Back for more? Welcome and thanks for reading! Monday at VMworld 2019 has been amazing. The keynote by Pat Gelsinger was great. It felt a little rushed but there was a ton of content to get through. I always stream the keynote for many reasons but mostly because I don’t have to sit in uncomfortable chairs and fight the crowds. While streaming it gave me the opportunity to get my post ready yesterday. I had so much content to add copy to it took me way longer than I had hoped to get it posted. So much to share and so little time to share it. Speaking of, let’s get started on Monday!
VMworld 2019 Monday
I spent some time in the morning getting my post for yesterday going and getting all my pictures uploaded.
Several customers and partners join me for lunch at The Keystone Social house. Good service and decent food. Also helped that it was right next door to my hotel.
Another busy day on the streets of San Francisco. This city is never short on activity from what I’ve seen.
There’s many more people out today and all the badges and VMworld backpacks are on full display.
Heading to the Solutions Exchange and I’m working the booth this afternoon.
If you saw The Square yesterday there was no one here, now it’s packed!
The show floor is incredibly busy as well. People are clamoring for the free stuff, activities and contests at all the booths. The technology almost becomes a sideshow to the swag.
Behold! HPE Primera in all its glory. These are a few examples of the mission critical, tier 0 storage platform from HPE.
I’m talking about VVOLs today! VVOLs have been a staple of what VMware is pushing for the last few years and HPE had the first and most effective implementation available from the outset.
In case you forgot who’s throwing this shindig. VMware doesn’t hesitate to remind you with branding everywhere.
Here’s the HPE booth. We received several comments that we had one of the better if not the best corporate representation on the show floor.
I finally got to walk around the show floor a bit after I did my time at the booth.
VMware made an archway with some fake plants hanging off of it. Not sure why but there it is.
These were some cool motion activated robots in the CDW booth. Pretty neat to interact with.
Leaving the Solutions Exchange for the day. I get to work the booth again tomorrow though so I’ll be back.
HPE and Cohesity invited our customers and partners out to the San Francisco Giants game at Oracle Park. I got to go since I had customers going as well.
It’s a very cool stadium from the front side and it gets even better once you get inside.
This is the Lefty O’Doul Bridge, aka Third Street Bridge or China Basin Bridge. It’s a drawbridge or can be called a bascule bridge. I wiki’d that.
The ballpark is located right on San Francisco bay.
Cohesity had their truck and trailer out that they’ve been running all over the country.
Unfortunately they also brought the Giants World Series trophies out. One of those should belong to the 2014 Kansas City Royals.
They displayed some Cohesity branded gear and a Nimble. 
Cohesity can also run on HPE Apollo servers as well. 
Best storage available today right there.
Here’s our first look at the field. The game is already in progress.
I heard the garlic fries were famous around here. Now I know why. I ordered some chicken tenders with garlic fries and they were amazing!
It’s Star Trek Night!? How cool is that, a nerd focused theme. It’s like they knew we were coming.
I know someone that collects Coca Cola. There’s a couple slides for kids inside of there. We were told by security not to ride it or we’d get kicked out. I guess we had the look of adults who would ride the slides.
That’s one big glove!
This is the Oakland Bay Bridge.
A nice shot of the park from above the bleachers in left field.
Here’s the Lefty O’doul bridge from the outfield of the park. It’s way colder over here near the water than it is on the street side of the park.
A shot from the lower level near the field.
This is a random shot I took while we were waiting for an Uber. The entrance to this building had a bridge with rocks underneath. Not sure why but I was confused by the necessity of this. Because art I guess.
Later in the evening we ended up at the Golden Gate Tap Room. We initially went to try and get into the Rubrik party because the Wu-Tang Clan were playing it but the line was crazy and we decided against it.
Even later in the evening we ended up at Johnny Foley’s Irish Pub dueling piano bar in the basement. We had an absolute blast here and as you’ll see in the follow up posts we frequented this place throughout the week.
And there it is! Monday at VMworld 2019 is in the books. What a crazy busy day. I got to work the booth, I got to go to a baseball game, I got to hang out with some awesome customers and partners and had a really great time doing it. VMworld 2019 so far is pretty epic. Stay tuned and check back for the rest of the happenings this week.