The Hands-on Labs team is continuing the momentum to make sure your experience this year at VMworld Barcelona is unforgettable! Here is a list of items you don’t want to miss during the event.

What’s New?

• VMware Odyssey™ by Hands-on Labs: We are taking Hands-on Labs to the next level by adding gamification elements to the labs you know and love. Showcase your technical expertise and skills with VMware Odyssey, sponsored by Intel. Compete through rounds and go head-to-head with teams to be crowned the grand prize winner.The winning team is awarded the NEW MacBook Pro.  Register Now and become the Odyssey Champion!

The winning team is awarded the NEW MacBook Pro.  Register Now and become the Odyssey Champion!  Are you ready to be crowned VMworld Barcelona’s Odyssey Champion?

Limited availability, Register Today, claim your spot and jacket:

• Lightning Labs: At VMworld Barcelona, we will have more lightning labs than ever! If you’re not familiar, Lightning Labs are short 30-minute, concentrated modules of our Hands-on Labs that are designed to maximize your time. Simply put, they are the fastest and easiest way to learn about core product features broken down to bite-sized actions. Here’s the list of all the Lightning Labs that you can choose from in Barcelona:

• Partner Labs: Test drive our newest partner products and solutions with Hands-on Labs. At Barcelona, we will offer many new partner labs including Dell, AWS, and more.
• Hands-on Labs Augmented Reality: Augmented Reality will be available within the VMworld App throughout the Hands-on Labs area. Discover the Expert-Led Workshops, Command Center Wall, Hands-on Labs Tours, and VMware Odyssey.

Labs That Fit Your Schedule

Take any lab, anywhere, anytime. VMware Hands-on Labs are flexible to fit your schedule. Here are a few options available at VMworld:

• Self-Paced Labs: Explore VMware’s latest products by taking a Hands-on Lab on your own time and at your own pace.
  • At a traditional workstation:Come into the Hands-on Lab room and we will provide you with a seat, a screen and a keyboard.
  • Bring in your own device (BYOD):Find a spot in our open HOL Connect (info on VMworld website) to start a lab.

• Expert-Led Workshops: Try Hands-on Labs in an engaging, instructional environment with lab creators and experts in the room with you! This year we increased the total number of workshops available AND added a number of workshops in French and German. 

• Hands-on Labs Tour: Get a 30-minute behind-the-scenes peek at what it takes to run our Hands-on Labs. Meet lab creators and engineers running our multiple clouds. Make sure to book your tour at the HOL Tour Information Desk during VMworld!

What about Prizes?

 This year our prizes are better than ever! Here are a few ways you can qualify to win:

• The CloudCred, Hands-on Labs Great Labs Game: Score your CloudCred points for EVERY lab and workshop. Follow the QR code at the end of your lab or session for CloudCred points to win BIG PRIZES!! 
• VMware Odyssey™ by Hands-on Labs: Come to VMware Odyssey during VMworld and enter for a chance to win prizes and Odyssey swag. First place tournament winner gets the NEW MacBook Pro!

After Hours:

After working hard, it’s time to play! Here’s a few of our favorite things to do after hours while in Barcelona:

• Attend a Football game at Camp Nou Stadium: Camp Nou is the home stadium of FC Barcelona and the largest stadium in all of Europe. Cheer on the competing teams and meet some locals!
• Visit the famous Sagrada Familia: The large and unfinished Roman Catholic church in Barcelona is one of the must sees while in the area.
• Walk around el Mercado de La Boqueria: This is our favorite local market in Barcelona that sells some of the best meat, cheese, and sangria in the city.
• Eat dinner at El Nacional: The first restaurant in Barcelona with different areas to try traditional recipes from all around the Iberian Peninsula.
• Grab a drink at the Old Fashioned: This is one our favorite Gin tonic & Cocktail Bars in all of Barcelona.

We can’t wait to see you there!

We just made updates to the HOL-2008-04-ODY – vSAN Beginner Odyssey Lab based on user feedback. Version 2 of the VMware vSAN Beginner Odyssey Lab is now live!

