Where has the time gone? We are already quickly approaching the start of Wireless Field Day 4 which will kick off on Wednesday in San Jose, CA. WFD4 brings a new format to this amazing event that happens twice a year. A change to the format may allow for a slightly more relaxed pace allowing for more side bar conversations, something the cameras don’t show you but is always incredible! We’ve got quite the list of delegates this go around, we’ve even furthered our international presence grabbing some fresh blood from across the pond.

Our sponsors this time around include Motorola Solutions, Juniper, Aruba, Meraki, and Cisco. You’ll notice two big names are missing: Aerohive and Ruckus. Unfortunately scheduling didn’t allow them to present this go around and they will be missed deeply, as will our friends at Metageek. But, we’ve got a newcomer to the party, Motorola Solutions. A lot of us delegates have wanted to talk with Moto for awhile now, most all of us come in contact with them at the very least for their Air Defense product. I’m really looking forward to hearing about their overall product architecture and seeing what it can do. Juniper is back again this go around as well, I really hope their presentation this time around is more about them and less about what others are doing and not so abrasive. Wouldn’t mind getting some hands on time with the gear, what’s going on with RingMaster? Aruba is back, as we expect them to be. Aruba is an interesting vendor, I liked their WFD2 presentation, they accepted my criticism and we had some good discussions. WFD3 was a little brutal, they lost some points for how they performed their presentation, especially removing us from our laptops for awhile! I would really like to hear about the actual tech behind their stadiums some more, I think they had some interesting points at WFD3. I also want to hear about their 802.11ac plans, this really goes for everyone! Last but not least we have Cisco and Meraki, yes we all know by now that Cisco bought Meraki, so why are they both here? Meraki is part of the Cloud Networking group and then we also have the Cisco Mobility group, more on the enterprise side. I’m interested in hearing about what changes are going to happen to Meraki, did the culture change with the acquisition? What about the staff that made Meraki who they were, are they still there? I’m sure Cisco will be discussing their 3850 Catalyst switch featuring an IOS WLC (would make a great gift hint hint) and how that will change the designing of their infrastructure. This change has already spurred some interest on twitter between a few of us delegates so I’m really looking forward to the discussions we’ll have around it.

Lastly, I really hope that the vendors take the time to read Keith Parsons’ independent wireless test report that he just published. I think Keith’s test showed some interesting results and will hopefully drive some conversations. You can check out the report here.

Make sure you check out this awesome trailer mashup by @SimplyWiFi, http://simplywifi.co blogger Dan Cybulskie and delegate.