Hi everyone! It's Sunday, and I have arrived safely to Orlando, Florida. It actually took me 25 hours to get here, due to mechanical problems on the plane, and an unexpected overnight stay in Chicago. My checked bags unfortunately got misplaced in Chicago, and will hopefully arrive later today.

In past years, IBM ran three separate storage events. One for IT executives, one for technical storage administrators, and one for IBM Business Partners. This year, we have combined all three into one event: IBM Edge. There are three distinct venues: Executive Edge is for the CIOs and IT Directors, Technical Edge for the storage administrators, and Winning Edge is for the IBM Business Partners.

I will be spending most of my time at the Technical Edge events. This year, I was on the review board, and spent much of the last three weeks reviewing a good portion of the 249 presentation topics that will be given this week.

If you have never been to IBM storage events in the past, or it has been awhile since your last one, you can review my blog posts from prior years to get familiar. I have them collected here in my January post [Mark your Calendars - Upcoming Events].

Here is my tentative plan for the week, in case you want to find me. The table is color-coded. White for sessions I am merely attending, and yellow for those sessions that I am presenting or participating as part of a panel.

Monday	Topic	Room
8:00-10:00am	Opening General Session	Bonnet Creek Ballroom
10:30-12:00	Technical Edge Main Tent	Waldorf Astoria Ballroom
1:00-2:15pm	Understanding Your Options for Storing Archive Data to Meet Compliance Challenges	Flagler room
2:30-3:45pm	IBM TotalStorage Productivity Center: New Features and Functions	Hamilton & Indian
4:15-5:30pm	IBM Watson: How it Works and What it Means for Society Beyond Winning Jeopardy!	Gilchrist
Evening	Reception and Concert	Solution Center
Tuesday	Topic	Room
9:00-10:15	IBM Building Blocks for Technical Computing	Manatee
10:30-11:45	IBM Tivoli Storage Manager as a Cloud Backup Service	Dade
1:00-2:15	IBM SMB Solutions for Cloud	Manatee
2:30-3:45	Introducing the IBM SmartCloud Virtual Storage Center	Citrus
4:15-5:30	Using Social Media for IBM System Storage Birds of a Feather	Flagler
Wednesday	Topic	Room
9:00-10:15	Data Footprint Reduction: Understanding IBM Storage Efficiency Options	Orange
10:30-11:45	IBM Active Cloud Engine Implementation on IBM SONAS 1.3 and IBM Storwize V7000 Unified	Columbia
1:00-2:15	Introducing VMware vSphere Storage Features	Hamilton & Indian
2:30-3:45	IBM's Storage Strategy in the Smarter Computing Era	Bonnet Creek Salon
4:15-5:30	IBM SONAS and the IBM Cloud Storage Taxonomy	Dade
Evening	Dinner and Concert	SeaWorld
Thursday	Topic	Room
9:00-10:15	IBM Watson: How it Works and What it Means for Society Beyond Winning Jeopardy!	Bonnet Creek Salon
10:30-11:45	IBM Tivoli Storage Productivity Center Overview and Update	Bonnet Creek Salon
1:00-2:15	Encryption and Key Management in the Cloud: The Top 6 Concerns to Ensure a Secure and Reliable Solution	Nassau
2:30-3:45	IBM SmartCloud Enterprise -- Object Storage	Hamilton & Indian
4:15-5:30	Smarter Storage for Smarter Computing	Sarasota
5:30-???	Storage "Free-for-All" moderated by Scott Drummond	Ballroom I
Friday	Topic	Room
9:00-10:15	How Real-Time Compression Can Maximize Storage Efficiency for Production Applications	Hamilton & Indian
10:30-11:45	NAS File Systems: Access and Authentication	Citrus

It's going to be a fun and busy week! I will be tweeting throughout the week. You can follow me on Twitter at [@az990tony]. You can also follow tweets marked #IBMstorage and #IBMedge from others.

technorati tags: IBM, Edge, Executive Edge, Technical Edge, Winning Edge, Twitter, @az990tony, #IBMedge

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