Storage Monkeys

The title of this post was my first thought when I received the invitation to join the Gestalt IT Tech Field Day.

To start off from the beginning, I'm a regular reader over at Gestalt IT. "So what is Gestalt IT" you may wonder now. Well, on their website you will find the following:

We are collecting the best analysis and commentary from leaders in the fields of virtualization, networking, storage, and desktop engineering.

...

We work with independent experts, bloggers, and writers to generate content focused on IT infrastructure topics. Many of our articles and posts are syndicated from the blogs of their authors, meaning that they select their best and most relevant work and transmit it to us using an RSS feed, just like Google Reader and other feed readers use. Posts are then formatted and edited for publication here.

So, you could call it an agregate of posts that are collected and submitted by people who know their stuff in things IT.

So, I read that they were organizing something called a "Tech Field Day", which is basically an event where they invite bloggers from all over the place to come to San Francisco and see and test new products by various vendors. You can use the stuff they introduce, punch holes in their product and exchange ideas and opinions.

The big difference to a regular conference? It's not sponsored by a big company. The main point is not profit. The people there are free to say what they want and can write about the things that they find interesting.

So, after reading about it I asked the initiator of this Idea, Stephen Foskett, when we would be seeing something similar in Europe. Shorlty after I received a short tweet from him with the question if I would consider attending. Now, having the quote from the field day website in mind, namely:

The following industry thought leaders have tentatively agreed to attend

I was pretty confident he just sent his tweet out to the wrong person. But actually he did mean to talk to me. Can you imagine that?

Anyway, after confirming that I would be more than happy to attend I am now on the list as it appears and will probably be in San Jose, CA on the 12^th and 13^th of November and you can expect some blog posts about what I will see there and if we have some WiFi going on you will also see some tweets.

We will be seeing products introduced by:

• 3PAR
• Data Robotics, Inc.
• MDS Micro
• Nirvanix
• Ocarina Networks
• Xsigo

• Bhava communications
• TechValidate
• Truth in IT
• VMware