opus:interactive | If These Servers Could Talk

Wednesday, August 08, 2007 at 2:33 pm by Jason Nuss

Interop ‘07 - Sure, but was it worth it?

by Jason Nuss

The opportunity to do a conference in Vegas was great and to go with teammates was even better.

From the moment the flight was booked and my registration for Interop was complete the only thing I could think of was, “Is this going to be worth the money?” Although we did the free registration for the conference I knew we would be spending a lot of money to get down there, a lot of money on hotel, food, taxis, monorail, and of course entertainment. In the end, on the flight back to Portland, my thoughts were, “That was a great trip.” Here’s why.

I get to travel quite a bit in my position as Director of Operations. I say quite a bit but that’s in comparison to others here who don’t travel at all. I go to 3-4 places a year attending training, conferences, vendors, and retreat. The opportunity to do a conference in Vegas was great, since I hadn’t been there for more than a day in 12 years. The opportunity to go with teammates was even better. Vegas, to me, is a place you don’t really want to go alone. Two reasons that’s true: one, there is too much to get you into trouble, so having buddies keeps you on the up-and-up (not that I would ever get into trouble, it’s just a tempting place); and two, who wants to go to Vegas alone? So just being in Vegas, relaxing away from the office, trying new things, seeing new sites, and, best of all, people-watching, was almost worth the money by itself. But obviously we didn’t go to Vegas for that, we went for Interop.

Interop was bigger than I expected. Although I new there were a lot of exhibitors I didn’t expect to see what I saw. Huge booths and displays, some of them two stories high, were common. In fact, you often had to look up to see the entire booth/displays. The big companies that opus:interactive uses for equipment, like Cisco, HP, and Dell were there, as well as the smaller vendors we use, like Array Networks (load balancers), GTA Firewalls, and IronPort Systems (S&V appliances). Hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent by these companies, for sure. What the ROI was, I don’t know, but it was obvious they felt it was an important place to be.

The big themes, as I saw them, were networking appliances and accessories, security appliances, wireless technologies, and data center cabinets, cooling, and new technologies. Not all these spoke to us as a company, but we did study every booth and visited anything we thought might be interesting.

Free stuff. We were up for free t-shirts, squishy balls and dice, Lego sets, candy, coffee, pop, backpacks, hats, pens, and more. The most notable freebie for me was the branded Lego set by IronPort. Very creative and memorable. I also like cleverly designed t-shirts. The free lemonade stand was creative, and the fact that it was hosted by half-naked women attracted a lot of buzz. BlueCat Networks hosted free Xbox360 gaming at their booth, as well as a few amazing-looking “booth babes”. Again, the girls tended to attract folks to the booth, although I am sure many guys didn’t attend the booths so as to not be viewed as a perverts. I lean towards not going up to talk to the booths with some half-dressed girl there unless it was a must see product, but that’s just me.

So the food in Vegas was amazing. I had a steak at this restaurant called Nine Fine Irishmen. The one thing I remember about this place—okay two things—was the t-shirt for sale in the lobby that said “I’ve done Nine Fine Irishmen,” which I found humorous. The second thing was the incredible ribeye steak. Wow.

We also took in Cirque du Soleil at the MGM. The show was amazing, to say the least. It was well worth the $69/per ticket price. That was the cheapest ticket available, but in a theatre of only 2000 seats there really wasn’t a bad seat.
Technology-wise, my biggest takeaway from Interop is that opus:interactive is ahead of the curve on sustainable practices and its effort to be eco-friendly. We are not perfect, but many of the practices that were presented at Interop are things we have been doing for a couple years. So I tip my hat to the owners and my director of IT for allowing us to push the edge on new technologies that improve our overall environmental impact.

Final thoughts:

• Flights were uneventful
• The weather was in the 90’s.
• Every time we walked out of a casino Jeremy and Eric would sneeze. I guess it was a temperature change? Whatever. It was funny.
• There were huge 50-foot billboards with g-stringed women advertising Vegas shows. Unimaginable in any other city.
• Rockstars were $5 each in the MGM.
• I went to a casino where all the dealers were impersonators. They would rotate singing on a stage in the middle of all the blackjack tables: Cher, Elvis, Louis Armstrong, Madonna, Maria Carey…
• The cab rides were freaky scary, but the stories the cabbies told were funny. One thing they all had in common: cabbies are bitter individuals who hate people.

The funniest moment (I must have laughed for 5 minutes and then throughout the trip just thinking about it):

Eric and I were playing Craps. Sometimes a die would bounce off the table and onto the floor, but it’s not common because the sides of the tables are so high. Eric finally got his chance to throw the dice. Instead of one of the dice bouncing off the table, Eric threw both dice off the table. In fact, they never even hit the table—they hit some guy in the gut. Eric was embarrassed, and I was rolling on the floor laughing. I couldn’t stop. I hadn’t laughed like that in months. Thanks Eric.

Good trip, worth the money.

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