Good news (mostly for me, I’ll admit): I’ll be visiting EMC World 2015 again! Just like the last edition EMC World will once again be held in The Venetian in Las Vegas. I’m looking forward to meeting my fellow EMC Elect over there as well as absorbing some new knowledge in the various lectures and/or general sessions which will be held during those days. If you also want to go, I’ve got a discount code you can use… so read on!
For the fellow Dutchies
If there are any Dutch(wo)men reading this post, don’t forget to sign up for the Dutch Delegation over here. Especially if you’re flying solo, this might give you some company during the hectic week that will be EMC World 2015. Even if you’re not alone and lost on the floors: there’s some really great company in there of which you will definitely be able to learn something… and at the very least you’ll be able to have a beer and a laugh with them.
About the lecture sessions
The lectures are sorted into three levels: Introductory, intermediate and advanced. Over the last couple of years at EMC World I’ve learned to translate these levels to something that actually makes sense.
- Introductory = mostly marketing, the most basic of introductions in the product, only attend if you have no idea what the product does or that it even exists.
- Intermediate = you have limited knowledge about the product, maybe you’ve seen it once in a data center. Good sessions, but if you work extensively with a product, you might already know 50% of the subjects covered in the presentation.
- Advanced = you have worked with the product before and you’re reasonably up to date on it, and these sessions will help you build on that knowledge and learn something new.
My biggest advice: if you’ve ever worked with the product and you want to learn more about the internals of it, go straight for the advanced sessions. Don’t waste time in the introductory sessions; you’d be better off spending that time in a Hands on Lab exploring the actual product.
If you’ve signed up for EMC World, don’t forget to use the schedule builder to make your own personal agenda. This year I’ll focus on Isilon, VNX and (for the first time) VMAX. I’ve recently finished training on the VMAX so I’m dying to learn some more advanced stuff that wasn’t discussed during training. I’m going to work with the following schedule:
- Mon 10am: General keynote – Redefining Next: Experience, Performance & How to Drive Your Business
- Mon 3pm: Isilon – Running Petabyte sized clusters in the real world.
- Tue 3pm: VMAX3 – Performance monitoring made simple
- Tue 4.30pm: Isilon – Maximizing Performance for your cluster
- Wed 8.30am: VNX Hybrid Flash Best Practices For Performance
- Wed 10am: General keynote – Emerging EMC: Better, Faster, Smarter, More
The rest of the schedule will quickly fill up with EMC Elect meetings, hands on labs or me bouncing around the Solutions Exchange floor. So my second biggest advise would be: don’t cram your schedule full with sessions all day long; leave some time to actually breathe and process the knowledge you’ve just gathered.
If you see me in any of those sessions (EMC Elect and Tech Field Day stickers on the laptop), do come say hi!
Still have to register?
If you still have to register for EMC World 2015, I’ve got a $150 discount code for you, courtesy of the EMC Elect. You can use the following code: EW15_ELECTNX11
Please note: the code expired on April 6, 2015, it cannot be retroactively applied to an existing registration, nor combined with other registration codes or redeemed by EMC employees.
The code can be used 3 times so if it shows up as being used or invalid, someone else beat you to it. Reach out to the other EMC Elect on Twitter using the #EMCElect hashtag and someone might have a fresh code for you. Or leave a comment and I’ll try to get you a new one.
Hope to see you in Vegas!
