The size of VMworld 2011 is amazing and so are the efforts needed to pull it off. I have never been at an event with more than 14,000 people before, actually not even a fraction of that number, so being able to observe everything that needs to be done to make such a complex event successful is really interesting.
At VMworld, breakfast starts at 6:30 in the morning to enable attendees to catch their sessions, which start at 8:00 AM. It was a long walk to the meals hall of the conference area, but it was an even longer walk inside the meals hall!
The VMworld organizers had lines of hotel employees greet the walkers all the way through and guide them to the end of the hall. It is only logical to seat the early comers at the end of the hall to make room for later waves to be seated easily. Being greeted and smiled at by hundreds of people is sure a great way to start your day, with full of energy 
And it seems that energy is exactly what the organizers had in mind when they put the breakfast menu together, as it consisted of many sweets, fruits and lovely nuts with raisins.
The meals hall itself seems to be a huge storage space that was converted for the VMworld event. I am sure that making room for thousands of people to eat was not easy. It was clear that the organizers have done a great job as everybody is enjoying themselves.
The same arrangement is done for lunch time, with the availability of the meal box option to allow attendees who are in a hurry to grab lunch and run to their next session.
Finding your VMworld sessions is very easy. In addition to the printed pocket guide that contains a map of every floor of the event, there is a mobile app that enables attendees to view and edit their schedules, fill out surveys and get important updates, like session cancellations or additions, session locations, what sessions are starting when, and even a map of the conference hall.Other announcements are displayed on the Agenda-at-a-glance LCDs located on every floor. This sure helps attendees get a grip on what is going on as one can easily lose track of everything that is happening.
Providing WiFi coverage for this huge number of people is not an easy thing, and WiFi at the event is not that reliable. It seems that the Cisco Access points distributed every few meters all over the place are not working that well, and frequent interruptions are the norm. I would not blame Cisco as I know that almost all mobile devices operate on the 2.4GHz limited band. My laptop that utilizes the much more available 5GHz band was having no trouble getting a stable connection.
However, there are “email-stations” on every corner to allow attendees to print their schedule, view and edit it and fill out surveys about sessions they attended. You simply logon by scanning the bar code on your conference badge.
One also needs to “logon” to attend the sessions; you must be registered at least 30 minutes before the session starts, and you are only admitted after scanning your barcode. This helps make sure getting into sessions is both easy and organized.
However, the event is not only about sessions and lectures, there is also room for relaxing, playing chess, volleyball and badminton. The Hang Space at VMworld 2011 is a park which was brought inside for the event.
But I guess vNerds, will stay vNerds and even in a park will chose to use their laptops to browse the Internet and catch up on things. I decided to leave my laptop in the room for tomorrow to force myself not to do that
The climax of the day 1 at VMworld 2011 was the keynote, officially kicking off the event. Everybody was wondering what hall can host all attendees as no hall we’ve seen so far would be adequate. It turned out that there is a huge secret hall hidden behined the park are that was equipped exactly for that.
I strongly recommend that you watch the Paul Martiz’s keynote address which illustrates a vision for the “post-PC world,” as it is being called.
Carrying my heavy laptop around, being forced to take it out of the bag, then turning it on and waiting for it to boot; I myself began to feel the importance of tablets for the current business atmosphere. Still I have to agree with Microsoft that it will be a “PC-world” for some time to come as I can’t imagine a tablet fulfilling all my needs.
Interesting! Wish I win a trip like this.