[Vms.sig-hu] OpenVMS Advanced Technical Boot Camp Trip Report - ok
for external (fwd)
Fodor Zsuzsa
fodor31 at freemail.hu
2006. Jún. 6., K, 07:49:59 CEST
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valamelyiktek...
---------- Továbbított levél ----------
Dátum: Sat, 3 Jun 2006 02:50:31 -0400
Feladó: Skonetski, Susan <susan.skonetski at hp.com>
Címzett: Skonetski, Susan <susan.skonetski at hp.com>
Tárgy: OpenVMS Advanced Technical Boot Camp Trip Report - ok for
external
Dear Folks,
I thought I would write a trip report for the Boot Camp, thank you very
much for all your help.
To me the Boot Camp is one of the highlights of the year. It's a lot of
work, but we have a great team of folks working together to plan and
deliver and make the customers happy and the Boot Camp would not
happen
with out this team. I have never been to Las Vegas so the
advertisement
what happens in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas sounds about right to
me.
So what happens at Boot Camp stays at Boot Camp (well mostly) since
it
is under non-disclosure there is much that can not be included in this
message since it going to so many people but I will include some
highlights that said this is around four pages long. Have folks seen
some of the reports on www.openvms.org? There are some small
snippets
and a few pictures. How do I give highlights? Well let's see I will
start with numbers.
We had a total of 190 registered and 189 showed up, which is pretty
good. The one person that did not show was a person from NH.
However
if you remember we had recently had a problem with flooding and he
had a
buffer overflow. For the actual Boot Camp we had folks from 22
countries come in Argentina ,Korea, Germany, England, Netherlands,
Switzerland, Singapore, Sweden, Belgium, Canada, Ireland, Austria,
France, Australia, Belgium, India, New Zealand, Spain, US, China, Japan,
Scotland)
There were 168 session
60% of the Audience were repeat attendees
40% were new
6 people were under 30 years old
Back to the story.
The week prior we hold free workshops for folks that can come in, it
makes it easier for folks to justify their travel and if we can offer
the classes why not. Rob Eulenstein who was in the Colorado call
center
and now works in MSE did a week long Crash Dump analysis class.
That is
a long class; 5 days about 9-10 hours a day, there were probably 10-12
students in that class. One of the cool parts about this week is that
we get to start seeing friends coming in early not just the customers
but folks from the group coming in from other parts of the world. It's
like a family reunion so we all get together at lunch. On Tuesday (I
was out on Monday) I got together with the Crash Dump class had
lunch
and took them on a tour of the ZK03-4 floor and lab. There was this
great woman in the class Cheryl who also collects DEC stuff so I
showed
her my collection at the boot camp. Officially the Crash Dump class
ended on Friday but Rob ran another session on Saturday as well. On
Wednesday of the seminar week the free porting workshop began that
John
Egolf ran that session had about 6-8 folks in it including one partner
that had 10million lines of Dibol code which she ported in the 3 days
(how cool is that). I can't give you many details because to tell the
truth I took the folks from the Crash Dump class there on Friday around
1 and just about everyone was done and had left. The third seminar
was
TCP/IP, this is a two day Thursday and Friday, it used to be one day but
attendees said it was to much information for one day so the TCP/IP
team
made it two day. This session uses A LOT of equipment and there were
about 15 attendees in this workshop. The students in this class have
real hands on and seemed to really enjoy this class. The equipment in
this session is also needed for the boot camp.
Some of the pre-work that had to be done which is kind of unique that
you would not know is that Kevin StGeorge who was on our team is an
electrician (good thing) we had a number of prototype machines running
VMS for an event on Tuesday evening. Which obviously needed power,
in
fact Kevin had to have a 60 foot long (220v) 3 inch diameter power
cord
made since the room we were in did not have anything close to what
we
needed. Or in another room (Larry and Tom's room) you are putting in
4
EVA's 5 Alphas and 5 Integrity's power might just become an issue so
this has to be worked before had. One of the things that we also have
to take into consideration is the network which is managed by Jim. This
network is both wired and wireless connecting all the rooms to a server
to get the presentations from the server to every room and for the
attendees to down load, works great, once you have the
presentations!
This also has to work for folks trying to do email and work back at the
office. The team tries to get all the done before we get on site, have
all the equipment everything planned out, we pack it and ship it over.
You also have to have the network provider working (which is not
always
the case) ;'( no matter how hard you work or plan, or floods, floods
will slow you down
Friday (May 19) - We had several shipments We will need to transport
equipment from Marlboro Ma and ZKO (VMS Engineering) to the
Sheraton and
we will have several trips to cover all the equipment and the skids of
materials heading over to the hotel. We need to empty out the trucks
and
store/hide everything, there is a prom at the hotel this evening (Prom =
teenage formal dance 500 teenagers and 220v bad mix). The only
exception is the certification room which must be set up so testing can
take place on the weekend. Tonight about 19 of us go out to dinner at
one of my favorite places and we have a wonderful time. Have you ever
noticed that with friends everything tastes better?
Saturday (May 20) - We set up today, there are so many people that
help,
all the rooms get wired for wireless are wired internet access and for a
speakers PC and a projector at a minimum those are the easy rooms.
There are extension cords, gaffers tape and cables everywhere and just
like a thousand events before you wonder if this will ever work knowing
in your heart it will because the team only knows how to succeed but
reason still can not believe it. Customers are stopping by every five
minutes for their hug and begging to be put to work so we do. They
are
helping me move things, taping cables, helping each other, helping us.
As the day goes one the noise gets a little louder the laughter a little
louder and you it gets happier and your heart lighter more of the family
is here. Amazing as the day goes on things fall into place the hands on
rooms look good, I do a room check, make some final changes its close
that's for sure. And on the lighter side the quilt is hung, the mug and
button display cases as well as my new displays are ready as well.
