So - you're thinking about coming to Geek Day and you wonder if it is worth your time.

There is a value proposition for companies like yours that may influence your decision to attend - or send someone to attend this educational event:

First of all, contrary to the irreverent marketing look and feel of this Geek Day website, we take this event and the time you spend attending it very seriously.

 

This is a serious event for serious technical people.

We do like to have fun though, and make light of the fact that technical people are often called Geeks.

As consultants, our first goal is to save our clients time and money. We do this through educational events like Geek Day. The education and hands-on experience you will get, with one-on-one time with the product managers and architects in the lab can not be had any single other place  - anywhere.

We are a small company focused on a very narrow niche in technology. Geek Day is an all day educational event focused on that niche. As it is created by us, the theme each year focuses on the areas of our expertise and some aspect of Virtualization, Optimization, or Secure Access to x-86 environments.

Geek Day is not a tradeshow. In fact, no PowerPoints or Snag-Its are permitted. No banners or ad specialties are allowed, no ‘golf swing analyzers’ or other gimmicky way of capturing your contact information are permitted. For your privacy, you are given a number to attend and unless you give that number to anyone, your contact information is protected and hidden from all vendors in attendance there. They have no way to know who you are unless you tell them. We are technical consultants with no salespeople. We built this event to educate our list of technically advanced clients.
 

We survey our clients heavily to ensure that we are providing exactly the information they need. To support that I offer the following from the Geek Day survey of early registrants:

Virtualization Products...

    75.3% are used in Test/Dev in our environment.
    74.1% are used in Server Virtualization in our environment.
    25.9% are used in Desktop Virtualization in our environment.
    42.0% are used to facilitate High Availability and Disaster Recovery in our environment.
    27.2% are being evaluated at this time.
      6.2% are not used in our environment at this time.

As you can see, like your organization, most of the attendees are heavily into Virtualization. This will be a group of people doing exactly what you are doing right now. Geek Day affords you and your people a chance to learn from peers in Virtualization. During the Lab and Break Outs you will meet people doing exactly what you are doing in organizations in other demographic categories, but equally as large, as complex, and politically charged as your organization might be.

Our client list is made up of the Fortune 1000, Military, Government, Educational, and Healthcare industries and solutions selected for this event are germane to those market segments and demographic categories. This year the theme is Availability. Availability of data, systems, data centers, etc. - all made possible through the utilization of a robust Virtual Infrastructure.

 

Many clients take this opportunity to ask for developments and additions to existing product. As we sit on the partner Technical Expert Council for VMware and Citrix we have the good fortune to connect with those individuals responsible for the direction of many of the solutions and our clients benefit from that connection.

 

The event is broken up into 3 segments, the general session, the Geek Lab, and the breakout workshops. At the general session we explain who is showing products at Geek Day, why we selected them, and how their solution fits in the Availability plan for a Virtual Infrastructure. In the Geek Lab you will be able to lay hands on all the solutions. Imagine VMware, and Citrix’s XENServer side by side on the same network in the Geek Lab, with engineers from each company available to you for contrast and comparison information without the sales or marketing hype.

 

The breakout workshops are created for Server Centric and Geek Day based on the feedback from the early client surveys. Each breakout is unique and is given once during the day. Because 3 breakouts fill the same hour (in 3 rooms) it is impossible for one person to take all 3 workshops. Most companies send multiple people in order to cover all the tracks.
 

We search the nation for companies in the Virtualization space and evaluate their products then bring the best of the breed to Geek Day. Geek Day this year will provide you a chance to evaluate all the 3rd party optimization technologies designed to streamline your maturing Virtual Infrastructure. We have a solution to manage cross vendor hypervisors, something to reduce the storage footprint for vms, bill back utilities for virtual infrastructure, compliance solutions, auditing solutions, all designed for Virtualization.

We have a laser focus on the Virtualization industry. We are currently writing a series of Virtual Desktop Infrastructure whitepapers for VMware and as a creator of intellectual property for such a prestigious company in the industry, we have the luxury of introduction and influence in the 3rd party solution market space. You will find answers to your questions at Geek Day.

This years vendors; AMD, Citrix, Data Domain, eG Innovations, EqualLogic/Dell, HP / OpsWare, Kingston, Microsoft, NetApp, RES, Vizioncore, VMware, Wyse, Zeus and some sizzling new technology companies we discovered- all hand-selected by us, and they will be showing the newest products for the creation and management of a fluid virtual infrastructure.  There will be 20+ different technologies featured.
 

Exciting tech breakthrough are revealed and launched at Geek Day.  Mendel Rosenblum, the Chief Scientist from VMware and the Father of Virtualization came to Geek Day in 2005 and stayed late in the lab, missing his plane back to Palo Alto. Kingston introduced their new V-Memory chip last year at Geek Day. Intel launched their Vanderpool Chipset right here - at Geek Day. Blue Lane introduced their patch management solution for vm’s at Layer 3 at Geek Day.

Each year we get ‘thank you’ emails from individuals who came up with an idea to accomplish a goal for their organization through a discussion they had at this event.

While the average demographic of the attendee is a senior systems admin, last year we had over 40 Director Level and higher attendees. A CIO from St. Louis wrote "it was the very best technical event I have ever attended.”

We expect 500 people this year and hope you find a way to have some of your team attend to judge the value of the event. We will do everything in our power to make sure it was time well spent.

Don’t hesitate calling or writing with any questions or concerns.  We look forward to seeing you there.