This year, I had the exciting opportunity to attend VMware Explore 2024 in Las Vegas from August 26th to August 29th.
I set a few goals for myself for VMware Explore. Those goals were to learn as much as possible about AVI load balancer, VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF), NSX, Kubernetes, and network with other VMware nerds like me. I am happy to report that I achieved those goals. I even met people that I had only ever spoken with online. My brain is so overloaded with information right now, and I love it.
This post will recap my VMware Explore 2024 experience in Las Vegas.
Day 0
The first day of my trip was Sunday, August 25th, and I’m calling this Day 0 as this was essentially a travel day. I flew from the Calgary airport and landed in Las Vegas around 5:45 pm local time.
It was my first time in Las Vegas, so everything was a new experience. The first shock I had was that the airport had gambling machines throughout, even ones in isolated boxes for people to smoke in. I did not expect to see that, but it makes sense, as Las Vegas is known for gambling.
Escaping the airport to the rest of the Las Vegas civilization was an adventure. I needed to take a tram to another part of the airport to get to the doors that would let me out. I thought that was strange as I figured they would just be like exit here, which would be very straightforward.
I then took a cab to the hotel where I stayed, The Palazzo. On the way to the hotel, the cab passed by the Las Vegas Sphere, and holy smokes, is it huge!
The Palazzo is one of two hotels that make up the Venetian Resort. The second hotel is the Venetian. VMware Explore occurred in the Venetian Convention Center, also known as the Venetian Expo.
I got checked into the Palazzo and proceeded to find my room. You must cross the entire casino floor to get to the rooms (also called guest suites). I found my way across the casino floor to the guest suite elevators, where you needed to tap your access card before getting to the elevators. I found the bank of elevators that took me to the 35th floor, the floor my room was on.
I dropped off my bags and proceeded to find my way to the VMware Explore registration as it was around 6:15 pm, and registration closed for the day at 7 pm. I wanted to get registered immediately, as I was worried that if I waited until the following day, I might miss out on some sessions. I also wanted to have one less thing to worry about.
The only thing I knew about the location of the VMware Explore registration was that it was at the Venetian Expo and in a ballroom on level 2. I had no idea where any of that was.
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