Month: May 2016
Opening Acts 2016
Plans are starting to come together, and we’re tired of sitting on some of this fun information, so here’s our first dump of official details.
As we revealed last week in our Planning Your VMworld 2016 Trip post, Opening Acts is on. We’ve had two good years of success running two panel stages concurrently to provide 3 hours with 6 sessions. One common complaint we’ve received: “Why do you make me choose between all these great panels?!” So, given this request and venue limitations in Las Vegas, we decided to play with the formula a bit this year.
For 2016, we’re going to run 4 panel sessions sequentially: Show up for the entire time and you’ll catch all the panely-goodness. This meant moving Opening Acts forward by an hour to noon, which put us into lunchtime. If there’s one thing we know will get conference-goers riled up, it’s food! As fate would have it, about the time we made this decision another great community group (who we’ve wanted to find a way to work with anyways) approached us about sponsoring lunch during Opening Acts.
Please join me in welcoming vBrisket to the Opening Acts family!!
That’s right! Opening Acts now offers you technical knowledge AND BBQ!
So here’s the schedule for Opening Acts on Sunday, August 28, 2016:
- 10:45am – The doors open
- 11:00am – Panel Session 1
- 12:00pm – Panel Session 2
- 1:00pm – BBQ lunch by vBrisket
- 2:00pm – Panel Session 3
- 3:00pm – Panel Session 4
- 4:00pm – Fin.
The panel sessions are still not defined yet. You still have time (assuming you’re reading this before May 31, 2016) to help us decide on topics (and possibly offer yourself up as a panelist). Just go fill out this form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1MtGcD3C4k2vGjvTPthgiyjONWrO1zx5gFrautroj6AA/viewform
Finally, if BBQ is your thing, the vBrisket team has an AWESOME opportunity available to both fill your mouth with meat (yeah, I know…) and help you get to Vegas right on time for Opening Acts. You should definitely check it out, especially if you live in Chicago, Kansas City, or Denver (or any points along that route). See all the details here: http://www.vbrisket.com/vbrisket-bus-tour-to-vmworld-2016/.
Planning your VMworld 2016 trip
If you haven’t noticed, VMware has opened the registration for VMworld 2016 US; they’ve also opened the public session voting for breakout sessions. That means it’s also time to figure out your travel plans if you’re headed to Sin City…
The #vBrownBag and VMunderground teams were given a big challenge when VMware announced the change in venues from San Francisco to Las Vegas for 2016: we had a great, nearby location at the Metreon for our 8th and 9th VMunderground Party, plus two awesome years of increasing attendance and community interest and support for OpeningActs.
So: what to do, what to do…
I hope everyone is as excited as I am that we can officially announce that OpeningActs and VMunderground are GO for 2016. We had to make some adjustments to our previous model of using the same space for both the panel sessions and the party, while still staying in close proximity to the VMworld venue (ie, south end of the strip, near the airport), but we feel pretty happy with what we’ve got planned.
And yes, we’re a community of communities, so some additional shenanigans are in the works with other event teams (more details as we get closer!).
While exact schedules for VMworld are still under wraps—the Schedule Builder won’t go online until mid-July—we can confirm that our activities will occur on Sunday, August 28th. OpeningActs will run in the early afternoon (first panel should start around 11am) and the party will be later in the evening.
As usual, we’re going to be stingy with the final details until we get closer to the end of August, but we wanted to get these critical bits out to the world so that prospective attendees have the opportunity to plan accordingly.
I’m not quite ready to count down the days…
…oh hell. It’s [click here] days away.
#VMunderground 