Those who follow me on twitter probably have seen me “moaning” about the Dutch VMUG for a long time now. For years the Dutch VMUG was not a VMUG like any other VMUG in the world. Yes we had HUGE event in the Netherland every year with over 700 attendees, but it was a commercial event (my opinion!) and not a User Group event. User groups throughout the world are groups which organize events / meetings, these are organized by VMware users for VMware users, free of charge (or for a minimal fee), independent events, striving to make the life of the user better by sharing experiences and knowledge! In the Netherlands this was different, the VMUG was controlled by a single company but that has changed… finally!
Een overzicht van de veranderende Nederlandse VMUG: http://t.co/Wsf1rrc6cv en volg @nlvmug voor updates
— De Nederlandse VMUG (@NLVMUG) June 16, 2013
As of June the 15th 2013 there is an Official Dutch VMUG. This VMUG is part of the world wide international VMUG organization and controlled by a board of VMware users called the Customer Council!
So what does this mean? Lets make this absolutely clear, there is only one official VMUG in the Netherlands and that is NLVMUG.nl. Also, the yearly event in December (already announced for the 13th) is not an event by the Official Dutch VMUG. Personally I did not attend the VMUG event in 2012 as I do not want to support an event which is supposed to be a user group event but doesn’t come close to it, at least not what I perceive a user group to be. Both the Customer Council and VMware apparently agree with me on this, as on the announcement they state that neither of them will support or attend the December event that was announced.
Het op vmug.nl aangekondigde evenement is geen officieel VMUG evenement, en zal dus ook niet gesteund en bezocht worden door de Customer Council of VMware. We zullen jullie zo snel mogelijk proberen te informeren over een evenement dat door de officiële Nederlandse VMUG, de Customer Council, VMware Benelux en natuurlijk de community (bloggers) zal worden gehouden.
A couple of things before I wrap up this blog post with a call to action for all of my readers. First of all, I want to thank Ferry Limpens, Joep Piscaer, Viktor van den Berg, Dennis Hoegen Dijkhof, Robert van den Nieuwendijk, Laurens van Gunst, Sander Daems and Arjan Timmerman aka “The Customer Council” for taking this bold step. It is great to see that you guys are not afraid of change and are willing to take a risk. Congrats!
Secondly, I would like to ask every single person who has ever attended a Dutch VMUG event to let all of their friends and colleagues know about these changes and sign up for the official VMUG using the link below! You can read it in Dutch on the official Dutch VMUG website: nlvmug.com. If you are on twitter, make sure to follow @nlvmug, and if you have a question / would like to present at a VMUG / help organizing… feel free to drop these guys an email: [email protected]. This is a user event, so try to participate, you are the community!
Last, but not least, I would like to ask all of the Sponsors of the Dutch VMUG to contact the Customer Council to see how you can help taking this User Group to the next level. The official Dutch VMUG can use all the help they can get!
I know this pain all to well, the NEVMUG went through something similar with this here in New England area. That is why the the VTUG was formed.