Last year's VMworld was probably the hardest tradeshow that I've ever worked. VMworld 2018 was just as hard as last year's VMworld, but with a better result. 70 meetings set in the booth plus a few more that were interested where we have photos of their badges. As a comparison, last year we set 43 meetings and most exhibitors don't even attempt this. We also had 2500 badge scans this year and will probably trade with a few other exhibitors to increase that count.
The magician was a great addition to the booth. He would start off with only a few people, but grow that number significantly as his 13 minute show went on. He was especially good at pulling people in that were passing by the booth when he was performing. We developed a system where we would "herd" the people from the magic show into a line to spin for the Harley. We were able to talk with them once they were in the line. Simple questions like "Have you heard of hyperconverged systems?" or "Have you investigated hyperconverged systems?" were great to open the conversation in the line. Most people were really open to having a discussion.
We worked with the Slot Machine company to speed up the slot machine from last year as the line was huge last year. In the future, we'll look at slowing it back down a little to keep the line always formed as people seemed to want to join a crowd.
We met with many analysts and reporters. In addition to the articles that I sent out before, there were a couple of new ones that hit over the weekend:
We also had some great customer dinners where Terry Lagaly from American Fidelity told us about when he lost a node one time and lost a drive another time, and Maxta kept on going. Kelly Dean from TSU told us how he ran out of space in their NetApp and had to migrate everything over to Maxta over a weekend. Kelly's wife said that it saved his job. Kelly said that it saved all his department's jobs. UT Dallas is just getting everything up and running with Maxta, but will be great proponents once they are.
So overall a long, tiring, but extremely successful VMworld. Thanks to everyone that helped with the show whether you were there or supporting back at Maxta. Now its time to turn those leads into revenue.