DHPA TechFest 2018

I was invited to talk at the DHPA TechFest 2018. The DHPA foundation is a collaboration between market-leading hosting and cloud providers in The Netherlands. DHPA TechFest is not your regular IT event. It is called an IT festival by the organization with the tagline “work hard, play hard”. Besides several technical tracks, the festival also offers VR escape rooms, music and last but not least, the Dutch Championship Server Throw (yes, this is actually a contest to see how far you can throw a 1U rackserver). The festival is hosted at the golf course in Naarderbos. The location was simply breathtaking!

They really succeeded in creating a more informal festival mood. Between sessions some lazy house music could be overheard over the speakers. This picture from last year’s edition  gives a nice impression of the venue:

My session at DHPA TechFest 2018

With the recent launch of the Managed Service Provider program for VMware Cloud on AWS, I thought this was the perfect opportunity to further introduce VMware Cloud on AWS to the Dutch service provider market. I guess the audience was 99% vendors and service providers so this turned out to be a perfect match.

Despite the very nice weather and the awesome outdoor location, my room was nicely filled and there was a good interaction with the audience. I got a couple of questions after finishing my presentation and to me, this is always a nice indicator that people were actually listening and interested. One thing that did strike me, is that I did not see a single person stare at his smartphone during my presentation. That was a welcome change! I still find it difficult to concentrate when the entire room seems lost in their smartphone, iPad or notebook. Kudos to the DHPA TechFest audience!

My DHPA TechFest 2018 Slidedeck

As soon as the DHPA TechFest organization publishes my slidedeck through their channels, I will also publish it here on my blog … so keep posted!