Two years ago, I attended my first Interop IT Conference and Expo in Las Vegas, and it left quite an impression on me. I’d heard about the “granddaddy of all IT conferences,” as it is now in its 28th year, and it didn’t disappoint. Despite the cool parties, the cool swag, and the well-staffed booths, Interop was also wall-to-wall with the world’s IT leaders in attendance. And I was in awe.
This year is no different. While I’ll always have a special place in my heart for Cisco CTO Padmasree Warrior, who spoke at Interop 2012, this year Cisco tapped CIO Rebecca Jacoby for Wednesday’s morning keynote. A Cisco employee since 1995, Jacoby will discuss “The Internet of Everything: A CIO’s Point of View” and share her insight into the critical elements needed to effectively unlock the business value available through the intelligent connections among people, process, data, and things. The Cisco team always pulls out all the stops when it comes to slides for these large conferences, so sign me up for that one for sure.
Also of interest is Thursday morning’s keynote lead by VMware’s CEO Pat Gelsinger. I was on hand at VMworld 2012 when then-VMware-CEO Paul Maritz essentially handed over the reigns of the company to Gelsinger. It was a momentous occasion, probably as close as I’ll ever get to an inauguration. Gelsinger, a Stanford grad, has worked for EMC and RSA, and he was Intel’s first CTO. As head of Intel Labs, Gelsinger was the architect of the original 80486 processor and a design engineer on the 80386 and 80286 processor design teams. Save me a seat for that keynote.
Since essentially every workplace and every IT pro are affected by BYOD these days, not surprisingly, Interop has a great BYOD panel lined up Thursday morning entitled “BYOD: The Trend That IT Loves to Hate.” Moderated by UBM Tech Editorial Director Susan Nunziata, the BYOD panel will discuss the questions still unanswered by the great BYOD debate of security vs. device availability. The panel features Citrix’s XenMobile Tech Evangelist Brian Robison, Microsoft’s Windows Server and Management General Manager Mike Schutz, and HP’s Steve Brar.
Being a training guy, I’d also like to catch leadership training guru Rob Cordova Thursday. In his session entitled “Creative Leadership: Driving Innovation and Change,” Cordova will try to help IT leaders learn how to solve problems creatively. IT leaders are challenged in any organization to be on the cutting edge of all associated technologies and to drive innovation—sometimes with little to no new resources. Cordova will share real-world examples that will show attendees ways to become more creative, no matter what their job title is.
If you’re not attending Interop, follow the #interop hashtag on Twitter and @GKJohnMarkIvey for updates from the conference.
If you are attending Interop, make a point to stop by the Global Knowledge Booth #2067 in Mandalay Bay Convention Center and find out how we can help you level up your IT skills. We will also be giving away our custom-designed Level Up T-shirts by artist Tom Whalen. Hope to see you there.