Congratulations to Anthony Laurente, Jonas Weber, and Danilo Coppola on ranking at the top of our global vSAN version 1 leaderboard! Keep an eye out for our VMware Odyssey swag to come in the mail.

https://go.hol.vmware.com/odyssey/leaderboard.htm?showProgress=true&rows=27&interval=10&code=GMVSAN

Thank you everyone for playing our VMware vSAN Beginner Version 1 Odyssey Lab!  Now is your chance to go back and showcase your vSAN skills on our brand new leaderboard: https://www.vmware.com/go/try-vsan-odyssey 

Following our recent VMware Odyssey “Hackathon” at Electronic Arts, we decided to share some guidance and best practices to have some friendly competition at your next team meeting.

Prep Work:

In order to host a successful VMware Odyssey Competition, make sure you have the following:

• All participants have a modern laptop / browser with a 13” minimum screen
• 350 – 500 Kbps modern Wi-Fi / Networking to run Hands-on Labs
• Snacks, especially if it’s an afternoon event, Pizza and Beer have no enemies
• Large monitor to display the VMware Odyssey leaderboard
  • We can even give you a custom Game Code, so you will be able to have a unique leaderboard just for your event!
• VMware Odyssey swag or prizes to award to the winning team!

Getting Started:

Now, once you have the prep work down, lets form teams and design the game format based on the amount of time you have allotted.

Team Formation:

Start by having all individuals form teams and create their team names. Help them along the way and try to keep each team small (we recommend no more than 6 participants per team). Once all teams have been finalized, write the team names and members down on the whiteboard. We noticed this can take a while, but it’s on our roadmap to automate.

Game Format:

Most Odyssey games run for 30 minutes, so we’d recommend you set aside 1 hour per game. Here’s an estimated timeline of events:

• First 15 minutes: introduce VMware Odyssey, create user accounts, and make sure all players are ready. *If you have a special Game Code, make sure people use that instead of the one within the lab manual.*
• Next 30 minutes: Game Time – Choose one Odyssey lab at a time, and let the games begin. We’d recommend starting with a Beginner level Odyssey lab to warm the players up, and then move into more Advanced topics if time permits.
• Last 15 minutes: Once participants begin completing all the Odyssey lab tasks, they should walk around and help other players that are falling behind. VMware Odyssey is all about having fun and working together!

As the team’s race to rank first on the leaderboard, be sure to keep track of all their completion times. As all of the players on team’s progress through the tasks, continue recording the team names, players, and time it took to complete. At Electronic Arts, we wrote down the team names and scores on the whiteboard and went from there.

Once all teams have finished, add all of the scores together manually (this can also take some time). The team that was able to finish all the tasks in the least amount of time is the grand prize winner!

Pro Tips:

#1: If you have any swag (i.e. t-shirts, jackets, backpacks), award the winning team with first selection.

#2: If you find most individuals are stuck on a certain task, be sure to encourage them to use other resources (i.e. Google) to help solve the answer.

#3: If you don’t want your last name on the leaderboard, you can edit it out on our VMware Learning Platform Profile (lab portal) and refresh your browser. See image below:

All in all, the whole goal of Odyssey is to have fun while sharpening your skills.  Have fun!

Email hol-feedback – at – vmware.com to receive a unique Game Code for a customer leaderboard!

Our NEW VMware Odyssey, gamification of Hands-on Labs, hosted its very first Hackathon at the Electronic Arts Summit on September 18^th, 2019. We took an odyssey ALL the way to Vancouver, Canada at the EA Vancouver Studio to challenge the participants on our VMware portfolio.

Before kicking off the Hackathon, we had teams of three form on the spot. There were 12 players and four teams created. Our four teams were named Disaster Area, DevOps, Wirecutters, and the Wookies.

The teams were challenged with successfully completing each task within the Odyssey Lab in the least amount of time to rank on our leaderboard.

The competition kicked off with three rounds on the following topics:

1. vSAN
2. vSphere Performance
3. vRealize Operations

The teams dove deep into each task, in hopes to rank #1 on the leaderboard.

After all three rounds were completed, we had our grand prize winner! Congratulations to the Disaster Area team (Patrick, Andrew, and Robert) on finishing all three Odyssey labs in less than 40 minutes. Enjoy the prizes, swag, and most importantly, the bragging rights!

