[Vms.sig-hu] Highlights from the OpenVMS Advanced boot camp ok for External (fwd)

[Fodor Zsuzsa]

---------- Továbbított levél ----------
Dátum: Thu, 23 Jun 2005 13:49:43 -0400
Feladó: Skonetski, Susan <susan.skonetski at hp.com>
Címzett: Skonetski, Susan <susan.skonetski at hp.com>
Tárgy: Highlights from the OpenVMS Advanced boot camp ok for External

Dear Friends,

I just wanted to give you some highlights from the OpenVMS Boot Camp
which was held the week of June 5th.  It goes without saying the
audience appreciated the excellent speakers both internal to HP and 
Dave
Robinson VP from South Eastern Freight Lines and Geoff Lowney Fellow
from Intel.  It was easy to tell because everyone was excited and happy
about what they were learning.  Attendee feedback is attached.

Week Prior

We did run classes the week prior to the boot camp week of May 30th.
The Alpha Crash Dump class went Tuesday through Saturday 11 hours 
a day,
Rob Eulenstein from the Colorado customer Call Center was the
instructor.  The feedback was very positive, Rob has said he is willing
to do this again next year with hopefully Integrity information as well.
We also had a great TCP/IP session on Wed that was full, the TCP/IP 
team
did a great job on pulling this together which everyone enjoyed, we did
get the feedback that this should be two days instead of one since 
there
is so much information. There was also an Oracle Rdb forum on 
Thursday
and Friday.  When I went over to the Oracle building it was standing
room only, it looked about 60 people to me.  I did put the Oracle Rdb
forum materials on the boot camp share for everyone. 

Boot Camp

Just some metrics for you.  We achieved our goal of 200 attendees we 
had
zero no shows, so if people said they were attending the event they
showed up.  We did have about 17 people cancel prior to the event but 
we
also had walk-ins. Only 24% of the audience had attended the boot-
camp
in 2004. Participation was from 21 countries. Every day we started at
7:45 AM except Thursday when we started at 7:30 and every day was 
full
of technology and fun, friends, knowledge and sharing.

We ran into a small problem loading up our 18-wheel truck and the
problem was not everything fit so we could not actually close the door.
Thank goodness it's a short trip.  On Friday we unloaded the truck
thanks so much for everyone that helped not only on Friday but all
weekend (Tim, Matt, Martin, Colin and all the folks I forgot)

Registration started on Sunday morning, everyone received their 
badges
and invoices to save problems with their expenses later thanks to 
Stacie
Hemann.

Months in advance work is done with the hotel to make sure that rooms
are set up and meals are ordered that work is done by Kathy Coan and 
Dee
Libertine and they did a great job on-site.

On Monday morning Colin Butcher from the UK received the John 
Wisniewski
Spirit Award. This award is given to a member of the VMS Community 
who
most shows the same spirit as our friend John Wisniewski who passed 
away
last year.  John had passion, integrity and excitement to communicate
about VMS and technology and it is truly a pleasure to work with people
of the same caliber.  Ann McQuaid gave Colin this award after her
keynote on Monday morning.

Monday evening was VMS Story time, many thanks to the celebrity 
panel of
Andy Goldstein, Al Meier, Chris Brown, Melanie Hubbard, Bill Clemmons,
Dan Klein and everyone who participated in telling stories.  Probably my
favorites were when folks actually had to unplug the machines to get
them to stop.

Tuesday evening was the Engineering roundhouse which is coordinated 
by
Catherine Ward, the engineers brought their machines from their offices
and we had discussion tables, it was a time to talk informally and see
what was going on.  This was also the time to give away the Customer
Awards as determined by the customers.  If you remember I had sent 
mail
asking you to send mail on who you think has helped you the most, you
selected Ken Farmer for his work on www.openvms.org and Gerrit 
Woertman
for all his work in the Netherlands. 

Because the Boot camp is designed to be flexible we did need to run a
Introductory VMS class, based on audience request that Tom Moran 
taught,
this class was full.  

Wednesday the Boot Camp attendees surprised me with a lovely gift of 
a
blue topaz necklace and earrings, and it is not often that I am
speechless and surprised. Thank you all very much, I have been 
wearing
the necklace just about everyday.

For the first time at an OpenVMS Advanced Technical Boot Camp we held
OpenVMS Certification training, with many thanks to Doug Dickerson.
This was very well received by the attendees.  We were able to have 
the
tests available for only about 29 hours. In that time 71 certification
tests were delivered there are now 21 new VMS CSA's and 10 new VMS 
CSE's

Warren Sander our web master not only for the boot camp but for the 
VMS
web external web site in general. Will have all the presentations
available to the 2005 boot camp attendees and the HP folks soon.

