HP New Zealand's reseller channel turned out in force yesterday for the vendor's annual HP Partner First Forum in Auckland.

This year's event featured a number of innovative breakout sessions providing partners with real-world examples of how to help customers reinvent their offices, revolutionise industry, secure their future and create the home of tomorrow.

Included in the Revolutionise Industry stand was a virtual reality display, enabling resellers to see first hand how VR could be used in industries including architecture and engineering, while the event's 'partner product lens' Android app enabled resellers to experience augmented reality and its opportunities.

HP says it has provided virtual reality units for Starship Children's Hospital for use for children's MRI scans – helping relax children and keep them comfortable during the procedure, and also enabling them to be guided through the experience prior to the actual scan.

Meanwhile, in the Reinvent Your Office stand, resellers learned how HP's offerings, including the Elite X3, PageWide printers and Slice – which the company dubs ‘the smallest, most innovative and flexible desktop, which can be built up to be conference device, desktop station' – can enhance mobility for businesses.

Paul Burman – HP's Melbourne-based national product training specialist – lived up to his LinkedIn promise of being an ‘overly enthusiastic tech-obsessed product guy who loves to talk useful innovation' in the Home of Tomorrow stand.

Burman's high-energy demonstration covered devices ranging from the HP Envy 34 curved, all in one desktop to the ‘power without the tower' fully spec'd quad core desktop that looks like a small speaker. The three-sided device features a motherboard on one side, harddrive on one and cooling on the third, with Bang and Olufsen speakers in the centre and parabolic reflector shooting out sound at 360 degrees.

Also showcased in the Home of Tomorrow were Omen gaming PCs and printers.

A wide range of security offerings were highlighted in the Secure Your Future section, where resellers also got the low down on how every endpoint – including the printer – can be a vulnerability for customers.