Those of you who attended Geek Speak Live! at Synergy from May 4-6, or read my previous related blog post know that we had more sessions, more discussions, and more fun this time than ever before!

Click here to view the entire collection of photos from Geek Speak Live! at Synergy 09 in Las Vegas.

If you attended Geek Speak Live! at Synergy this year, these photos will take you on a geektastic journey down memory lane. If you didn't have a chance to attend, they'll give you a good idea about what this year's event was like from start to finish. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words and, if you take the time to view all of these photos, it'll be the equivalent of reading an entire set of Citrix courseware. ...Enjoy!

Would love to hear your feedback, so please feel free to send me an email. For more information about the Geek Speak program, click here.

Laura Whalen
Citrix Systems, Inc.

Geek Speak Live! at Synergy 09 was a raging success, the result of having the most seasoned, skilled technologists from across the globe assembled in one high-energy location for a three day, content rich, audience interactive event!

Event Highlights

Some memorable GSL! at Synergy 09 moments include:

• A Geek Speak Tonight! session where three esteemed Citrix CTOs - Simon Crosby, Brad Pedersen, and Michael Harries, and three renowned Citrix CTPs - Rick Dehlinger, Brian Madden, and Bernhard Tritsch - shared their thoughts on the future of application delivery. When is the last time you witnessed six brilliant thought leaders on one stage discussing their ideas and projections about one of the hottest trends in IT?

• Two separate and unique Terminal Server vs. VDI sessions run by Rick Dehlinger, Brian Madden, and Bernhard Tritsch. In one session, Rick played Dr. Friedrich von Dehlingerhausen, IT specialist, who helped Benny and Brian's alter egos "TS" and "VDI" discover they had more in common than meets the eye. In the other, this triad of talented speakers began what was an excellent TS vs. VDI debate when, suddenly, the CTO speakers from Lounge B of the Geek Speakeasy decided to join in on their discussion. The result? An impromptu, highly entertaining twist on the already successful session. You'll just have to watch the videos to experience the sensation.

• At the Geek Speakeasy during Expo Hall, we had the opportunity to take a 50-minute journey toward a better understanding of "Client Side Virtualization: How Does It Help, How Does It Make Things Worse?" led by Simon Crosby and Ian Pratt. And how about Gabe Knuth's informative Geek Speakeasy session on the topic of "Client Hypervisors: What, How, When, Why, and Who?"

• A series of interactive Geek Speakeasy lab sessions on Mon-Wed were run by Jason Conger, Brandon Shell, and many other CTPs and technology experts. Demos and deep dives and test results, oh my!

• At Geek Speak Tonight!, Martin Duursma provided insight into "Why All Remote Access Solutions Are Broken," followed by Kurt Roemer and Charles Aunger who shed light on how to achieve "Security, Compliance, and Privacy in the Citrix Delivery Center."

• During Geek Speak Happy Hour, Ruben Spruijt and Jeroen van de Kamp, two Citrix CTPs, delivered a fantastic session about their "Project: Virtual Reality Check," a masterful follow-up to their Geek Speak Virtual! webcast that took place on March 26. We listened intently as they unveiled data and findings from this independent project, and shared their resulting analyses and best practices.

• Two Geek Speak Track sessions became a double-header lesson in awesome:  Steve Greenberg and Joe Shonk shared their expertise on "When to Use which Virtualization Platform," while Brad Pedersen and Richard Hayton gave us solid insight into the "Future of Remoting Protocols."

• And a Geek Speak Tonight! session that deserves a special highlight...Shawn Bass's "XenDesktop 3.0: One Year Later, What's the VDI Landscape Look Like Now?," a fantastic follow-up to last year's session that included Shawn's acute and thoughtful observations of the latest XenDesktop release, turned out to be one of the most thought-provoking and entertaining sessions of Synergy 09!

