Blogging from CMG 2004 - and the perks of industrial conferences

If you can only attend one conference each year about capacity planning and performance modeling, the Computer Measurement’s Group week-long event is probably the one to choose. And so I’ll be blogging from CMG 2004 in Las Vegas for the next couple of days.

When I gave a talk at CMG a couple of years ago, one of its nicer aspects was the mix of industrial and academic presentations, with a real emphasis on giving first-time industrial speakers the support and help they need to give a good talk — the only other conference I’ve experienced that came anywhere close was Supercomputing, and then I was experiencing life strictly from the academic side of things.

This year I registered to be a CMG reviewer, but nothing ever came of it (I think maybe I missed a deadline somewhere…). Nonetheless, when I checked in this evening they still gave me a badge with a little “Reviewer” ribbon, and more importantly the coveted reviewer’s thankyou gift. This year it’s a CMG-branded Victorinox swiss card tool:

As a reviewer at an academic conference, you’re lucky to get a special ribbon. More likely, you just get mentioned in a long list of names in the proceedings. But a thankyou gift?? Fuggedaboutit.

As for other bloggers, I’m pretty sure that Werner Vogels will be here, mainly because he’s due to give a presentation tomorrow  I was also expecting that someone from the Microsoft Operations Tool Team would be giving a talk, but right now I can’t find it in the schedule (warning, 860 KB PDF) — anyone know for sure whether they’re here?