General Session

So this was the last General Session today and (as in previous years) were dedicated to the TED Talks (for those of you that don’t know about TED).  I really like these and still remember VMworld 2012 listening to Kelvin Slavin’s presentation on Algorithms (I ended up playing it at our next VMUG meeting as I thought it was so profound).  Here’s a link to the talk, I think it’s just as relevant now 2 years later!

http://www.ted.com/talks/kevin_slavin_how_algorithms_shape_our_world

Here’s the official link to the VMworld 2014 General Sessions: –

http://www.vmworld.com/community/conference/us/learn/general-sessions

This year, the 3 presenters were: –

Jane McGonigal @avantgame

James Patten @jamesmpatten

Sean Gourley @sgourley

Sean Gourley’s presentation really stood out for me as it talked about the idea that Augmented Intelligence (basically this is fusion of Human and Machine Intelligence) The premise being that combined they are of greater value than machine intelligence alone.

I really like the idea of this and had an epiphany about Skynet and all the other films we’ve seen about evil AI’s taking over the world really only being fiction as it would only take the partnership of AI & humanity to stop this happening (so machines actually needs Humans to become more than themselves)!

I found this link which is the same presentation, but not from VMworld (I really liked the zacks story, a real david vs goliath battle), oh and Sean’s from my neck of the woods being a Kiwi!

vBrownbag

I had the chance to present a community session at @vBrownbag, my topic was 17 tips for building your own user group (BYOUG).

I’d really like to thank the vBrownbag crew for putting this on, this year the theatre layout in the Hang Space was awesome and I really enjoyed the whole experience.  Here’s the schedule so you can get an idea of how many presentations were done over the last 4 days: – http://professionalvmware.com/2014/08/vbrownbag-tech-talk-schedulevmworld-usa-2014/

Final Word

I had a great time this year at VMworld, it’s been good blogging about the event, attending sessions, hunting out interesting technology in the solutions exchange,  attending the VMUG Leader Q&A, presenting at vBrownbag, helping out on the Pure Storage booth and of course meeting old friends and new at the various parties (thanks everyone for being friendly, approachable and .

I really feel invigorated and ready to bring home my learnings and start applying them!