Airheads Conference - 20 Days Later

It's been almost three weeks since I returned from the Aruba Airheads Conference in Las Vegas and I figured maybe I should write down my thoughts before they fall out of my head.

Note to Self: My Blackberry camera is not a substitute for a real camera.

This was my first time attending an Airheads conference so I didn't really know what to expect. I'm happy to say that I was impressed with the overall format and content of the website. Some of the highlights for me were:

Amigopod/ClearPass Clarification

I don't know if it's just me, but I have found the Amigopod/ClearPass transition to be a little confusing. I found myself wondering: Is Amigopod going away? Is it just being renamed? Is it being added to ClearPass as a module? Going into the conference, I was really hoping to get some clarification and I 'm happy to say that I did.

The word on the street is that Amigopod will become a feature license on the converged ClearPass platform called ClearPass Guest. If you're a current Amigopod subscriber, you should work with your local account team to work through the particulars of the transition. Apparently, the transition will be quite favourable for existing Amigopod customers so it looks like Aruba is doing the right thing here.

Victoria Poncini, Wireless Network Architect at Microsoft

I had no idea that Microsoft was doing so much cool research in the wireless field. Victoria talked about some of the interesting challenges they've experienced with Wi-Fi in elevators, using Wi-Fi as a safety tool in outdoor venues, and providing Wi-Fi to tech savvy individuals on shuttle buses. It was a really down-to-earth talk that actually didn't even focus on Aruba. Instead, she stuck to the technology and challenges.

Tech Field Day Roundtable at Airhead Conference

On the Thursday of the conference, I had the incredible opportunity to participate in a roundtable discussion with a panel comprised of wireless bloggers, Aruba employees, and industry experts/customers. This was a 45-minute roundtable that covered the following topics:

• High-Density WLANs
• User/Device-Based Security Policies
• Personal vs Shared Local WLAN Services (ie. AirPlay)
• Large Scale WLAN Management 

Admittedly, these topics had already been covered during the conference. However, I found that the opportunity to sit down and have a candid discussion with some amazingly talented wireless experts really helped me gain a more solid understanding of these topics. 

I will post links to the video when it is made public.

Closing Thoughts

I could go on about all the different topics covered at the conference but I think this is a good summary of my highlights. Most of the conference presentations have been posted on the Airheads Community so I would definitely recommended cruising over there and checking them out at some point.

Daniel

Disclosure: I attended the conference as an independent wireless blogger. My expenses and conference fees were covered by Gestalt IT. No additional gifts or swag were received beyond those which were  received by all conference attendies. No expection of positive review or mention was expressed by Gestalt IT or Aruba Networks.