Starting 2017 in community

Last 2 months come with some interesting news about communities around VMUG and VMware. People, events and fun facts are key element are moving in the changes and improvement way. More and more we are hearing about leaders, community managers and their initiatives to make community a great place to share, discuss and improve our knowledge. Let’s see what happened!

VMUG new election board

The first of the 2017 is the announcement of new VMUG Board and Committee chairs for the current year. In the restyled website https://www.vmug.com/Join/About/board there are the names (and photo) of the new members headed by Ben Clayton (president) and Piergiorgio Spagnolatti (vice-president… let me say: vmug.it rocks!!!). The ex-president Mariano Maluf is moved in the board of directors and Brad Tompkins remains confirmed as CEO.

For newbe: VMUG is an independent company born in Aug 2010 and with the purpose of sharing, training and make events around the globe. Just to remember that this is not a VMware branch or affiliates and all vmug leaders must not be VMware employer. In every part of the worlds are present local vmug (like vmug.it) where vmug special members called leaders are involved as volunteer in meeting, activities and a special event called UserCON. VMUG’s power comes from the member and membership gains many benefits! For this reason go the the site to know more… and apply! https://www.vmug.com/Join

vExpert 2017

News coming from official VMTN Blog, includes vExpert application ended last month (deadline was 16 Dec 2016). Indeed vExpert 2017 announcement will be on Feb 8th. Full post is here: https://blogs.vmware.com/vmtn/2016/11/vexpert-2017-applications-are-now-open.html

vExpert program is a <<VMware’s global evangelism and advocacy program>>. For me is the 3rd applications and two years I appreciate the energy of Corey Romero, to recognize a network of people that evangelize VMware tecnologies around the world!…and this is amazing, because during VMworld 2016 EU, I met some of them in an exclusive event called vExpert party, and I could confirm the powerful of this network to grow professionally and personally. I felt a like a world citizen! No divides and only connections with other amazing people around the world! This is my enthusiasm to believe in this program and hope I’ll continue the adventure.

I would leave this argument with this video showing Corey and Tony thoughts about community, bloggers and vExperts, from VMworld 2016 EU.

New badges from Cloud Credibility… and more

Improve the knowledge is important in my job! And what about improving and have fun together? Is what Cloudcredibilty is done since March of 2013. And after 3 years, meet the “manager” and one of the oldest Cloudcred player was an awesome moment: there are funny people behind a username and avatar!

(From L to R: Andrew Mauro, Noell Grier, Andy Nash, me)

Well! back to the news, there are two important highlights:

New badges earning starting with 2017 (vExpert Engagement 2017, vExpert Readiness 2017 and vExpert 2017). Check further information in the Noell’s post: https://blogs.vmware.com/vmtn/2016/12/cloudcred-vexpert-badges.html
The making of a #1 Team, the LonVMUG recent activities in Cloud Credibility. Check this post https://blogs.vmware.com/vmtn/2017/01/making-1-team.html and good luck friends! Don’t forget the main challenge is with vmug.it team (the real vMaffia)

Answering the question: << Why is so important play to Cloud Credibility to improve your knowledge?>>, always I answer that there are 3 elements that influence the growth of a person:

Knowledge: study and practice
Community: be social and connect with world and evangelize what you learned!
Fun: none of us like to be sad during learning and connecting. Be happy and have fun!

If you want to learn and have fun, join https://www.cloudcredibility.com/

VMUG it (words from a “newbe” Leader)

Yeah! We are starting this 2017 with some upcoming meetings and many other channels! Stay tuned.

Like PJ said during last UserCon 2016, the need to highlight the “U” in VMUG (Users), is the trend where all of us are investing our time. This year we would like to realize new format where people, with their experiences, shares their thoughts about virtualization and cloud technologies. For this reason, during this year, the call for paper will starting early, but in different format. Stay tuned and be fearless! Come in and share your knowledge and remember: VMUG is not the leader’s place! VMUG is your place!

In {code} we trust!

Last news of the month is new VMware {code} website https://code.vmware.com/. Theme now looks like VMware’s style and you could find all code related content like SDKs, resources and news with some external contriburtors links. IMHO this could be another important community reference, and if you like code, this is a great place for you!