Virtualization Review

To my understanding all these bloggers are industry independent bloggers and do not work for any storage / virtualization manufacturers. Though some people might be affiliated as partners, integrators, consultants, etc.

More techno-geek talk expected on this blog with tags GestaltIT Techfielday over the next couple of weeks, Stay tuned for all those updates. Please follow the GestaltIT Badge on the Right to go all the relevant blog posts about this event.

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Related posts:

1. GestaltIT TechFieldDay 2009: Post 3 (The Industry Independent Bloggers Attending)
2. GestaltIT Techfieldday 2009: Post 9 (Day 1 Continued)
3. GestaltIT Techfieldday 2009: Post 11 (The Fun Day)
4. GestaltIT TechFieldDay 2009: Post 10 (Day 2)
5. GestaltIT Techfieldday 2009: Post 8 (Day 1)
6. GestaltIT TechfieldDay 2009: Post 1