Getting ready for the Gestalt IT Tech Field Day 2010 – Boston

Last year in November I was fortunate enough to be invited to the Gestalt IT Tech Field Day which took place in San Jose. A recap of what happened there can be found here.

Some of you might not be aware of the concept of the tech field days, so let me give you an overview.

The origin might be found in an event that is called “Tech Day” and was initiated by HP. Basically HP invited several bloggers from around the globe and offered them a technical discussion and a more in depth view of several of their products.

Gestalt IT’s Stephen Foskett was one of the bloggers invited to this event who felt that this might be a good basis for that which now makes up the tech field days.

So, in a nutshell the tech field days brings together a group of independent people that are present in the various social media (think of Twitter, blogs, podcasts, the works) and have a technical background. These good folks then are packed with two days of presentations, discussions and hands on from the sponsors of this event.

You might want to think of this as vendor love, but you wouldn’t be quite right. First of all there is no obligation to communicate about any of the things that are presented to you. What is even more important, when you decide to actually report on what happened, you can give your honest opinion, be it good or bad. Secondly, since the group of people that are invited have a very broad background, the service or products presented will usually get a very broad array of questions fired at them. These will range from very detailed questions that could be about the choice of an algorithm to something more general like for example the value of deduplication in a virtualized environment.

Because we are talking about people with backgrounds in (among others) backgrounds in storage, virtualization, operating systems, hardware, networking and analysts you will find that the questions asked are usually tough on the presenters. These are people that know their stuff and this is also why presenters get the recommendation to not make this in to a marketing show.

This is an event for the community and as such the people who attend are very aware of this fact and looking at the first event, you will see a lot of feedback coming from the people who attend. This is not just limited to the on-site discussions. We had discussions put on video in the pub, there were dynamic conversations in the hotel lobby where the delegates discussed ideas or even took the time to explain concepts to the other delegates who were not experts in the same area.

So, here’s a list of the delegates that will be attending the event:

	Jason Boche	Boche.net	JasonBoche
	Carlo Costanzo	VMware Info	CCostan
	David Davis	VMwareVideos	DavidMDavis
	Greg Ferro	EtherealMind Gestalt IT	EtherealMind
	Edward Haletky	The Virtualization Practice	Texiwill
	Robin Harris	Storage Mojo ZDNet Storage Bits	StorageMojo
	Greg Knieriemen	Storage Monkeys iKnerd	Knieriemen
	Simon Long	The SLOG Gestalt IT	SimonLong_
	Scott D. Lowe	Tech Republic SearchCIO	ScottDLowe
	John Obeto	Absolutely Windows	JohnObeto
	Devang Panchigar	StorageNerve Gestalt IT	StorageNerve
	Bas Raayman	Technical Diatribe	BasRaayman
	Simon Seagrave	TechHead	Kiwi_Si
	Matt Simmons	Standalone Sysadmin	StandaloneSA
	Gabrie van Zanten	Gabe’s Virtual World	GabVirtualWorld

If you check out the profiles of the attendees, you will see that these people should make for an interesting mix. What’s more, I am certain that these folks are able to ask questions that are not always easy to answer.

Cisco Systems
Data Robotics
EMC Corporation
Hewlett-Packard Company
VKernel

So, look for some interesting posts coming from the delegates and on Gestalt IT. You can follow what happens online on Twitter by using the hashtag #TechFieldDay, and be on the lookout for lot’s of interesting things to be coming on April 8^th and 9^th.

One final thing that should be said.

Disclaimer:
The sponsors are each paying their share for this non-profit event. We, the delegates, are not paid to attend. Most of us will take some days off from our regular job to attend. What is paid for us is the flight, something to eat and the stay at a hotel. However as stated in the above post, we are not forced to write about anything that happens during the event, or to only write positive things.