Kicking off trade show season with VMworld 2008

We have now entered September and not only does this month mark the beginning of Fall, but it also marks the beginning of trade show season for many of us in the high-tech industry. From VMworld to Web 2.0 to Interop to SNW, many of us here are in the middle of prepping our clients for a busy (and fun!) few months.  While many things have stayed the same, the many ways in which we communicate has changed due to social media.  As we've seen from the adoption of everything from Facebook to Virtual Plazas to Twitter, social media now has a predominant place in getting messages across to a whole host of audiences. This was evident at last week's VMworld 2008 conference, where several attendees and journalists were communicating for over a month before the show even kicked off. VMworld took it one step further by hosting a Twitter community on the show website, as well as a Twitter Virtual booth. We'll certainly see more of this as trade show season rages on.

I was lucky enough to attend VMworld last week and had a chance to catch up with a couple of leading industry analysts and reporters while in Las Vegas. Carryl Roy of Virtual-Strategy Magazine and George Crump of Storage Switzerland shared their insights on what they were most looking forward to seeing at the show while also shedding light on what some of the biggest trends in virtualization and storage today. They commented on VMware's Paul Maritz's "Trinity of the Future" strategy, cloud computing, SSD, and how storage companies are working to address virtual machine management. But, like many others in the industry, in the coming months, I'll be looking forward to see what trends will emerge and what rumors will be proven false.

Enjoy the video and let us know if you agree - or disagree - with their musings.