We even had a custom Electronic Arts Summit – Odyssey Hackathon Leaderboard with all the players and their rankings!

Interested to see where you would rank on our global leaderboard? Take our Odyssey labs now and find out! https://labs.hol.vmware.com/HOL/catalogs/catalog/1416

Thank you to all the players that made our very first VMware Odyssey Hackathon a success! A big shout out and thank you as well to Electronic Arts for giving us the opportunity to host our first Odyssey Hackathon at an AWESOME location and to our sponsor, Intel, who helped us make Odyssey happen!

What a week! VMware Odyssey, sponsored by Intel, was a HUGE success. Contestants and viewers gathered around the Odyssey stage to witness the first official launch of the program at VMworld 2019 US.

RECAP – What is VMware Odyssey?

VMware Odyssey, sponsored by Intel, is the gamification of Hands-on Labs, designed to engage, challenge, and showcase user’s expertise across the VMware portfolio. Last week at VMworld US, we offered two types of Odyssey labs:

1. Game Mode – Individual VMworld attendees could take an Odyssey lab in game mode at one of our desktop stations to compete with other players around the world!  The global Odyssey leaderboard displayed the top players with the quickest times.
2. Tournament Mode -Teams come together in a tournament setting to compete against each other in rounds. The winning teams continued to the finals to play for 1^st and 2^nd place.

VMware Odyssey – Game Mode

Outside official Odyssey tournament hours, our stage was open to anyone who wanted to try our brand-new Odyssey ‘Game Mode’ labs. Customers came to experience a taste of the ‘Odyssey Game Lab’. Participants raced against the clock to complete the given lab tasks as fast as they could to rank on the global leaderboard. Some initial customer feedback is included below:

• “Great experience. This would be a good way to expand on VCP certification and have a lab setup to test the skills of a certification.”
• “Fun concept. Challenging enough to be fun but not impossible. Leading but not spoon fed. Really well done; enjoyed this. Thanks!”

The VMware Odyssey Tournament Begins

Ready, Set, Go!

On Tuesday, all the participants delved into Round 1 with great scrutiny, trying to figure out the correct configurations. The excitement was almost tangible as teams huddled together to help each other in figuring out the correct configurations for the tasks.

After the first two rounds finished, the top 12 teams progressed to the semifinals on Wednesday, August 29^th. Each round covered a brand-new VMware product topic.  To kick off the final rounds, our CEO, Pat Gelsinger, cheered on the teams, and even gave them back rubs for good luck!

The top six teams from the semifinals advanced to the final round and competed for first and second place. After some breathtaking minutes we had a winning team, the Meteors!

Congratulations again to our Odyssey grand prize winners – the Meteors! Well done Dmitri,
Ben, and Nick! Check out Ben’s blog post on his experience with Odyssey: https://www.murben.net/2019/09/vmworld-2019-hol-odyssey-competition-we.html

Thank you again to everyone who participated in or cheered on VMware Odyssey at VMworld US last week. A special shout out and thank you as well to our sponsor, Intel, for making our first official VMworld Odyssey Tournament possible!

Check out our Facebook page for more photos: https://www.facebook.com/vmwarehol/ 

What’s Next?

Our next stop is VMworld 2019 Barcelona.  We can’t wait to see you there!  In the meantime, check out the VMware Odyssey website to learn more: http://odyssey.vmware.com/

About Kate Lee – 

Kate Lee is a Technical Marketing Manager (Support Engineer) of the Hands-on Labs Team and the only member residing in Asia. She loves supporting day-to-day customers and employees with their Hands-on Labs experience and is also engaged in supporting Odyssey.

Make your mark at Hands-on Labs VMworld 2019 US! Over the last 12 months, our team has been working tirelessly to create a meaningful experience for you. This year we have 83 new labs across all of our products and several never-before-seen offerings.

What’s New?

We are excited to be introducing several new programs this year.

