Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

vmug

VMUGs next week in South Africa, sign up!

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Last year when I visited South Africa and presented at 3 events someone on twitter said: if I would have known I would have shown up. Already tweeted it a couple of times, but just in case people missed it, I figured I would also do a short post on the topic. I am presenting at 3 VMUGs in South Africa next week together with Scott Lowe and Joe Baguley. If you live near any of these three cities, make sure to sign up… Great way to meet like minded people, extend your network, and get to hear all about Software Defined Everything from Joe, The future of NSX from Scott and all about VSAN 6.2 from myself. (Note, Joe will not be able to present in Durban unfortunately)

Hope to see you guys next week, and euuh… Yes, I would love a Stellenbrau 😉

Soon at a VMUG near you…

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I have a whole bunch of VMUGs on the agenda in the upcoming month that I wanted to inform you about. For those who have never been to a VMUG, they are “user group” meetings where usually you see community people presenting and vendors presenting. The setting is a bit more informal which allows you to have discussions with fellow users during breaks, ask questions during session and meet up with people from VMware and other vendors who attend. In the upcoming weeks I will be delivering sessions at my favourite VMUGs in the world, if you are in the neighbourhood make sure to attend. These are free events, so you just need to free up some time from work to attend. If you do attend, don’t hesitate to stop by to say hi!

  • Thursday November 12th – Italy VMUG – Milan / Italy
    • Awesome event in a great city with people like Lee Dilworth, Chad Sakac and Vaughn Stewart. I can ensure you that this is going to be a great event. A lot of the sessions will be in English by the way, judging by the people who are presenting. Also, what I love about Italy is the passionate community they have, one of those events where I spend talking to users/partners/customers and bloggers most of my time.
  • Thursday November 26th – Scottland VMUG / Edinburgh
    • Although this is a “smaller” event it doesn’t mean the agenda isn’t top notch. With Joe Baguley delivering the keynote and people like Paul Nothard, Robbie Jerome and Andy Jenkins from VMware presenting this is going to be a great day.
  • Tuesday December 1st – Nordics VMUG (Denmark) (Usercon)
    • Keynote by Paul Strong and a line-up of great speakers like William Lam, Paudie O’Riordan, Cormac Hogan, Ole Agesen, Christian Mohn and Joerg Lew. Strongest line-up I have seen in a very very long time at an event with a very interesting closing speaker which is the first Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen. I expect this event will fill up, so register today! Most sessions will be in English, so whether you are from Sweden, Finland, Norway or Germany… you can’t miss out on this one!

So if you live close to any of these VMUGs, I expect to see you there. I will be delivering a session on VSAN at each of these events and are more than happy to talk about anything else before or after my session. I will also bring some cool Captain VSAN stickers for those who want to pimp their laptops / office etc. Hope to see you all there.

Recommended viewing: VMUG Sessions

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Last week I presented at a couple of VMUGs and at those VMUGs all whole bunch of sessions were recorded. I receive a lot of requests to speak at VMUGs and although I try to attend many of them, there is still quite a few I have to decline unfortunately. Whenever I visit a VMUG I try to attend various sessions just to get a better understanding of what it is our partners offer, how our customers use our products and what type of questions are raised. Below you can find a couple of the sessions (including my own) which I enjoyed and recommend watching. I understand that it is difficult to find a block of 5 hrs to watch these, but I would like to urge to do so as they will prepare you for what is coming in the future.

Sharing VMUG presentation “vSphere futures”

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Last week I presented at the UK VMUG, Nordic VMUG and VMUG Belgium. My topic was vSphere futures… I figured I would share the deck publicly. The deck is based on this blog post and essentially is a collection of what has been revealed at last VMworld. Considering the number of announcements I am guessing that this deck is a nice summary of what is coming, feel free to use it / share it / comment etc.

Once again, I would like to thank the folks of the VMUG organizations throughout EMEA for inviting me, three great events last week with very passionate people. One thing I want to call out in particular that struck me last week: Erik from the VMUG in Belgium has created this charity program where he asks sponsors (and attendees) to contribute to charity. Last event he collected over 8000 euros which went to a local charity, it was the biggest donation that this particular charity received in a long time and you can imagine they were very thankful… all of this while keeping the event free for attendees, great work Erik! Thanks for giving back to the community in various ways.

See you next time.

VMUGs I’ll be speaking at in November…

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I had this question last week from 2 readers if I was planning on presenting at a particular VMUG. I have prepared a session for three VMUGs in November where I will be presenting on vSphere (and related tech) futures. If you want a hint at what is going to be discussed I recommend reading this blog post. I will present this session at the following VMUGs, make sure you register as soon as possible as these yearly events are definitely worth attending. I encourage EVERYONE who comes to my session to ask questions and to interact to avoid death by Powerpoint 🙂

For the folks near the belgian border (Holland / France / Germany), all presentations should be in English so it is worth attending if you live relatively close by!