VMworld 2020 is soon upon us, and due to the current world situation it’s an online only event this year. Personally I think this is a big loss, mostly because I usually spend most of my time at VMworld networking and speaking to people I often only see once a year, something that simply will not happen this year. In fact, I usually spend more time in the Blogger / Community Lounge than I do in sessions. There are many reasons for this, but the main one is that I’m kind of a social being. Now the physical aspect of VMworld 2020 has been taken away, and the entire conference is a streamed event, which really bums me out.
While I am sure the content will be as good, or perhaps even better, than it usually is the whole conference experience has been removed from the equation. One of the things that I really enjoy about attending VMworld, is the fact that I’m physically there, which makes it easier to focus. This time around, it’ll be more of a yet another day or two in the home officeTM style event, which frankly is getting a bit tired.
Thankfully Nick Howell and Jeramiah Dooley took the baton, and has tried to recreate or even re-invent some of the social aspects of the conference experience, on Discord. While I’m under no illusion that this will replace a physical event, it’s nice to see community members step up and try to offer an alternative to the famed hallway track.
Community is hard. Community has been something that vendors of all shapes and sizes have managed with varying degrees of success at conferences, and we think that, especially with the pandemic, we can build the infrastructure that makes community easier to organize and coordinate.
Orbital Jigsaw is the virtual conference center: it’s a place people gather, a place where discussions happen, a place where people put context to the content. It has rooms for content, rooms for discussion, rooms for play, whatever the community needs. Video, audio, text, links to collateral, places to talk shop with partners, all in one place, and all consistent from conference to conference.
– Jeramiah Dooley
It will be interesting to see how this works out in reality. Like many things right now, things are a bit of an experient and we need to adapt and overcome somehow. I’ll be hanging around Orbital Jigsaw as much as time permits during VMworld, perhaps I’ll see you there?
For more details, see Jeremiah’s posts
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- Headshot-as-a-Service VMworld Europe 2018 — Published
- VMworld 2018 Europe Day Two — Published
- VMworld 2018 Europe Day One — Published
