I haven’t been to my datacenter in over six months. I have a feeling the front desk folks at the Westin Casuarina are missing me by now. But I’m still on the move. Hopefully I’ll see some of you at one of the following events in the near future. 

VMworld US 2013

& Tech Field Day Roundtables at VMworld

This year’s VMworld is in San Francisco, just a 90-180 minute commute (each way) from where I live in Silicon Valley. Thanks to the gracious support of Gestalt IT’s Tech Field Day and the Tech Field Day Roundtable at VMworld sponsors, I’ll be camping in San Francisco and making the most of the opportunities during the week. 

Along with a dozen and a half other Tech Field Day delegates, I’ll be meeting with our friends from Asigra, Commvault, Infinio, and Simplivity. I’ve been to TFD sessions with all but Simplivity, but I’ve met Gabriel Chapman (@bacon_is_king) at the SV VMUG so they’re not strangers to me either (even if their “cube” is actually not cubical). 

In addition to the vExpert and VMware customer events, I’ll also be visiting friends from past Tech Field Day meetings, including Scale Computing, Nutanix, Zerto, Pure Storage, and Tintri. If I’ve missed anyone, feel free to touch base. 

Software Defined Data Center Symposium

Gestalt IT is hosting a full day SDDC symposium at Techmart in Santa Clara, a mere 10-15 minute commute for me. There’s still room to join us on Tuesday, September 10th, for a day of discussions about SDDC topics, featuring Greg Ferro, Jim Duffy, Ivan Peplnjak, and several leading vendors in the field. The event will set you back a mere $25 and that includes lunch. 

The Cloudera Sessions

This one actually has nothing to do with Gestalt IT, but if you’re deep into Hadoop, and Cloudera’s particular flavor of it, it’s definitely worth a visit. Cloudera hosts The Cloudera Sessions in cities around the United States, and I’ll be attending the San Francisco event on September 11th.

Several Cloudera technologists, from the system engineering manager to the co-founder/CTO will be talking about where the company is going and where Hadoop is going in the foreseeable future. This event will set you back $149, but if you are a current Cloudera customer, check with your account manager to see if you can get a discount. 

BayLISA At Joyent

The October 17 meeting of BayLISA, Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area’s oldest system administration group will be held in San Francisco at the headquarters of one of the most prominent Solaris technology companies, Joyent. We’re looking forward to hearing from Brendan Gregg about his new book, Systems Performance: Enterprise and the Cloud, as well as getting an update on Joyent’s Manta storage service.

Attendance is free, but space is limited. RSVP at the BayLISA Meetup site if you’re interested. 

IEEE Computer Society’s Rock Stars Of Big Data

As much as I hate the use of the term “rock stars” (since that’s not necessarily a compliment or a good thing), this event looks interesting. I’m not sure how useful it will be for technologists, but it’s worth a look. IEEE Computer Society is hosting their Rock Stars Of Big Data event at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View on October 29th. It will set you back $239 as an IEEECS member, or $299 without membership. Group discounts are available for registration of 3 or more people on one ticket. 

Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party

Everyone deserves a bit of a break, and big data can wear a technologist out…. If you’re planning to be at the Magic Kingdom between September 10 and November 1, you should check out the Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party. I went two years ago and it was pretty enjoyable. I do work for the Mouse, but I don’t get any benefit if you go. So I highly recommend it.