At VMworld US there was this really cool new initiative at the hands-on-labs. They had this competition called Odyssey where lab teams were competing against each other to complete labs successfully as fast as possible! These labs are on the topic of vSAN, vSphere, vRealize, NSX-T, Horizon and AppD. Not only was the gamification aspect of the HoL a very interesting and fun concept, but it also meant for the participant that they had to work in teams to complete the labs and had to communicate to get a good understanding of who is doing what. Adds a whole new aspect to the exercise, and at the same time made it even a bit more similar to how you manage your datacenters.
But why would you bother doing this? Well besides that it is an enormous amount of fun, believe I have witnessed the competition and everyone was extremely motivated yet at the same time had a huge amount of fun, you also can win a brand new shiny Macbook Pro. Yes you are reading that correctly, every participant of the winning team will get a Macbook Pro, and a nice Oculus Go for the second place. On top of that, for every single participant of the Odyssey challenge the HoL team has created these awesome jackets, which are a trophy to begin with if you ask me!
There are free slots available for teams that want to compete, you (and your team) can register using this link http://hol.pub/regodyssey, or on-site on Monday by going to the Hands-on Labs Area/ Odyssey Info desk.
It was really cool!!!
Unfortunately our team lost in the semifinal.