Back from Briforum

Back from last week’s Briforum conference in Chicago, and I must say it was an enriching experience. How many people can say they rode to dinner in a stretch Hummer with 30 other geeks?

The amazing thing about Briforum was the content-rich discussions. Unlike other shows I’ve been to, Briforum was a super concentration of the leading practitioners and researchers in the virtual desktop space. Moreover, there was a candid, open sharing of ideas -- and a sense that no one has this figured out, so let’s all push it ahead together. Very refreshing.

In particular, I really enjoyed Ruben Spruijt (Twitter, blog) and Shawn Bass’ (Twitter, blog) overview on application and desktop delivery solutions. Impressively, in 75 minutes, it covered the full expanse of virtual desktops and applications. I left with a much better sense of the “lay of the land”.

For MokaFive’s part, John Whaley (Twitter) and I held a session on the huge promise of layering in virtual desktops, and it’s ability to greatly improve manageability of VMs for IT on the one hand and the customizability of VMs for users on the other. We had a terrific turnout and many great questions from the audience, even though we started at 5:30pm and lasted way into the dinner hour. A testament to dedication and fortitude of Briforum attendees!

Update: John just posted a short video demo where he gives an inside view of our layering technology. This is a "short and sweet" clip of what we showed during Briforum.



For more photos of BriForum, check out Brian Madden's Flickr stream and the fan section of MokaFive's page on Facebook.

Burt Toma