Away Mission: VMware World, Digital ID World and Intel Developer Forum

By Howard Dyckoff

VMware World

VMware World is up first this year, and it actually starts on August 31. The venue is San Francisco again after a brief hiatus to San Diego. Two years back, this was a very solid conference, and I expect more of the same this year. To some extent, they have to do well, considering the increasing competition in virtualization space.

The opening keynote is on September 1, so this is technically a September conference.

The conference "Party!" is on Wednesday evening, September 2, and takes place at both Moscone Center and Yerba Buena Gardens, outside. Options will include riding a mechanical bull, rock climbing, and laser tagging your colleagues. They say there will be a food court, with food from around the world, but I think this will be potstickers and pasta. But there's got to be beer.

The party headline act is Foreigner, performing classic hits like "Cold As Ice", "Feels Like The First Time", and "Double Vision" .

TAM Day is a one-day event on August 31, designed exclusively for VMware Technical Account Manager (TAM) customers, which showcases new VMware virtualization technologies plus road-map sessions. TAM Day also includes a Birds of a Feather luncheon, where you can sit with subject matter experts in small groups. The event is free for any current TAM customer who attends VMworld; if you don't qualify, you can still pay for one of many tutorials.

At VMworld 2007 in SF, the ESX hypervisor was the big news. VMware Infrastructure was also a hot topic, and was covered in several technical sessions. Its next rev - vSphere - should be a hot topic this year.

The 2007 VMware World featured classes, labs, panels, and tutorials, plus interesting keynotes. Inside the conference backpack, which was substantial, was a USB drive loaded with VMware ESX 3, their high-end hypervisor, which was not free at the time. Couple that with great meals and snacks, and you have something to look forward to.

Most of the content from VMworld finds its way to VMworld.com. You have to register there first, but it's free. Here's a link with agenda information from VMworld 2007: http://www.vmworld.com/community/conferences/2007/agenda/. And here's a link to highlights from recent VMworld conferences in the US and in Europe, which includes "Virtualized Oracle Server Performance": http://www.vmworld.com/community/sessions/.

Digital ID World

On a counter swing, Digital ID World moves from SF to Las Vegas this year. It will be held at the Rio, September 14-16. The long-running forum on identity in the digital world is sponsored by Digital ID magazine. This is the place to discuss federated identity, OpenID vs CardSpace, identity governance frameworks, WS-Trust, and SAML.

In 2008, speakers included Doc Searls, Senior Editor, Linux Journal; Kim Cameron, Architect of Identity, Microsoft Corporation (who is very friendly to open source); and Jamie Lewis, CEO and Research Chair, Burton Group.

Besides good speakers and great discussions on identity issues, this conference has historically had great desserts!

Here's the link to the conference page for Digital ID World 2008: http://public.cxo.com/conferences/index.html?conferenceID=24

Click the post conference tab to get to PDF files and MP3 audio from some sessions.

And here's the link to Digital ID World 2009: http://public.cxo.com/conferences/index.html?conferenceID=51

IDF 09

All of IDF 08 fit nicely into the new Moscone West building, which is across the street from the main North and South halls. Just go up and down the escalators to get to sessions on the second and third floor. Actually, most sessions were on two long corridors on Moscone Convention Center's second floor.

The tech tracks are well managed and keep closely to the set time. That's important with 50-minute session times. Audience Q/A is also very limited, due to the short session format. Sit near the microphone if you have questions, and be first or second up to the mic.

I think there were fewer concurrent sessions in 2008 than there were in 2007. Several labs were run only once or twice (in a single day), rather than repeatedly over the week as in earlier years. That did lead to a lot of standing-room-only sessions. Anticipating the most popular sessions and arriving early is a helpful art. On the other hand, several of those were supposed to be be posted on-line.

The food is a carnivore's delight and certainly a bit light on plant food. Your veggie friends may go a bit hungry at lunch. However, Intel and other co-sponsors did provide a variety of veggie items at the evening Expo receptions.

Here's where to find a long list of technical tracks for IDF 09: http://www.intel.com/idf/technology-tracks/

These include, among other topics, Mobile Tech, Moblin, Intel Virtualization, Extending Battery Life, Eco-tech, 32 nanometer microarchitecture, Super Speed USB, Public Clouds, Next Gen PCI, etc.

IDF will continue with Intel's focus on mobility in computing. Last year, Intel gave its Moblin project over to the Linux Foundation, but Intel engineers continue to be the bedrock of Moblin.

The 2008 Keynote info is here: http://www.intel.com/idf/us/fall2008/highlights/keynotes.htm?iid=idf+BottomNav+ForumHighlights+Keynotes

I expect live streams and archive info on that link later.

The 2008 session catalog is here: https://intel.wingateweb.com/US08/scheduler/controller/catalog

And here is a list of the 2008 technology tracks: http://www.intel.com/idf/us/fall2008/training/topics.htm?iid=idf+MarqeeNav+Subnav+Training+Topics

Also don't forget the new events hosted by the Linux Foundation: 1st Annual LinuxCon and 2nd Annual Linux Plumbers Conference, both in Portland, OR., September 21-23 and September 23-25. Follow the links for more info: http://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/linux-con/ and http://linuxplumbersconf.org/2009/

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Howard Dyckoff is a long term IT professional with primary experience at Fortune 100 and 200 firms. Before his IT career, he worked for Aviation Week and Space Technology magazine and before that used to edit SkyCom, a newsletter for astronomers and rocketeers. He hails from the Republic of Brooklyn [and Polytechnic Institute] and now, after several trips to Himalayan mountain tops, resides in the SF Bay Area with a large book collection and several pet rocks.

Howard maintains the Technology-Events blog at blogspot.com from which he contributes the Events listing for Linux Gazette. Visit the blog to preview some of the next month's NewsBytes Events.