Tuesday Night at HP Technology Forum 2010

It’s been a busy day.

For those who don’t know, I was lucky enough to receive a free pass to HP’s Technology Forum 2010– a nerd convention. I’ll be writing about all of that soon in a post entitled “How a Mormon Perfectionist Decides to Go to Las Vegas”.

At the event, I’ve attended two keynote sessions in the massive events center. The first keynote was a little more interesting than the second, though they both concentrate on enterprise computing– massive servers in massive server rooms computing and storing massive amounts of data. I’m just not that much of an enterprise sort of a person– I like to learn about things that I could actually use myself; though I’d love to own a personal room full of server racks, I’m not sure what I’d do with them by myself. Still, there are a lot of interesting things to learn (such as how there are fifteen miles of cable laid just for the tech forum this week) and we’ve had some spiffy discussions (such as from the founder of Dreamworks). The events center doesn’t look too shabby, either:

I’ve also been attending a few small sessions on various topics– namely Linux at HP, Configuring a Corporate Linux Desktop, and the HP Global OEM Sales Program. I already knew everything they had to tell me on how to configure a corporate Linux desktop (it was really simple, to be quite honest), and the HP Global OEM Sales Program was a little out of my league– it’s just not something I’d be very interested in. There was some good info from the Linux at HP session, though.

I also explored the expo floor where HP and many of its partners are arrayed in various booths showing off their wares and services. I’m going to take a lot more pictures tomorrow, but here are a few depicting the central hub of the expo floor and one of the many server racks I saw there:

Tomorrow I participate in more sessions and visit more booths at the expo– hopefully I’ll win some neat swag, too. Thus far, Samsung has given me an 8GB SD card and a mousepad, HP has given me an HP-branded OGIO backpack and a “green” bag, Red Hat has given me a… a red hat, Silentium has given me a 2GB mini USB drive/keychain about the size of a postage stamp, and I’ve received t-shirts from both QLogic and ATTO.

I’ve also been entered into several contests (and will be entered into several more) to win HP netbooks, an HP DreamScreen, an iPad, a Kindle, a Barnes & Noble Nook, and plenty more.

Now, the main reason I’m here is to see what there is to see and write about it. Thus far, there hasn’t been an extensive amount of material to write about for OSNews– we’re just not the kind of site that drools over new HP G7 servers (though they definitely are drool-worthy). Though enterprise is definitely something we’ll cover, I just don’t see a good article for OSNews from all of this enterprise hype. I’m going to try to collect as much data as I can from all of the sessions and keynotes I attend, but I think where I’m going to get something more interesting (and probably unique) is by interviewing some of the tech people behind the scenes here at the forum– hundreds of trained professionals have to be running the networks and the audio and video behind the keynotes, and I want to know who they are, what they do, their hardware and software, the time their procedures take, their procedures in general, and more. I’ve got in contact with the right person here at the forum, and she actually says that I should have been instructed on a few things– such as how the press gets a happy little table at the front of the keynotes to use their lappies/typewriters on and how bloggers can arrange meetings and talk with various leaders at the STUDIO and how there were special press-only events and lunches. Someone missed a step, and I missed out on two days of awesome because of that. Well. It still was awesome. Just perhaps not as awesome as it could have been. There’s still tomorrow, though, so here’s hoping.

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