The Life of a Silicon Valley Rockstar

I can tell today was better day just from looking at my twitter stream. In hindsight it was a lot better than yesterday. I’d like to start with a post by John Furrier talking about the possibility of Siemens being acquired. Mark Straton basically said as much in his keynote last night!

It begs the question why? Did Mark simply slip or was it an intentional message to those considering a Siemens solution? I have my thoughts but I’ll hold those to the end of the conference.

Despite being distracted by the wine tasting next door AVST put together a great presentation. If I were in the market for a VM solution I’d give them a hard look. I just wonder if they have a great answer to a question very few people are asking?

After the conference proper I had a great conversation with Jim Burton and John Furrier over a wonderful 2001 Phelps cab. A huge thank you to Jim for providing the wine. However, even more than the wine I was intrigued by the conversation and where UCStrategies is going.

I had all too short a time to chat with Blair Pleasant. She gave arguably the most valuable presentation tooday and one that I’ll likely refer to once the slides are published *hint*

I skipped Kerry Shih’s presentation for obvious reasons. I heard the flip flops with the suit, a la Mark Zuckerberg, was the best part.

The 8-person panel discussion was called by many to be UC speed dating. In reality it was less and IMO a waste of a session. It could have been better used, again IMO, to highlight 3-4 experts and create an interactive discussion. Maybe next time?

I’m going to track down Jim and John and see if they need a hand finishing that bottle of wine.