E2EVC Epic Amsterdam – Trip Report

This was my first time attending an E2EVC (Experts to Experts virtualization conference).  Liquidware has attended and presented at prior events, however this was my first E2EVC and I’m glad I attended.

I arrived in Amsterdam from Chicago on Thursday morning – a little tired to say the least, but fear not, I ran to the first coffee station I spotted and ordered a morning perk up.  My coworker Morteza, arranged for my transportation from Schiphol airport to the hotel and as I expected the room was’t ready yet.  That’s OK, a quick trip to the WC and I changed and was shuttled over to the Liquidware office.  There I was greeted by Morteza in the restaurant on the main floor where I spotted a cheese sandwich that I would later order for lunch.  For now, we headed up the lift to our office suites and Morteza took me though a day in the life of LW.NL – how nice.

After the office tour, we ate lunch on the outdoor patio, then Morteza and I headed over to the ITQ office to meet up with Johan van Amersfoort (aka the Bearded VDI Junkie) and engage in a lightboard session.  Of course when we arrived we were greeted with another coffee, which was perfect since I was a little tired from the sleepless flight.  We met a couple of pleasant VIPs and then sat down and spoke for a bit in a cool hangout area.  Next, we proceeded upstairs to a very cool custom built recording studio with an amazing lightboard setup. Johan asked me a few questions about keeping profiles, apps and data managed in a mixed environment and I answered how Liquidware decouples key components of the desktop, redeploying and managing them across different windows delivery methods (Physical, VDI, RSDH, DaaS).  It was an honor to do this session and I look forward to another one in the future if ITQ will have me again.  As we were headed out the door, I noticed ITQ had developers on staff able to make custom connectors and applications for clients.  ITQ has the knowledge and resources to implement all sorts of projects, including hybrid workspaces and cloud-native applications too.   I also had a sneak peek at Johan’s new EUC focused book, which looks informative, well laid out, and is due out soon.

For my first night in Amsterdam, Morteza took me over to Mr. Porter Steakhouse,  a trendy and upscale steakhouse near Dam Square.  I had an amazing beef short rib which I highly recommend.  If you like tender beef on the bone which pulls off with a fork, you will not be disappointed.  There were many beautiful people and views on the outside terrace which overlooked the city.  Definitely a must visit when you’re near the city center, but do make reservations days early or you will be saddened and hungry as you’re turned away.

 

 

Friday morning we grabbed a Starbucks at my request and headed over to the Volkshotel where the E2EVC event was being held.  I was reminded that outside drinks were not allowed, but I made sure to tip well when I ordered my breakfast snack and was allowed to keep my drink this time.
Today there was to be about 180 of us in a central room where the presentations were held.  As the event kicked off, we were updated with a change to the schedule for the day.  It turned out that one of the presenters at the 2:20 slot today, would not make it and my Saturday session was bumped swapped and now to be delivered today if I was OK with that.  Of course I was totally good to present to the entire audience today, since my scheduled on Saturday would have been one of two simultaneous sessions at the 10:50 slot.

 

 

My presentation focused on how we all can help clients protect their investments by modernizing their processes, harvesting user persona, applications, data and policy – elevating these key resources to 1^st class citizens and making them portable and visible so they can be re-deployed on any Windows delivery platform.  I also showed demonstration of 2 users logging into an RDS hosted session on GPC (Google cloud platform) and loading their persona, applications, data and policy dynamically from GCS (Google cloud storage).  This was a never before publicly seen demo that I was proud to show the experts in the room.  Loading Photoshop on a desktop session that had NO Photoshop installed was awesome, especially since it was layered directly from GCS, ie NO SMB file shares to manage and scale.  What was really amazing was how fast it loaded, which goes to show you the power of using GCP and GCS together vs. a connection to privately hosted SMB file share or worse, a VPN back to your corporate network.  I spoke of how we need to modernize traditional processes and break away from using checkbox solutions tied to the delivery platform so clients could treat any Windows delivery mechanism as a commodity thereby using whatever is the fastest, or most secure, or least expensive or most capable of delivering more content types. During the talk, I noticed the audience in almost a constant affirmative head nod which was nice to see from my point of view.  My session went the full 40 minutes and afterwards, I had number of experts thank me for the talk and immediately add me to their linked in network.  At this time we also gave away a very neat solution to track devices like your mobile phone, wallet or purse called a TileMate.  I’m sure all who received one are enjoying this techie gift as it had the sleek looking Liquidware logo on it, so we couldn’t go wrong!

 

 

The rest of Friday, Saturday and Sunday were packed with sessions.  This was an end to end informative event which can be overwhelming if you’re used conferences where the speakers talk marketing speak about things to come.   See this one example below:

There is actually so much more that comes to mind, but you really need to experience these things yourself, like the Grandfather experts who bring a wealth of credibility to this event since the inception, Centurion experts who have attended for over 10 events and the no BS Q&A during the sessions.  The one thing that I had never seen before during a session, is the amount of beer and shots delivered to the panel speakers who answered or audience members who asked questions.  It was all in good fun though and everyone was openly communicating and not commercial or stuffy.  This was truly an experts to experts conference with a nice friendship bond between all.

Between the sessions, I was able to speak with consultants who have implemented our solutions and take back some suggestions for our product team.  I also spoke with others who have keen interest to startup a partnership with us.

On Friday night after the event, E2EVC treated us all to burgers at a restaurant across the street.  On Saturday night E2EVC again treated us to a canal cruise though Amsterdam where I hung out with two very knowledgeable and pleasant people, Eugene Kalayev from Control Up and Matjaz Znidar from UniCredit Bank Slovenija. While on the cruise I snapped a few photos of Amsterdam and afterwards a few of us grabbed a drink at a local bar on the river.

 

 

 

 

Around midnight I walked back to my hotel and on the way I stopped off and managed to squeeze in one of my favorite passions. I snapped a stunning photo of The Royal Amsterdam Palace which actually consists of 7 individual photos at various exposures combined together into an HDR composite.

My session was recorded and will be available online soon.  Until then, I have included a link to a pre-recorded version of the session that I did ahead of time for the practice and in case I couldn’t find my way to the event Saturday morning.

Click here for my preso and demo – 1st unveiled at this E2EVC Epic Amsterdam conference: David Bieneman Liquidware E2EVC Dry Run with Embedded GCS/GCP Demo

I look forward to attending another E2EVC and I would suggest if you’re looking for the best of the best consultants for a project, speak to the people who attend and present at the E2EVC conferences, you won’t be disappointed.

 

For more information on E2EVC or to get in contact with an E2EVC specialist, contact Alex Cooper via Direct Message at @E2EVC or visit http://www.e2evc.com.