Airheads Vegas 2013

I arrived in Vegas about 1am PST Tuesday morning because my flight was late. My friend, Jamie (@jamie_easley) and I had planned on checking out all the Cosmopolitan has to offer but due to the late arrival, 4am EST our time, we checked into the hotel and called it a night.

Tuesday we spent the day scoping out the Cosmopolitan and meeting fellow Airheads. We also met up with one of the Wireless Field Day stars Dan Cybulskie (@simplywifi) and had a "few" drinks 😉

Wednesday morning the Conference "officially" started. Similar to 2012, the conference commenced with a Keynote from Aruba CEO Dominic Orr. After that we arrived to my favorite part: Demos from Aruba CTO Keerti Melkote (@KeertiMelkote) and team. I was very impressed with the demos at this year's Airheads. One demo that was very interesting was a container app for mobile devices. The app could create a VPN to corporate and allow other apps inside the container app to use that VPN session. When outside the app, the normal apps on the device communicate normally to the local network. This container app also had the ability to allow or block different operations based on time and location. I am very interested in the product.

Throughout the conference Aruba had a Technology Playground in the commons area. I hit up the playground with Bala (@bala18686) and he showed me around some of the newer features and equipment. App RF was cool and its integration into upcoming Airwave was a plus. There was also a 802.11ac Demo AP. Seemed a little larger that the AP135 but with a more sleek look. It was just a demo and might not represent the final product.

This year's conference was full of Breakout Sessions. This was a major plus. One of the breakout session I took advantage of was "Migrating 1800 AP's to 7240 Mobility Controllers". I have this coming up within the next year and was hoping to get some clarity. It gave me a simple understanding of what it would take for me to switch to the new controllers.

Like last year I was offered to attend the Tech Field Day Roundtable Discussions at Airheads. One thing you might know about me if you are close to me is that Cameras SCARE ME lol. What better way to overcome my fear than to keep doing it. Admittedly was shy but I know I did better that last year. Having fellow on camera pros like Keith Parsons (@keith.r.parsons) made the discussions a blast. Ohh and some awesome Camera Gurus over at Prime Image Media (@PrimeImageVideo)

Jennifer Huber - @jenniferLucille Jennifer's Bog
Keith Parsons - @keith.r.parsons - Wireless LAN Professionals
Chris Lyttle - @wifikiwi – Wifikiwi
Dan Cybulskie - @simplywifi – Simplywifi
Sean Rynearson - @SRynearson – WifiGeeks

And let us not forget the main man Stephen Foskett - @SFostkett - Pack Rat Thanks Stephen!!

An 802.11ac Reality Check

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMsLf0ZhxzA

Deep Packet Inspection

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mm1KoN-0nZQ

Predicting the Future of Mobile Device Management

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qt4noCW28kw

How To Boost Your Career as a Wireless Professional

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yzVQom7ZhU

Aslo like last year, Aruba brought out all their product managers and lined them up on stage. The audience was allowed to come up to microphones and fire questions at the line. Very Very Brave!!!