Why should you attend VMware Explore?
About VMware Explore
VMware Explore, formerly VMworld is an annual, global tech conference organized by VMware, which lasts between 3–5 days with a diverse agenda and thousands of attendees.
Since 2004 it has been held in several locations in the US and since 2008 it was hosted in parallel also in locations in Europe. Due to the pandemic, 2020 and 2021 the event was converted in a fully digital format, which is what I experienced as a consequence of the timing when I got interested in virtualisation and the fact that it was free.
This year, apart from renaming VMworld to VMware Explore, a significant difference is the fact that it will be hosted not just in the US and Europe, but also in Brazil, Singapore, Japan and China. For more details on the dates and price, you can visit their global page or the respective countries pages which it seems are created as each date approaches.
What follows in the next sections will be my own takeaways from attending online the 2 past years and my prediction of the potential benefits that would weigh in on my own decision whether to visit this or any other tech conference.
Networking
It’s a well known fact that in-person conferences are a golden opportunity to meet like-minded people which can translate into business referrals or vendor contacts.
But apart from that, there is also what I call indirect networking, because you can amass people to follow on social media, that create good learning content and inspiration. This can be achieved following the event online, but I can only imagine that live conferences must be an even better chance, plus the potential of actually meeting these people could be a huge benefit career wise.
I found that Q&A sessions can also be a great provocation for productive thought processes not just for yourself, but for other listeners too. Besides, for beginners it can give a unique opportunity for short public speaking/writing ice breakers.
All in all, the least a tech conference can give you is an increase in your intra- company networking chances, as it can provide you with quality “water cooler” topics with coworkers before, during and even after the event.
Learning aspect
Regardless if online or live, the available sessions will be either a lot of fluff by marketing people without technical depth to make the experience worthwhile. Or if you’re a beginner, there will be “deep dives” sessions on topics that are too advanced that they go over your head, at the moment.
But you will stumble upon a few gems of valuable sessions from established expert speakers, which you will go back to again and again once you get involved enough in a certain technology stack. Those are the ones that fall under the indirect networking I described earlier, and will be a a gift that keeps on giving when it’s about people/blogs that will provide you learning content for future every day use.
TL;DR
To sum up, there is certainly value in attending tech conferences, if you can afford it.
Whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned professional in your field, it’s a chance to familiarise yourself with the latest/future trends in the virtualisation space, and in this case with an emphasis on VMware’s focus onwards. Additionally, that type of information can help with your future plans which techs skills to acquire/upgrade, or if you’re in a decision-making role in your company (even a homelabber), it can nudge you in the right direction for decisions on which technologies to back up for your infrastructure.
