Well it’s over again… The second “VMware’s elite technical event for Partners” aka VMware EMPOWER 2019 is behind us. For people who are not familiar with what VMware EMPOWER is:
VMware EMPOWER has replaced the technical aspect of Partner Exchange (PEX) previously held at VMworld. EMPOWER 2019 Europe is taking place at Lisbon Congress Center, Praça das Indústrias, Lisboa, Portugal.
The event is only available for VMware partners and is the place to be to get in-depth, sales and technical deep-dives into VMware products and solutions. The event is focussing on people with a sales and technical background such as SEs and Architects.
During the event our hands where itching to blog and tweet about all the goodness that was presented during all the session, but unfortunately all the NDA disclaimers prohibited us to do so…
Conclusion: Overall, the delivered content was GOOD! In my opinion the content was even at a higher level (more technical) than at EMPOWER USA 2018. Especially the NSX-T breakout sessions were popular and had a full house. Not a lot of marketing stuff but real deep dives (a lot of bits) and very good speakers.
But unfortunately not all sessions were on the same level, especially some of the EUC sessions could use some improvement. On the positive side all sessions were recorded and a link will be send out to all registered attendees in about one or two weeks after the event. So even if you couldn’t attend some of the sessions you can still watch them back online.
One of the best perks of attending EMPOWER is the FREE EXAMS!! Because when you attend EMPOWER a voucher for a free VCP or VCAP exam is included. The VCAP deploy exam vouchers could be send to your email address to use later (not later than the 15th of june) because it was not possible to take a deploy exam on site.
I presented my first session at EMPOWER : VCAP-DCV Deploy Exam Tips & Tricks: Learn best practices from VCAP certified peers. It was just plain beautiful. We had an almost full house and a lot of interaction with potential exam candidates, which we hope got all their questions answered. We hope that these kind of sessions get more attention in the near future, as we received tons of positive feedback from the attendees and we could notice that these kind of sessions are what people talk about, even after the sessions!
Another positive thing in my opinion is: NO VENDORS!! I think keeping the vendors out is a positive thing, it really keeps the focus on the VMware and not the whole ecosystem VMware really listened to the feedback of partners and the EMPOWER team really took a step in the right direction to empower the Partner Ecosystem
The event was spot on, it is the ultimate technical training event of the year for partners. Would I recommend it to other partners? Most definitely!
Some food for thought?
- A partner like ITQ, invests heavily in all the Solution Competencies (SC) and Master Services Competencies (MSC) available. But these Solution Competencies were never mentioned or explained during this partner event and only the MSC’s got briefly mentioned in the general sessions. For me As #1 leader of the Partner University I would like to see more information about the importance and necessity of the Master Services Competencies and Solution Competencies and what benefit it could bring for the Partner Ecosystem. That’s why I think it is important to inform partners about the importance and benefits of the MSC’s and SC’s and help them with education and certification.
- The LiveFire sessions were really good, but they took the whole day, therefore planning these sessions with other shorter sessions was simply not possible.
- Include Partners in the sessions for their war stories and lessons learned from the trenches, because this is the information partners would like to hear! What are the caveats and how did other partners tackle certain challenges.
All in all me and my colleagues had a blast and left Lissbon a little bit smarter then we arrived so mission accomplished!