Acknowledgements

GSL! extends a warm "thank you" to all of the incredible speakers who contributed to making this event a success, including:

Citrix CTPs:  Alex Danilychev, Bernhard Tritsch, Brandon Shell, Brian Madden, Charles Aunger, Jason Conger, Jeroen van de Kamp, Joe Shonk, Michael Keen, Rick Dehlinger, Ruben Spruijt, Shawn Bass, Steve Greenberg  

Citrix CTOs:  Abolfazl Sirjani, Brad Pedersen, Ian Pratt, Jason Lieblich, Kurt Roemer, Martin Duursma, Michael Harries, Simon Crosby

Citrites:  Adam Marano, Chris Fleck, Gus Pinto, Matt Lull, Rich Crusco, Richard Hayton, Sai Allavarpu, Vishal Ganeriwala

Industry Experts & Partners:  Gabe Knuth, Andrew Chambers, Chris Carter, Christopher Viamonte, Clyde Hedrick, Dan Palmer, David Miller, Hector Angulo, Kenneth Duda, Lee Kaminski, Martin Casado, Matthew Gray, Param Desai, Percy Wadia, Robert Tooth, Travis Graham

...And special thanks to those of you who started out as audience members and became speakers mid-session, contributing your questions and comments, as well as your ideas about each and every topic that was covered. We truly appreciate your participation and hope to see you at future Geek Speak Live, Virtual, and Local events!

We'd love to hear your feedback about GSL! at Synergy 09, and also get your thoughts and ideas about our year-round Geek Speak program that includes live, virtual, and local events. Please feel free to send me an email. For more information about the Geek Speak program, click here.

Event Resources

Throughout the event, some of our CTP speakers participated in head-to-head interviews on Citrix TV. Click on the links below for a replay!

•    Shawn Bass & Jeroen van de Kamp - Reaction to Dazzle
•    Brian Madden & Shawn Bass - The layer cake approach
•    Brian Madden & Brandon Shell - Automation & PowerShell
•    Rick Dehlinger & Brian Madden - Offline VDI
•    Charles Aunger & Michael Keen - To blueprint or not

 And don't miss the Brian Madden TV Synergy 09 Wrap-Up, hosted by Brian Madden and Gabe Knuth.

Stay tuned to the Citrix blogs, because we'll be posting more GSL! at Synergy 09 photos, session videos, and content. Brought to you by the letters C, I, T, R, I, and X (and the number 20).

Best,
Laura Whalen

Here are some photos I took of the Citrix Synergy 09 closing party.

Click the below link or on the picture to view the album:
http://cid-7cee7fc8f528290a.skydrive.live.com/play.aspx/Synergy%2009%20Party?ref=1

Here are some photos I took on day 4 of Citrix Synergy 09

Click the below link or on the picture to view the album:
http://cid-7cee7fc8f528290a.skydrive.live.com/play.aspx/Synergy%2009%20Day%204?ref=1

Here are some photos I took on day 3 of Citrix Synergy 09

Click the below link or on the picture to view the album:
http://cid-7cee7fc8f528290a.skydrive.live.com/play.aspx/Synergy%2009%20Day%203?ref=1

Here are some photos I took on day 2 of Citrix Summit 09

Click the below link or on the picture to view the album:
http://cid-7cee7fc8f528290a.skydrive.live.com/play.aspx/Synergy%2009%20Day%201?ref=1

Here are some photos I took on day 1 of Citrix Summit 09

Click the below link or on the picture to view the album:
http://cid-7cee7fc8f528290a.skydrive.live.com/play.aspx/Synergy%2009%20Day%201?ref=1

Will you be at Synergy 2009? Are you interested in talking with the Citrix technology leadership? The Geek Speak unconference is your opportunity. The Citrix CTOs and others from the CTO Office are on stage for 12 sessions of Geek Speak. Here are the sessions for Wednesday. (I've already posted Monday's and Tuesday's sessions.)

Talk to the Experts - Open Q&A with the Technologists (CTOs and CTPs)

Client side virtualization: how does it help, how does it make things worse?

Client side virtualization is all the rage nowadays, with well established type 2 virtualization solutions from VMware, Microsoft, Parallels, VirtualBox and others, and type 1 hypervisors on the horizon from Citrix in partnership with Intel and the Xen community, and VMware. What does client side virtualization enable that's so powerful? Proponents will argue for the use of client side hypervisors to securely deliver corporate apps/desktops to rich client systems for disconnected, secure access to corporate workloads, enforcing separation of user and corporate state, and offering new ways to deal with app compatibility problems. But it remains true that users don't perceive value in client side hypervisors themselves, and client side virtualization has a nasty habit of hammering battery life and increasing the user's perceived complexity of the overall solution. Is this a storm in a teacup, or should you be gearing up for the next major trend in IT optimization? Bring your questions and opinions, and meet the world experts in design of client side virtualization at this Geek Speak showdown.

