Back from HPTF 2009

Once again, I've had the privilege of attending the HPTF and, once again, I was not disappointed.

Although I didn't see the special events, I assisted to all the technical sessions I could find and the content was similar to previous years. But it shows that travel expenses at HP have been cut off; I've had at least one session where the speaker was covering for some of his colleagues, and one particular session where the speaker, an HP employee, wasn't up to the "I like HP" thing as he could have been.

Here are the highlights:

1. At the HP-UX panel, where customers have a chance of speaking to a panel of HP-UX experts, there was a guy responsible for Systems Insight Manager. A lady went ballistic against RSP and the System Fault Management agents. The SIM guy replied that "the team developping the agents have come under lots of scrutiny recently" but he wasn't aware of all the problems (which I've had too, by the way). I felt bad for him, as RSP and the agents was not his product. As a matter of fact, I think the agents, which are very bad, aren't anyone's product at HP. Then two other attendees, and me, chipped in to vent ourselfs on the ISEE-to-RSP migration process. The lady was very upset all that time and the moderator eventually put the discussion to a halt.

2. Speaking about RSP, I've been able to meet its Product Manager face-to-face, all-around a nice guy who was glad to hear from a customer. I didn't spend too much time on my past issues, as they have been resolved, and instead gave some suggestions on improving the product. He should follow-up on this. I was very aware that some of the worst products, the SysFaultMgmt agents the lady I mentionned earlier was pissed about, aren't his products so I didn't spend too much time with them.

3. Connect organized activities named "Meet the experts" which were round-table discussions with select people within HP that cater to a particular product. I've been able to meet Bdale, who's in charge of Open Source at HP, I was alone, and very surprised that no one else showed up. I didn't have much to say actually, but asked him if HP intended to eventually open up HP-UX. The answer was no, as there are too many proprietary technologies in it. Another "meet the experts" session I assisted to was with Bruce and Bob, who are based in Fort Collins, and at this one we were three users. We've gave them some input on what we would like to see in the OS in the future. Hands off to Bruce and Bob, by the way. I've seen them showing up at many conferences for the whole three days, and they're very implicated with the community of users.

4. The closing keynote with Dr. Michio Kaku was very interesting. Great choice. In my opinion, for a tech conference it's much better to have someone like him rather than a comedian. Before him we had to endure the usual corporate mumbo-jumbo from Intel, a Microsoft researcher and Brocade, and as usual it wasn't very good. They at least gave me time to follow-up on my e-mails. That triple--dipping didn't leave much time for Dr. Kaku, he got unpolitely shoved off the stage once his time was up, and that sucked.

5. Like last year, the CDA area wasn't very good, very few prototypes and actual hardware. It would be better off not doing it at all. But there were some CDA sessions and although they didn't deep-dive very far, it was better than nothing.

6. Of yes, and Brian Cox handed out HP-UX 25th anniversary champagne glasses at the HP-UX kickoff. For a geek like I am, that was a great "show-up" present.

That's it for now. More to come.