VMware Explore Las Vegas 2026 Day 1

Despite working with VMware for at least the last 13 years, this is my first time attending a VMware Explore event. I'm a keen advocate of VMware technologies, and with so many changes recently I was keen to attend so I could immerse myself in everything VMware for a few days as well as taking some time out to enjoy everything that Las Vegas has to offer!

This years conference is at The Venetian, a large and impressive venue in its own right.

Ticket types

There are 2 main ticket types for VMware Explore: The Meetings Plus pass and the Full Event Pass. I won't go into too much detail on the difference's as you can google this yourself, but if you're a techie like me I would highly recommend paying the extra for the Full Event Pass, as the extra perks almost pay for themselves. This includes Breakfast and Lunch, the official Backpack and T-shirt, Event Swag, Hands on Labs entry and a free Certification voucher which itself is worth £250 alone.

Registration and Check-in

Registration actually starts on the Sunday if you want to get in there early, but i registered early on the Monday and then grabbed some breakfast before the sessions started. If you have a Full Event ticket, you can of course pickup your complimentary free Explore Backpack and T-Shirt, which is a must for the event!

Networking started early

My first conversation started completely by accident when another attendee let me know I dropped my wallet after taking my phone out to take a photo, upon which we got chatting. I learned my fellow attendee was Gage from Georgia, and we sat over breakfast and had a great chat about everything VMware, our experiences since the Broadcom acquisition, and everything else in between.

The VMware Explore App

Everything you need for the event can be found in the officlal app. This allows you to view and schedule sessions, chat to follow attendees via the built in chat feature, and view maps of where everything is. One of the fun features of the app is a gamification feature. The idea is that it encourages you to visit and chat to the various sponsors as well as the various official Broadcom stands, and you can then earn points by getting the QR code on your event pass scanned at each stall, in return for points which you can then exchange for swag. Great idea, so I went on to chat to several vendors, many of which we have existing relationships with, and others I have worked with in previous roles in Infrastructure

Broadcom Rewards

My next visit was to the Broadcom rewards stand. If you're not familiar with Broadcom rewards, its a platform that encourages you to get involved with the community and you can earn points whilst doing so, which you can convert to swag. Its well worth registering. Anyway whilst chatting to the rewards team, I unexpectedly bumped into a colleague I hadn't known was attending the event. We ended up chatting until I realized I was late for my first expert led Hands on Lab session, and of course by the time I got there, I was 3 minutes late and it was full, and they wouldn't let me in, so I quickly learned not to make that mistake again

Hands on and Odyssey Labs

Having missed my Expert led Hands on Lab session, I came across the Odyssey Labs Centre which I remembered exploring online some time ago. I must admit I had forgotten about the Odyssey Labs. These are very similar to the Hands on Labs, except with a little gamification added for fun, but you can run through them as normal Labs and ignore the gamification aspect and treat it as almost identical to the Hands on Labs if you wish. Best of all there were probably over a hundred or so desks and I was able to logon and run some VCF 9.1 Labs and learn about the new features of vSAN in VCF 9.1 without needing to book.

The Hands on Labs command centre driven by VCF Operations. Thanks to Jon Shulz for the great chat on what went into building this epic set of dashboards!

The Experts bar

In the course of my role in Managed Services we occasionally come across the occasional bug, UI issue, or feature improvement idea, some of which i've submitted via the VCF Ideas Portal, this was an opportunity to discuss and demonstrate some of the real world issues and challenges we've seen in person, which can then be fed back into engineering.

Networking

This is a great event for meeting your peers, and I had lots of great chats today with various vendors and fellow attendees. This is an opportunity to ask lots of questions, share ideas, and learn the rapid development of Private Cloud particuarly around AI.

Summary

There was a lot more that helped make it an action packed day, and there's still more to see, but i've covered some of the key highlights, and all in all, I had a great first day, and looking forward to day 2.