Bring Your Own Computer (BYOC) Security

Bring Your Own Computer inititives are cool - but what about security? Hear arguments from both the user side and the IT side on how BYOC security really works - or doesn't. Bring your toughest BYOC questions and fears out for deliberation.

The future of remoting protocols

This session provides an overview of existing remoting protocols and how these protocols need to change to accommodate ever increasing requirements. Options for architecting a remoting protocol of the future will be explored.

We're looking forward to some great discussions. See you there.

Will you be at Synergy 2009? Are you interested in talking with the Citrix technology leadership? The Geek Speak unconference is your opportunity. The Citrix CTOs and others from the CTO Office are on stage for 12 sessions of Geek Speak. Here are the sessions for Tuesday. (I've already posted Monday's session. Look for Wednesday shortly.

Talk to the Experts - Open Q&A with the Technologists (CTOs and CTPs)

What Citrix needs to do to support MSP and service provider models

Are you a small or large enterprise considering alternate IT sourcing options such as MSP-delivered IT services? Are you a managed service provider interested in delivering managed application delivery services to your clients? Join this panel discussion to discuss the MSP market landscape, trends, drivers and challenges. Grab the opportunity to participate in shaping Citrix product, technology and go-to-market use cases and directions to support our MSP community.

Virtual Images: with great power comes great responsibility (Image Lifecycle Discussion)

The separation and containerization of Application and OS in virtual images is powerful and one of the greatest benefits that virtualization has brought. Whether it's desktop workloads or production server workloads you must manage the contents of those virtual images, keep them up to date, properly secured and dispose of them properly when you're done. Jason Lieblich, CTO of the Virtualization and Management Division, is looking forward to describing some of Citrix's thinking in this area, emerging products and hearing your thoughts.

CTO's and CTP's: The Future of Application Delivery

In many ways, our industry is at an inflection point. The virtualization and application delivery market spaces have collided. IT is being forced to deliver in with less and adapt quickly to weather challenging economic times. The rate of change and innovation in technologies, business models, and consumption patterns is dizzying! In this context, getting some perspective on the future of the industry may be more than an interesting aside - it could be a matter of survival.

This session will provide some valuable perspective. We've assembled a panel of senior technologists who have a very real impact on the future of our industry. They'll be discussing the 5 most important technology trends impacting our industry. Queue up your questions and opinions - you'll have an opportunity to share them during this interactive panel discussion.

Why all remote access solutions are broken

In this session Martin Duursma, VP Citrix Labs and CTO Office Chair will lay out some controversial ideas how remote access technology enables employees to work from any location, but introduces other issues into the enterprise.

Security, Compliance and Privacy in the Citrix Delivery Center

How does the Citrix Delivery Center impact Security, Compliance, and Privacy? In true GeekSpeak format, we will discuss and debate the triumphs and tribulations of security, compliance, and privacy in the Citrix ecosystem.

IT in the cloud

We're looking forward to some great discussions. See you there.

Here are some photos I took on day 2 of setup for Citrix Synergy 09

Click the below link or on the picture to view the album:
http://cid-7cee7fc8f528290a.skydrive.live.com/play.aspx/Synergy%2009%20Setup%202?ref=1

Will you be at Synergy 2009? Are you interested in talking with the Citrix technology leadership? The Geek Speak unconference is your opportunity. The Citrix CTOs and others from the CTO Office are on stage for 12 sessions of Geek Speak. Here are the sessions for Monday. (I'll post the other days separately.)

Talk to the Experts - Open Q&A with the Technologists (CTOs and CTPs)

Technology Trends Toward Solving Application Compatibility

Application compatibility will always be an issue for application delivery. Every time one layer of complexity is solved, another is added with new technologies and new applications. This session will provide some valuable perspective. We have assembled a team of Citrix CTOs and senior technologists to discuss the future of application compatibility. We're looking forward to discussing this topic with you - bring your thoughts.

We're looking forward to some great discussions. See you there.

Here are some photos I took on day 1 of setup for Citrix Synergy 09

Click the below link or on the picture to view the album:
http://cid-7cee7fc8f528290a.skydrive.live.com/play.aspx/Synergy%2009%20Setup%201?ref=1