• VMware Odyssey™ by Hands-on Labs: We are taking Hands-on Labs to the next level by adding gamification elements to the labs you know and love. Showcase your technical expertise in our Hands-on Labs environment across the VMware portfolio of products. Compete through rounds and go head to head with teams to be crowned the grand prize winner! Register now and become the Odyssey Champion!

Are you ready to be crowned this year’s Odyssey Champion? Limited availability, Register today, claim your spot and jacket!

• Partner Labs: Test drive our newest partner products and solutions with Hands-on Labs. At VMworld 2019 US, we will offer many new partner labs including Dell, AWS, and more.
• Hands-on Labs Augmented Reality: Augmented Reality will be available within the VMworld App throughout the Hands-on Labs area. Discover the Expert-Led Workshops, Command Center Wall, Hands-on Labs Tours, and VMware Odyssey.

Labs That Fit Your Schedule

Take any lab, anywhere, anytime. VMware Hands-on Labs are flexible to fit your schedule. Here are a few options available at VMworld:

• Self-Paced Labs: Explore VMware’s latest products by taking a Hands-on Lab on your own time and at your own pace.
  • At a traditional workstation: Come into the Hands-on Lab room and we will provide you with a seat, a screen and a keyboard.
  • Bring in your own device (BYOD): Find a spot in our open HOL Connect (info on VMworld website) to start a lab.

• Expert-Led Workshops: Try Hands-on Labs in an engaging, instructional environment with lab creators and experts in the room with you! This year we increased the number of workshops available AND added two workshops in Spanish and Portuguese. 

What about Prizes?

 This year our prizes are better than ever! Here are a few ways you can qualify to win:

• The CloudCred, Hands-on Labs Great Labs Game: Score your CloudCred points for EVERY lab and workshop. Follow the QR code at the end of your lab or session for CloudCred points to win BIG PRIZES!! 
• VMware Odyssey™ by Hands-on Labs: Come to VMware Odyssey during VMworld and enter for a chance to win prizes and Odyssey swag.

We can’t wait to see you there!

About Olivia Reyes

Olivia Reyes is a Content Delivery Specialist and the newest member of the Hands-on Labs team! She is excited to drive innovation and automation across current processes, products and solutions for all things Hands-on Labs.

Have you ever wished there was a fun and quick way to learn about a VMware product and its features? If your answer is yes, we are happy to introduce VMware Odyssey a new approach to evaluating VMware products.

How? We have added gamification elements to the labs you know and love. VMware Odyssey are short 15-minute tasks that challenge your knowledge and expertise across the VMware portfolio.

How did it all get started?

It is in VMware’s DNA to push the boundaries, we launched an in-person competition during vForum Singapore 2018. The results were amazing! We had a total of 52 customers and partners, forming 18 teams of 2-3 people competition against each other. Within the teams, there was a great amount of teamwork as participants worked together to complete the required given tasks.  There were a lot of interactions with the audience as they cheered for their favorite teams and friends. Click here to read more

How has it evolved?

The Hands-on Labs team has been working tirelessly to grow and scale the program in-person and online. For the vForum Singapore event all the validation was done manually; participants completed tasks and lab staff checked to make sure they were done correctly. This did not give us much room to scale, so over the past 6 months, we have been developing a fully automated game engine that will automatically check that a task was completed correctly.

Odyssey is created using VMware’s Hands-on Labs environment with customized manuals created specifically to test your technical knowledge and expertise of VMware products. Once you complete a task you get instant feedback on your progress. You can form a team and go head to head against the clock to reach the highest ranking on the leaderboard.

Watch Video to Learn More

What’s next…?

We are happy to announce we are bringing the fun and excitement to VMworld 2019! Come and join the fun in San Francisco August 25-29 and Barcelona November 4-7, register at www.vmworld.com!

Stay tuned for our next blog with details about our upcoming in-person events. Please leave your comments and feedback to learn more.

Lightning Labs are short 30-minute, concentrated modules of our Hands-On Labs that are designed to maximize your time. Simply put, they are the fastest and easiest way to learn about core product features broken down to bite-sized actions.

These evaluations are FREE, easy to access thru our Lighting Lab Catalogue and up and running on your browser in minutes, NO INSTALLATION required.

