It’s true to say that the VMware community is awesome. Unlike others, VMware invest in their now over 1500 vExperts, VMTN community and certified professionals. This has become even more apparent to anyone visiting VMworld this year.
Even before registration, the community was buzzing on Twitter & vExpert slack with anticipation of what might be revealed and who was free to meet up and when.
I had personally been awarded a complimentary blogger pass to VMworld EU (Although there was no expectation for me to do anything in return) This granted me front seats to the general sessions in the designated press area. Pretty cool right?
VMTN Community
Once registered one of the first stands I saw was the VMTN Community area. To my surprise, VMTN had been given a dedicated section of VMVillage to present talks, for bloggers to sit and to socialise. This reminded me how big VMTN has become – over 3 million users and 100+ forums! Integration into VMware Support Request systems and now new, native language forums.
As a VMTN User Moderator, I definitely had to go over to say hello. Katie Bradley (VMware Technology Network Community Manager) was there subscribing new users and running the area alongside Elsa Mayer (Blog Program Manager)
It was great to be able to finally catch up in person with two great people from VMware, dedicated to help the “vCommunity” grow and mature.
I was talking to Elsa for some time about the new VMTN BlogBeat Program. If you are a blogger, you need to sign up to this! In summary it will display your content on various VMware Channels. Read more about this here https://blogs.vmware.com/vmtn/tag/blog-beat or reach out to Elsa directly.
Unfortunately, I found out that Corey Romero wasn’t able to make it to VMworld EU this year but thank you Corey for the Blogger pass, without it I would not have been here.
vExpert
There wasn’t a dedicated stand for vExpert but VMTN Community were handling all vExpert content. However there were a few vExperts around that I managed to catch up with. VMworld provided charging points, benches and tables for everyone. They also had many many fridges around the whole venue to help yourselves to soft drinks and water. There were also many free coffee stations around, especially in the Breakout Sessions hall area.
Solutions Exchange
The community isn’t all driven from VMware internally though, there were a good few vendors asking if you were a vExpert. In return for “yes” you were loaded up with pens, t-shirts, backpacks and even socks! Solutions Exchange is the heart of the Vendor stands at VMworld.
Education
I’ve helped a lot of people with their VMware Certifications over the last couple of years (and a lot of people have helped me) so it was nice to see another dedicated stand at VMworld for Education & Certification.
On entry I was asked what certs I had and ended up with a few items of clothing and a special VCAP badge! What was even better though, I had a certification question with regards to upgrade paths that wasn’t straight forward. I was hurried over to Karl Childs (VMware Certification Senior Manager) – A really nice guy who answered my barrage of questions. He even said that he was going to make a change based off the same feedback I and other community members had provided about the new badges!
Various community happenings
There were a few other things around the venue (It is quite a big place)
I loved the big screens with all the tweets on, very useful to see what’s going on. Also there was a meet the experts stand but it was always full so I couldn’t attend.
I’m sure there was more to mention but there was not enough time to attend all the sessions I wanted and to see everything that was going on.
Hope to see some of you next year!