Thursday evening we had a Partners roundhouse with approximately 40
business partners, this evening is coordinated by Signe Maximous.  Both
the Partners and the Boot Camp attendees and Engineering group had 
a
great time.  There are so many applications, tools and services to know
about this is really a great way to do it.

Friday was only a half day, but we still managed to pack a lot in before
we had to tear down everything before we had to set back up for
Ambassadors on Sunday. 

HP corporate sent evaluations to the attendees 123 of the 200 
responded
with an official rating of 4.6 out of a possible 5.0 
  
Next Year for your planning purposes

Next Year we have planned for the boot camp to be the week of May 
21 -
starting on Sunday May 21-26 the cost will $1495

I would like to thank the core Boot Camp Team, all the speakers the
engineers because without them we would not have VMS and most
importantly the customers because without them non of us would have 
a
job.

Warm Regards,
Sue Skonetski
Boot Camp Program Manager

------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------
Attendee feedback - there is more but I do not want to over do it - this
is not the official HP feedback this is just via email


The hands-on storage session was amazingly educational. That 3 hour
block almost paid for itself. I have read much about managing the EVA
storage units, but have nor been able to actually get my hands on a
system. I learned more in the three hour block than many, many hours 
of
reading. It helped that we had a good group -- two from InterSystems,
Ron(?) from Detroit Medical Center -- all of us experienced and
interested in trying more than was in the exercise. GREAT session.

Hey this was great! My first boot camp, even though I have been 
involved
with VMS for a good part of my life. I have made a personal commitment
to attend again, even if it's on my own dime.

Lock Manager sessions with Bruce Ellis. All I can say about this is
stimulating and energizing! One has to wonder how can one person 
(who
does not work for HP) store that much detailed information about
something like the Lock Manager...but then there quite a few people at
OpenVMS Engineering like him.

This 2005 VMS boot camp was probably the best event of its kind I have
ever attended. Many years ago I actually wrote a memo to my boss 
that a
conference I had attended was not worth the time. This event is
completely opposite. I would recommend any VMS site to send 
someone.
The convenience of sessions in the same hotel is priceless. Not having
to wander the area for meals is a major time saver. And the quality and
subject of the sessions is definitely the high light of the boot camp.

Access to engineers, another highlight. For example, I sat with Keith
Parris and discussed an upcoming large GS1280 system installation and
migration at a Cerner site with which I am assisting. Keith validated my
deliberate plan to minimize simultaneous changes, and made a couple 
of
good suggestions. Had a couple of fun conversations with Guy Peleg, 
and
I really appreciate his energy. I also saw but was not able to talk with
Kevin Jenkins, another of the people I have met a few times along the
way and are highly appreciated. 

The boot camp has paid for itself many times over. If all we got out of
it was the meeting of Dave it would have paid for itself. I have now
made contact with him, and we are hoping to crib some of what he's 
done
and put additional apps on VMS. We have also started to look at
CommunigatePro, thus removing the need for us to move to Exchange 
for
our mail services, this was again as a result of conversations at the
boot camp. On top of that we got a lot of technical info from the
sessions, some was new and some was the reminders we needed to 
ensure
that good practices are introduced and adhered to. Money and time well
spent. (Don't forget we come from the UK so was more money and time 
than
for most, but well worth it.)

Certification testing I did not plan on it, but was able to take (and
pass) two of the three tests available at the symposium. The access to
the testing was a very nice surprise. I believe the tests met their goal
of being challenging and testing experience over "book knowledge." 
And,
as I said to Mr. Dickerson, I would probably make the tests harder.

The OpenVMS boot camp was the best use of my training dollars/time of
any HP training I have taken to date. It just keeps getting better each
time I attend. Keep up the great work.

The boot camp event itself was excellent & even with the expensive
airfare from the UK more than constituted a return on investment. I'd
have considered it a major success to simply have access to the
Engineers for a week, let alone having them give presentations and 
hints
& kinks. You can spend considerably more money on a course with only 
a
single 'instructor'; this boot camp gave us the complete spectrum of
experts. Not only that, but to have additional engineers (such as Andy
Goldstein) and senior staff such as MJ, Paul Lacombe and Chris Brown
there mans the event simply can't be beaten. This must really be the
definition of 'value for money'. Finally, offering free VMS
certification was the icing on the cake. To have more certified people
out there can only be a good thing.

- the hands-on sessions were excellent, particularly the B101 (booting
Itanium) with it's well done lab guides.

- the performance-related sessions (I224 and I219) were a little bit
crowded, so a bigger room would be nice for next time.
 
I am extremely pleased with the boot camp technical content and its
administration. As someone who has attended many Symposia, I found 
it to
be the  best
technical event that I have been at in years and look forward to joining
you and the VMS engineers next year. As a professional consultant, all
time spent away from my clients is expensive in lost time and services.
I must say that the boot camp certainly made up in value for this lost
revenue.


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