Simply choose the lab you’d like to test drive and click on the Start Lab button.

Now you are ready to dive in and evaluate the features and functionality of VMware products. It’s that simple.

But don’t take my word for it, listen to the experts:

Got 30 minutes? Try one now!

If English is not your preferred language, you will be pleased to know that our 2019 Hands-on Lab manuals have been localized to serve our global audience. Click here for instructions on how to change your language in the Hands-on Labs portal.

Let us know what you think of our Lighting Labs. Carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

We know your time is valuable so we have been working on identifying the best way you can learn more about VMware products in small segments of time.

How? With the development of Lightning Labs.

What are Lightning Labs?

Lightning Labs are the fastest and easiest way to test-drive the full technical capabilities of VMware products. These evaluations are free, up and running on your browser in minutes, and require no installation. We have broken down the content of a lab into small “bite-sized” sections that allow you to learn about a core product feature in 30-minutes.

Explore Horizon 7, the leading platform for virtual desktops and apps.  Discover the integration between Workspace ONE and SaaS applications, and learn about Workspace ONE Unified Endpoint Management. Take one or both of these free 30-minute labs and be entered into a prize draw to win an Apple Watch.

To find out more, click here Lightning Hands-on Labs Competition

Lightning Labs must be completed in full and taken between 2nd April – 2nd May 2019*.

The winner must be a UK resident and all participants must agree to the terms and conditions* of the contest when signing up for the lab.

Full terms and conditions* can be found here

Learn more by watching this video:

Excited about VMworld 2018? We are too. That is why this year VMworld Begins With You!

For the first time at VMworld Las Vegas, on August 26 through August 30, the Hands-on Labs will be live streaming Hands-on Labs ON AIR on Facebook Live and YouTube Live.

It is in VMware’s DNA to always innovate and try new things.

In building out the Hands-on Labs ON AIR program, the team made sure that both in-person and online attendees have the opportunity to be part of the magic. That is why the live stream will be included as a key component of the Hands-on Labs experience.

Join our host, Sandy Visoso, part of the Hands-on Labs team, for a jam-packed series of live streaming material.

Below is a glimpse of the type of content that will be live streaming during the event.

Opening Day Highlights

Start the day with a run-down of the key activities that will be happening throughout the Hands-on Labs room.

Opening Day ON AIR Schedule:

• Monday, August 27th, 2:00-2:30pm PST

• Tuesday, August 28th, 1:00-2:30pm PST

• Wednesday, August 29th, 2:00-2:30pm PST

• Thursday, August 30th, 3:00-2:30pm PST

Hear from the Experts 

Engage with lab creators and engineers as they share their experience and details of their favorite Hands-on Labs modules.

Hear from the Experts ON AIR Schedule:

• Daily, August 27th-30th, 4:00-4:15 pm PST

Expert-Led Workshops

Live stream the Expert-Led Workshops and get exclusive access to VMware product experts in an engaging instructional environment.

Expert-Led Workshop ON AIR Live Schedule:

• Sunday, August 26th, 2:30-4:00 pm PST: VMware NSX Data Center for vSphere – Operations & Troubleshooting Workshop

• Monday, August 27th, 5:00-6:00 pm PST: vRealize Automation – Doing More with Custom Forms Workshop

• Tuesday, August 29th, 5:00-6:00 pm PST: VMware vSAN Sizing Workshop

• Wednesday, August 30th, 10:30 am-12:00 pm PST: What’s New in VMware vSphere 6.7 Workshop

Hands-on Labs Tours

Get a glimpse of the Hands-on Labs room, and a behind-the-scenes peek at what it takes to run a Hands-on lab.

Hands-on Labs Tour ON AIR Schedule:

• Wednesday, August 30th, 3:00-3:30 pm PST

Make sure to follow the action from any location and interact in real-time by following the Hands-on Labs Facebook and YouTube accounts.

Remember if you aren’t able to join the live stream you can always view the recording on our social channels at a later time.

Want more information? Check out these two videos on VMworld Hands-on Labs 2018.

Tips for Attending VMworld Hands-on Labs 2018

What’s New with 2018 VMworld Hands-on Labs