Connecting with new people and exchanging contacts at VMWorld is a crucial component of the conference (or any other conference, for that matter). I’ve networked with many people over my admittedly short conference going history, and the value of being able to easily contact colleagues in the field post-conference is only outdone by their willingness to help out.
It can be a terrifying experience to go these conferences and try to ask questions of these experts because no one wants to show that they may not know exactly what they’re doing. Once you do that and have the experience of not being treated like an idiot or as a lesser admin, you’ll see that it doesn’t matter how much you know or don’t know. What matters is that we all are in this together, to help our respective constituents use technology to their greatest benefit. Someone will always have made a design decision that you never thought of. Some one will have tested and re-tested theories and made mistakes for you so that you don’t have to. This enables you try new designs, theories, technology based on other’s work and the field (and our knowledge) advances that much quicker. The more we all, as operators of these technologies. cooperate in community, the better we admins, consultants, integrators, vendors and the industry as a whole become. This includes everyone from the newbies to the seasoned vets.
That all being said, you want to make it as easy as possible for people to not only get your information, but to save it. 2 weeks before VMWorld last year, I lost all of my business cards in an office move. I didn’t have time to get any made up through my employer, but I needed something. What I came up with was a QR Code picture shortcut on my Droid. So when someone wanted my contact info and they, too, had a smart phone, they could just scan my QR code and my contact information would be automatically entered into their address book. It was a huge success!
This year, I’m going to have both a QR code and Microsoft Tag on the back of my business cards as well as shortcuts on my Droid. I’m adding the Tag because it can hold so much more information in the vcard than the QR code can. I would suggest you consider enhancing your contact info before your business card becomes a soggy wad in the bottom of the Bellagio fountain.
