It’s hard to believe that the last Tech Field Day event was held almost two years ago.  Since the, the Field Day series has branched out to cover topics like Networking, Storage, and Wireless.  The industry never stands still for long, however.  The stars aligned and the sponsors asked to bring back the granddaddy of them all.  That’s why I’m happy to announce that I’ll be attending Tech Field Day 9 from June 19-21 in Austin, TX.

There’s an all-star lineup of previous Field Day attendees with a couple of new folks sprinkled in to keep things lively:

	Alastair Cooke	@DemitasseNZ
	Trainer, Writer, Consultant, Geek. From New Zealand.
	Bob Plankers	@Plankers
	A hardcore IT generalist, virtualization expert, blogger, and vocal end user of technology.
	Carlo Costanzo	@CCostan
	Carlo is a NYC based Virtualization Consultant. He writes about whatever interests him at the time @ vCloudInfo.com
	Chris Wahl	@ChrisWahl
	The guy who is in your data center virtualizing things
	Howard Marks	@DeepStorageNet
	Storage Analyst Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
	John Obeto	@JohnObeto
	I like SMBs and Windows
	Justin Warren	@JPWarren
	The Anablogger: Old-school, long-form analysis with an irreverent twist.
	Matthew Norwood	@MatthewNorwood
	Robert Novak	@Gallifreyan
	Writer, Photographer, System Administrator, Team Builder, Cat Herder, Comedian, Part-Time Shopkeeper
	Ryan Adzima	@RAdzima
	Ryan is an enterprise technology generalist with a tendency to always end up back in networking.
	Scott D. Lowe	@OtherScottLowe
	Tony Mattke	@Tonhe
	network engineer / geek

The delegates are some of the best and brightest across the networking, server, and storage industries.  Which is quite fitting when you consider the sponsors that are coming your way and how the represent the new trend in converged data centers:

In particular, Infinio is an exciting edition to the Tech Field Day series.  They will be launching during their presentation slot, so I’m sure they’re going to have a very interesting take on their topic.

Tech Field Day 9 is also a transition point for me personally.  For the first time, I’ll be attending the event as both a delegate AND a staff member.  Now that I’m a full-time employee of Foskett Services and Gestalt IT I’m going to split my time between listening to the presenters and making sure that everything is running smoothly in the background.  It’s going to be a challenge to try and keep up with everything, but I feel that I’m more than capable of making every aspect of this event outstanding.

What’s Field Day Like?

Tech Field Day is not a vacation.  This event will involve starting a day early first thing Wednesday morning and running full steam for two and a half days.  We get up early and retire late.  Wall-to-wall meetings and transportation to and from vendors fill the days.  When you consider that most of the time we’re discussing vendors and presentations on the car ride to the next building, there’s very little downtime.  We’ve been known to have late night discussions about converged storage networking and automation until well after midnight.  If that’s your idea of a “vacation” then Tech Field Day is a paradise.  I usually crawl onto a plane late Friday night mentally and physically exhausted with a head full of blog posts and ideas.  It’s not unlike the same kind of feeling you get after running a marathon.  You don’t know if you could do it again tomorrow, but you can’t wait until the next one.

Tech Field Day – Join In Now!

Everyone at home is as much a participant in Tech Field Day as the delegates on site.  At the last event we premiered the ability to watch the streaming video from the presentations on mobile devices.  This means that you can tune in from just about anywhere now.  There’s no need to stay glued to your computer screen.  If you want to tune in to our last presentations of the day from the comfort of your couch with your favorite tablet device then feel free by all means.  We’ll also have the videos from the session posted quickly afterwards on Youtube and Vimeo.  If you have to run to the store for ice cream or catch that playoff game you can always catch up with what’s going on when you get back.  Don’t forget that you can also use Twitter to ask questions and make comments about what you’re seeing and hearing.  Some of the best questions I’ve seen came from the home audience.  Use the hashtag #TFD9 during the event.  Note that I’ll be tagging the majority of my tweets that week with #TFD9, so if the chatter is getting overwhelming you can always mute or filter that tag.

Standard Tech Field Day Sponsor Disclaimer

Tech Field Day is a massive undertaking that involves the coordination of many moving parts.  It’s not unlike trying to herd cats with an aircraft carrier.  One of the most important pieces is the sponsors.  Each of the presenting companies is responsible for paying a portion of the travel and lodging costs for the delegates.  This means they have some skin in the game.  What this does NOT mean is that they get to have a say in what we do.  No Tech Field Day delegate is every forced to write about the event due to sponsor demands. If a delegate chooses to write about anything they see at Tech Field Day, there are no restrictions about what can be said.  Sometimes this does lead to negative discussion.  That is entirely up to the delegate.  Independence means no restrictions.  At times, some Tech Field Day sponsors have provided no-cost evaluation equipment to the delegates.  This is provided solely at the discretion of the sponsor and is never a requirement.  This evaluation equipment is also not a contingency of writing a review, be it positive or negative.  The delegates are in this for the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

If you’d like to learn more about what makes Tech Field Day so special, please check out the website at http://techfieldday.com.  If you want to be a part of Tech Field Day, don’t hesitate to fill out the nomination form to become a delegate.  We’re always on the lookout for great people to become a part of the event and we’d love to have you along for the ride.