The first “C” of the Tech Conference Survival Guide is Climate where I explained how to prepare for the summer season and technology conferences in climates maybe outside your comfort zones. The next “C” on our agenda is Conference. This is where I’ll talk about how to survive the conference itself. With so much coming up this year at VMworld, you need to plan in advance.

Badges, we need those stinking badges

Although the full agenda of sessions hasn’t been published that doesn’t mean you can’t get a jump on planning. Let’s look at the beginning of the week – the registration process. You should do everything you can to get your badge and care pack early. If there’s check-in available at your airport or hotel, take advantage of it. Murphy’s law will always apply here: if you want to complete your registration just before an action-packed session, the line will be a mile long. Get in early, thereby letting you get onto the content early.

Thankfully, for VMworld North America 2018, the registration desks are open extended hours on most days. This means you should do everything in your power to get registered on that first day. If you’re concerned about the dates and times that the registration desk is open, you can just check on the agenda.

Expo Floor

The next thing you need to be aware of is when the expo floor is open. At VMworld, this is called the “Solutions Exchange,” but at other shows it’s called other things. Although I love going to the sessions and talks, sometimes I just want to play with the technology and ask questions of the professionals.

I’m probably biased because I’ll be on the show floor with the rest of my team at the SolarWinds booth (#2301). Be that as it may, you should make sure that you spend a little time visiting the vendors for products you use every day. The expo floor is generally inundated with a flood of humanity on Sunday. This is generally part of the swag grab on that first day but make time (possibly later in the week) to meet up with representatives from your favorite vendors.

If your company happens to be in the middle of a bake-off between two separate vendors, take your decision-making questions to each of them. The people manning the booth can probably answer all your questions and provide you with tips and tricks for each possible solution. It doesn’t do any good in putting these products head-to-head in your environment, unless they are both running at their best.

The last thing that you want to do on the expo floor is understand if there are any special events with your vendors. These can be as simple as a breakout session on the expo floor or a meet & greet with other customers at an offsite location. Take pains to make sure that you get a chance to be a part of these. If you have a vendor/solution is new, you may not know what to ask, so just walk up and ask if they have anything planned for customers. If they do, try to make the time. I’ve never been to one of these side-events that wasn’t worth the time.

Session Schedule

The last thing you need to plan is your session schedule. It always seemed (maybe just to me) that some of the best sessions always seemed to run at the same time, on opposite sides of the building, in separate buildings. Sitting down with your team and coming up with a divide and concur strategy would be best. Do you really need your whole team in the same session? Probably not. Everyone on your team has specific talents, goals, and desires and they should each take part in sessions that are the best for them individually, while still meeting the needs of your organization.

This is where the divide and concur strategy comes into play: the team member who is currently planning the next phase of the roll-out, might be best suited going to a session specific on global deployments and optimization, whereas another teammate might do better in a session about integration and tooling.

Long story short, although you are there for your organization, be sure to understand how the knowledge you (and your team) gain can be tuned to your specific skillset. There is no such thing as a wasted session, you can get something out of each of them. If that session doesn’t appeal to you, but you know that the knowledge contained therein is required for your company, see if someone else on the team is willing to go. You may be surprised by the responses, but you’d never know if you didn’t ask.

Up next time is the last “C” for Celebration. This is Vegas after all and finding things to do is never a part of the problem.

Until next time campers, ramble on!