In previous years at VMworld, the Birds of a Feather (BoFs) sessions were tucked away in the lunch room and at odd times. BoFs are informal sessions of people who share a general interest — the term may go back to the sixties. If you went to the BoFs, they were usually really interesting as you compared notes with other attendees and actual live VMware engineers and product managers. (Don’t forget that the VMware folks will also be at the Genius Bar on the main Solutions Exchange floor, by the way.)
This year, we’re trying something different. There’s a "Virtual Plaza" outside the Solutions Exchange with 7 track lounges. On Tuesday and Wednesday, there will a set of prescheduled BoFs — the same schedule each day. They were available in the Session Builder, but are open to everybody on a drop-in basis as well. They’re right there close by the sessions and should be well-worth going to, but they’re pretty unstructured and are about whatever discussions you’d like to generate. There will be VMware technical staff at the BoFs.
Since the Content Catalog is a bit, um, social media unfriendly, and I can’t just link to a page listing the BoFs if you’re not logged in, I’ll reprint the BoF schedule here:
| Tues & Weds | Session | Topic | Track Lounge |
| 10:30AM | BOF100 | Windows on the Mac with Fusion | Virtualization 101 |
| BOF101 | Virtualizing Desktops in the Enterprise – Opportunities and Challenges for VDI | Desktop Virtualization | |
| BOF102 | High Availability | Business Continuity | |
| BOF103 | Installation/Configuration/Upgrade | Planning & Operations | |
| BOF104 | Virtual Machine Provisioning and Change Management | Automation | |
| BOF105 | Virtual Appliances and (V)Services | Enterprise Applications | |
| BOF106 | Networking/Converged Networks | Technology & Architecture | |
| 11:30AM | BOF107 | Licensing Your Apps for the Virtual World and How Virtual Appliances Can Help | Virtualization 101 |
| BOF108 | Application Virtualization – Co-existing with Desktop Virtualization | Desktop Virtualization | |
| BOF109 | Disaster Recovery | Business Continuity | |
| BOF110 | Performance and Benchmarking | Planning & Operations | |
| BOF111 | Managing Lab Infrastructure with VMware Lab Manager | Automation | |
| BOF112 | Virtualizing Business Applications (SAP, Oracle E-Business, etc) | Enterprise Applications | |
| BOF113 | Security | Technology & Architecture | |
| 2:00PM | BOF114 | Virtualization for Administrators, Software Publishers, and Developers | Virtualization 101 |
| BOF116 | SDKs , APIs and Toolkits | Technology & Architecture | |
| BOF117 | Application Release Management with Stage Manager | Automation | |
| 3:00PM | BOF118 | Proof Points: How to Convince Your Executives to Go Virtual (Sharing Battlewounds on Getting Budget and Approvals) | Virtualization 101 |
| BOF119 | Client Side Desktop Virtualization (Workstation, Fusion, Player, ACE) | Desktop Virtualization Networking Lounge | |
| BOF120 | Storage/SANs in a Virtual Environment | Business Continuity | |
| BOF121 | Cloud Computing | Technology & Architecture | |
| BOF122 | Operationalizing your Virtual Infrastructure | Planning & Operations | |
| BOF123 | Test and Development w/Lab Manager & Workstation | Automation | |
| BOF124 | Virtualizing Email and Messaging Applications (MS Exchange, Lotus, etc) | Enterprise Applications | |
| 4:00PM | BOF125 | Designing and Deploying an Enterprise Desktop Solution | Desktop Virtualization |
| BOF126 | Server Consolidation and Scalability | Planning & Operations | |
| BOF127 | Virtualizing Databases and Application Servers | Enterprise Applications |
Something for everyone, don’t you think? The other interesting thing that’s going on with the BoFs is that the rest of the 4pm slots and all the slots on Thursday are open for ad hoc BoFs. If you don’t see a topic you’d like to talk about, just drop by the lounges when you get in to Vegas and sign up to create one. (You are also signing up to be the de facto BoF leader, so you actually should show up to said BoF, OK?) We’ll post the schedule at the show.
