In my “HostingCon, Here We Come!” blog post, I promised that SoftLayer would be Bigger, Better and Badder at HostingCon 2011, and we made some pretty ambitious plans to be sure that was the case: Six conference panels and speaking sessions, SoftLayer’s biggest expo hall presence ever, in-booth presentations about everything from Portal 4 to Social Media, our infamous Server Challenge, and the biggest party in HostingCon history … Heck, we even let PHIL attend to do some “research” for PHIL’s DC. We pulled out all the stops.

Now that the dust has settled and the sunburns have started to heal, I can share a glimpse into SoftLayer’s HostingCon experience with anyone who wasn’t able to make it to San Diego last week.

HostingCon Expo Hall

When you walked onto the conference floor, you saw SoftLayer, and if you managed to miss our 20′x40′ two-story booth or the commotion around it, you were probably in the wrong hall. Each person on our team had a chance to speak with hundreds of attendees, and at the end of every conversation, we gave some swag as parting gifts: Switch balls, foam rockets and limited-edition “Robot” T-shirts:

Our in-booth theater was the venue where Marc Jones showed off the private beta of our new Flex Images for dedicated servers, Jeff Reinis talked about how customers can take advantage of our international expansion, Stephen Johnson gave a tour of Portal 4, Kevin Hazard shared some tips and tricks to managing social media, and Phil Jackson dove into the API.

Take a virtual stroll around the conference center with us:

And as you can tell from the pictures, the Server Challenge was a big hit.

The Server Challenge

If you bring a cabinet of servers to a conference full of server geeks, you’re going to get some attention. Challenge them to a hardware competition, and you’ll be inundated with attendee traffic. If you aren’t familiar with the in-booth activity, Kevin’s blog about the Server Challenge at OSCON is a perfect place to get your crash course. If you already know all about it (and if you’ve competed in it), you’ll be even more interested in seeing some of the action from the show floor:

At 3:07 in that video, you can see the eventual winner of the HostingCon Server Challenge complete a run on Day 1. His iPad 2-winning time was 1:01.77, and he beat some pretty stiff competition for the title of Server Challenge Champ.

Geeks Gone Wild

Put SoftLayer, cPanel and Resell.biz in a room, and you have a party. Add free drinks, a thousand of our closest friends, The Dan Band and a legendary venue, and you’ve got yourself the biggest party in HostingCon history:

If you took part in any or all of the above shenanigans, thank you! We owe a great deal of our success at HostingCon to you. Once everyone finally catches up on the sleep they missed last week, we’ll get the wheels turning to figure out a way to go even bigger next year in Boston … Speaking of which, does anyone know where I can get a boat that was in the Boston Harbor on December 16, 1773?

-@gkdog