It’s Wednesday morning of GTC 2016 a bit after 5 AM local time. I’m wide awake because of the time difference and figured I might get some random thoughts down on the GPU Tech Conference (GTC).
This is my first year attending GTC regardless of the name tag saying I am an alumnist of the gathering. The show organizers got a lot of things right on this show, and a few things I’d like to see improved. With that here’s my take on it.
Registration, they got it right. Everyone had their own lanes, speakers here, press here, general attendees here, and walk ups here. I was really impressed. I also am extremely impressed with the bag and shirt that were handed out at GTC. It’s a high quality messenger style bag that works. The only thing I would change on it is adding a handle somewhere so I can either carry it by the strap or handle.
The conference is smaller than VMworld, EMC World, and many others. It’s really great especially for access to the execs and others, since they arn’t being whisked away by their entourage for their next dog and pony show. It’s very down to earth and I love it.
Speaking of the larger conferences, this reminds me of 2008/2009 VMworld. Everyone’s still figuring it out and you don’t have all the suits walking around, the solution exchange isn’t crowded out by all of the big name companies. It’s great to see all the startups and smaller companies in the exchange.
My thoughts on the exchange floor are that many companies need some coaching on booth presence. Login VSI got it right. Simple booth, clean/clear message, 2 booth staff (which is about right for a 10X10 booth) and execs in and out of the booth during the floor hours. Kudos to all the booths that operated like this, well done.
What really disappointed me as a participant was walking the show floor and having so many booths empty. They had signs up, video’s playing, and no body was home. Yes that’s right there were several booths that were not staffed. I don’t know what it cost to exhibit but that seems like a waste of dollars to me.
I also understand that maybe the booth staff were out getting something to eat or they were exhausted from being in the booth all day. Oh wait, another thing the conference staff got right. They shut down the exchange during sessions so that people don’t have to choose between talking to a vendor or catching a really cool session on flying drones with GPUs. And what’s more is the slides arn’t typically crammed with pre-positioning material from the conference sponsor (in fact there isn’t even a standardized template for the sessions).
On a side note, again harkening back to the early days of VMworld, I do question how long many of the companies on the show floor will be around for. As I walked the isles I saw vendor after vendor with 4U rack mount severs. Sadly, the market can’t sustain a glut of vendors who have specialized in this one area. You have the big compute vendors (HP & Dell) who have a brand name and can deliver the same general product. I would really like to see these hardware vendors change their focus from delivering a hardware solution to delivering a software solution. In other words tell me how I can do this on an off the shelf set of hardware.
I also know many will say “but that’s not how you archive innovation Tony.” And you are right. Thinking back several years in the virtualization industry. If companies hadn’t come to these shows with their new hardware creations we wouldn’t have companies like Nutanix or Simplivity. So please continue to innovate and let’s see where it goes. These are just my observations.
As far as sessions go, I’ve been really impressed, the sessions are great. For many of them plan on having an understanding of the C language and Linux BASH shell knowledge (if you don’t understand just grep it 😉 ). The sessions are great and range from super simple sessions and labs to deep technical sessions looking at the change between calling code in one form or another. I’ll call it what it is, nerdvana.
Another highlight of the show was the poster program that was opened to universities. This was an outstanding set of posters. Talking with the students who created them was amazing. The material in these posters is going to shape the next generation of systems we see in the market place. For example the the picture shown is of Fully Parallelized Lossless LZW Decompression, how many application outside of video can you think of applying something like this? I think about storage, transmission protocols, big data analytics, and the list goes on. These are the ones who are going to redefine the technology industries.
Building on that, I saw a lot of theory at the show, but very few putting it to use in the field. This is a very academic conference, if you are looking for the application of the technologies to what people commonly claim to be “real world applications” then this may not be the place to look. If you want the foundations of how to apply this to something then you should be here. In other words if you are looking for a company to sell a squad of drones to do search and recovery you probably won’t find that vendor here, but if you want to know how to do it this is the place to be.
A couple of other things I’d like to highlight about GTC before I wrap this post up. The social media presence at GTC isn’t huge, so if you are looking for tweetups and social gatherings, there aren’t a lot to participate in. The one bright spot that I wish other conferences did was “dinner with strangers.” This is an absolutely outstanding idea that I have only seen at this show. The staff in charge of the program make reservations at a restaurant for 10 to 20 people. They have a board where people can sign up for dinner. You put your name and a topic. You then go to the restaurant at your designated time and have dinner with a bunch of great people who you probably don’t know. And of course the whole program is BYOW (Bring your own wallet).
In closing, props to the GTC team for getting a lot of things right. GTC is in the truest sense a “technology” conference. And the staff executes it well. I hope to attend next year and see you here as well.
Tony