Tonight we have about 24 folks for dinner so Barry from the hotel will
take the van and we have a few cars. Before we go to the restaurant
we
stop by the HP office where there is a bar code on the wall so I can
take a picture of all the folks which came out very nice. After dinner
we talk for a long time in the bar with our friend.
Sunday (May 21) - We set up registration in the morning Warren the
web
master is making sure the presentations are ready for download by the
customers and assemble from all the rooms. We are going to open
registration at 10. Stacie is managing registration, Dee is doing hotel
logistics, Amanda (daughter) is helping with registration and also
giving folks VMS email accounts on VMS Secure Server when they log in.
This was pretty cool for the customers to see a 17 year old creating VMS
email accounts with no prior VMS experience (visit
https://trysecureserver.com/) its very cool. Registration was a 2 hour
panic followed by a half hour welcome session where we talked about
the
agenda and saw all the new folks. Sunday night 34 of us all went out
to
dinner together. In case you haven't noticed I don't like to see folks
eat alone unless they want to, so I invite them to join us.
Monday (May 22)- Breakfast is out at 6:30 (its boot camp) session
starts
at 7:45 with a welcome where we restated that the boot camp was
under
non-disclosure followed by a keynote by Ann McQuaid where she
discussed
OpenVMS strategic areas. Then as we would do every day we broke
into
sessions for 3 hours followed by lunch then three more hours then a
closing key note which was the OpenVMS Information Desk by Guy
Peleg,
Norm Lastovic and Christen Moser this was a very useful performance
gaining session after a 2 hour break folks were back at 7:30 for
OpenVMS
Magic. This is where customers tell stories and try to win prizes and
we had an excellent panel of judges consisting of;
Andy Goldstein (The Music Man) also providing the gong
Richard Bishop (SDAman)
Forrest Kenney (Mr. USB)
David Moore (VAXaNation)
Robert Deininger (Blade Runner)
Steve Hoffman (Wizard)
Robert Brooks (Virtual Rob)- Gong Master
There were aprox 25 customer stories told and it would have gone on
longer but I thought 10pm was late enough for the first full day.
Everyone that told a story received a gift and the top five receive a
special gift.
Tuesday (May 23) - Breakfast starts at 6:30, welcome at 7:45 Nick
Vanderzweep did the key note around HP's virtualization strategy. Nick
spent 3 days with the customers at the boot camp listening to them and
participating in the boot camp, normal procedure for the rest of the
day. PM Key note was Mary Jane Vazquez and Christen Moser with
detailed
OpenVMS Roadmaps. At 6pm we have the Partners Roundhouse which
is
organized by Signe Maximous and she does a wonderful job. This is a
wonderful evening when we have 35-40 partners (39 this time) and
they
have a 6ft table and they come and talk about what they do its not a
trade show but it is a chance for people to find out about a product and
a company. Amanda also sold CD's of the entire set of the Digital
Technical Journals on CD for $10. But with out a doubt the biggest
thing probably of the whole night was the fact that there was an area
of
the room that had been set aside for unannounced hardware (very
cool)
that the engineers had sent down. This area was so busy you could
not
get near it. Also we had invited some of the young people from the
Merrimack High School FIRST team (robotics team) to come which they
did.
They were a little surprised with the warmth with which they were
accepted but they are going to WPI (Worchester Poly Tech) next year
and
asked if they could come back next year. I said yes of course and have
asked my daughter to give them a VMS email account so they get to
know a
little bit about VMS, maybe tell their friends. Anyway, I have heard
from several of the Partners and they had a great time and the
customers
did as well. You can always tell the first timers to the Boot Camp by
now they are a little overwhelmed. But Wed is coming which is the free
night (right).
Wed (May24)(same story in the morning) 7:45 Welcome followed by a
Keynote by Chris Brown on why Integrity is the right choice for VMS
which is a great session. Sessions for the rest of the day. Keynote at
the end of the day is a longer one because we have two speakers Jim
Janetos from VMS engineering and Mark Potter from HP Blades where
we
talk about hardware. What I have not mentioned is that we have had
network problems because of recent flooding but Jim worked with the
network provider and helped fix them. As far as the free evening goes
folks have made plans to do all sorts of things mostly folks don't want
to sit. There is certification testing tonight, there is a pool
tournament that started out with four people and ended up with 18.
And
while we are talking about certification
Certification took place on Saturday, Sunday and Wed Evening
77 tests delivered
66% pass rate
21 new CSAs (Certified System Administrators
6 new CSEs (Certified System Engineers)
9 folks upgraded their CSE to v8.2
High score: 93%
Thursday (May 25) Welcome at 7:45 and our keynote is the United
States
Postal Service and this is a very interesting discussion on
implementation. Just so much more than you would ever know.
Normal day
our 4pm General Session had to cancel because of a family emergency
so
we had an awesome engineering panel with about 35 folks from VMS
engineering maybe more you would have loved it. If it's about VMS and
you have a question the brain trust in that room was going to answer
it!
Friday (May 26) - This morning our keynote is Shell Pipeline and Earle
M Jorgenson once again a great implementation. It's amazing to me
how
you can have such a variety of people and customers from so many
places
using the same thing in such unique ways. Friday is the hard day for
me
because folks are leaving and I will not see most of them for another
year. At noon the sessions have ended folks are eating their boxed
lunches and we are packing things up. With speed that belies our
confessions of advancing age we return the Sheraton hotel from the
VMS
Boot Camp to yet another generic hotel. Its time to say our goodbye's
and in my case shed a few tears and say what always seems to be
inadequate thank you's miles of thin wire and gaffer tape makes way
for
balloons and confetti for yet another prom.
Thank you
Sue
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