VMware Community

Having started blogging about VMware virtualisation just over a year ago my knowledge and enjoyment for learning more has grown and grown. I was drawn to start a blog and eventually start twittering about my experiences and VMware products after spending a long time reading other users blogs, at the time it was www.yellow-bricks.com and www.virtu-al.com that got my attention the most. Whilst I don’t think my blog will ever be up to the status of these bloggers, due to their gift for explaining technical elements to a technical audiance it has been good to get possitive feedback from users who have enjoyed reading articles, or that I have been able to help out of a tight situation with problems in the datacenter.

Since I started posting regularly on twitter and following some key people in the virtualisation community I have really began to understand the concept of the VMware community that is mentioned so often in blog posts and the round tables podcast etc. Being able to comment on new events and products, find out about all the latest thought provoking blog post and make some keys contacts that share the same passion as myself. I have been helped out with issues by industry leaders, been able to offer help to other specialists, assist with ideas for products being designed to help the virtualisation administrator and much more.

This week saw for me and many others treck to IPExpo at Earls Court in London, I plan to blog about IPExpo a little later. But what IPExpo meant for me was a chance to finally meet a lot of the people in the VMware Community that I either speak to on a regular basis or follow on twitter. Being my first event of this type I was somewhat nervous, as putting myself out there and making first contact isn’t one of my strongest points (it’s easy to do when sat behind a screen and keyboard!) After a fantastic day meeting Scott Herold from Vizioncore (@vmguru), Doug Hazelman from Veeam (@VMDoug), Alan Renouf from virtual-al.net (@alanrenouf) plus many others and watching lots of fantastic demos, I headed to the storagebeers at the local pub. I lost track of all the people I spoke to but what a fantastic bunch of people! to be able to walk in a room with a group of people I had never met and be a. be recognised and b. be able to chat to about anything and everything including virtualisation was fantastic. So a big thank you to all of those that made me feel welcome (ecspecially Scott Herold, Doug Hazelman, Simon Seagrave, Stu (@vinternals) and Stevie Chambers even if I did only meet him briefly!)  and I hope next time I have the guts to introduce myself to a few more of you and can stay a little longer than 2 hours.

My week was topped off by being included in Eric Siebert’s Top 100 VMware & virtualization people to follow  list, to even be considered for this by someone as knowledgable and with as much experience as Eric Siebert is a great honour.

For anyone new to VMware or hoping to gain some more knowledge, following the people on the list above is a great start, dont be affraid to ask questions or add your comments or opinions. There maybe differences in opinions but by taking part and blogging albeit micro blogging via twitter or starting your own blog about your feelings and thoughts is a great way to learn more and get involved in the community atmosphere.  Also the VMware communities at http://communities.vmware.com/home.jspa are at the center of this community, this is a great place to get involved answering questions or poss your questions to the community.

Thanks to everyone involved in the community I hope I can continue to contribute for a long time to come and meet many more of you at community events, VMUG’s and hopefully even VMworld next year.