03 Nov 2013

Why I’m consistently returning to E2E Virtualization Conference

Back in the days, my first E2EVC (formerly called PubForum) in 2005 was already a great event having smart people discussing technical related stuff around server based computing. The attendee count was around 30 while nowadays, we have around 120 attendees on each event, which kicks off twice a year. This time we met in Rome (Italy) and, we’ve had attendees from 18 countries, including 18 MVPs, 15 CTPs and 6 vExperts. This has been the 20th event since the initial launch 10 years ago.

The event is limited to 140 attendees, which personally I feel comfortable with, because it creates a “family like” community feeling. There are so many nice people I now know for a long time and every event we have some newcomers, attending for the first time. While there seems to be an inner circle or core of geeks always attending, the “fresh” people allow the event to benefit of new ideas and keeps the spirit spreading all over the world.

As already mentioned, the event was formerly highly focused on Citrix virtualization technologies, while nowadays the content is broader and distributed over all kind of virtualization technologies. Also good to see that VMware has returned back out of the dark with a fair amount of vExperts. Even if I’m highly focused on Microsoft and Citrix technologies I appreciate the discussions with the so called “enemies”, because it can add value if you see how other technologies work and are being implemented.

Worth to say that it takes a lots of effort to organize an event like this and the E2EVC team is doing a really really great job here. Those who attended the conference from the beginning know that there have been certain troubles with the agenda which changed dynamically beside other small issues. This is all gone and since the last 8 conferences I attended I feel a professional spirit behind the whole organization.

I was honored to present two session this time, a keynote about the Microsoft Cloud OS and Server 2012 R2 together with “Kristian Nese” and a session about System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 R2 / Windows Azure Pack together with “Thomas Maurer“.

Of course the content is important, as we’re all addicted to technology…..but… Networking is king! The real value I get out of each event is meeting smart people, having interesting discussions and last but not least, doing business together.

And did I mention that no one gets paid for any efforts putting into the presentations? I think having all those smart people returning and presenting all over the years truly shows the community spirit of these event and therefore makes it unique to me.

Having that said, I can only recommend to have a look at this conference and to register for one of the next events coming up:

  • May 9th 2014,Los Angeles, USA
  • May 30th to June 1st 2014, Brussels, Belgium
  • October 31st to November 2nd 2014, Barcelona, Spain

Next year will be a premiere for E2EVC in the United States, right after Citrix Synergy. While having US geeks on every European event, we can now flip the travel time experiences J

If you want to know more, visit the E2EVC Event site: www.e2evc.com/home