Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat

Sprint USB EV-DO + Cradlepoint personal hotspot = sweet!

I was traveling this morning, and was shocked to not be able to check on my flight status with my iPhone. It just sat there churning when I arrived in Chicago. I couldn’t figure it out, but quickly booted up the Cradlepoint router and Sprint EV-DO card and was online. Since I also had critical work-related email to respond to, I would have been seriously upset if I didn’t have backup connectivity.

It turns out that AT&T’s network was out in quite a few locations. Although I didn’t see Chicago on he lists at first, it was definitely down this morning at 7 local time!

I guess my iPhone’s camera wasn’t the only thing on the fritz in Chicago!

I arrived in beautiful Chicago today for the Storage Decisions show at the Hilton here.  What a great event this is - loads of interested and committed storage users and some of the best minds in the business get together to talk about how we all do this thing we call storage!

I was glad to see Jon Toigo here - while I may not always agree with him, he certainly has vast experience in the storage industry.  And I appreciate his role as the iconoclast of storage.  We both agree that the real action in the industry happens at a whole different layer than just storing and moving bits.

Before sitting down with Jon, I was pleased to chat with my good friends, Curtis Preston and Bill Peldzus, both of whom have, over the years, proved themselves advocates of end user concerns.

I’ll also be looking for Greg Schulz, Mark Staimer, Arun Taneja, and Steve Duplessie and his crew from ESG.  See what I mean about the best minds in the industry?

Of course, the hotel is crawling with TechTarget’s staff, including Rich C and Rich F from Storage magazine, Dave Raffo from SearchStorage.com, and Amy, Lindsey and the folks who run the show.

If you’re here, please do come up and introduce yourself.  If not, there are three more shows scheduled for this year!

Ever been to the TechTarget Storage Decisions conference?  It’s my favorite trade show, since it’s totally focused on end users - instead of being a product showcase, Storage Decisions is all about what real people need to do with their enterprise storage infrastructure.  Sure, there’s lots of technical product talk, but none of the speakers work for the hardware or software companies.  And did I mention that attendance is free?

If this sounds good to you, then now is the time to register for the Chicago show, coming up from May 13 through 15.  If you can attend, I strongly recommend coming in the day before the show so you don’t miss the kickoff on Tuesday morning.

As for me, I’ve got two sessions at the show this year, both on Wednesday the 14th.  Come in the morning for my Deep Dive Into Email Archiving Products, incorporating lots of the ideas I got from my Storage Magazine article and Webcast on the subject.  That afternoon, I’ll be presenting a shortened version of my Storage Virtualization Seminar, covering everything you wanted to know about virtualization technology in an hour instead of a day!  I’ll also be at the Ask the Experts Booth on the show floor on Tuesday evening if you’d like to come up and introduce yourself.

If you can’t make Chicago in May, how about Toronto in June, New York in September, or San Francisco in November?