Virtualization, Cloud, Infrastructure and all that stuff in-between

If you are a London VMware User Group attendee, you’ll already be aware of the fantastic quality of presenters we have had from the community over the last few years. As such, we wanted a way to reward those that have spent many hours of their own personal time honing their content.

I know from experience how much time this takes, so we (the LonVMUG committee) presented the catchily titled inaugural LonVMUG Best Presentation of 2011 Awards (or, as maybe we should have called it vBAFTAs) at our first 2012 event looking back at the best community presentations from 2011 and we are aiming to make this an annual event.

Sponsors and VMware staff are obviously important to our events, and they also deliver some excellent content for our attendees but members from the community stepped way out of their day jobs and family commitments to share their experiences.

The list of nominees are as follows..

• Scott Vessey – VMware Certification, Preparing for Success
• Gabrie van Zanten – Cheap Disaster Recovery using PowerShell scripts
• Chris Dearden – Transatlantic Datacentre migration
• Tom Brand – Private vs Public cloud
• Stuart Radnidge – Rethinking infrastructure
• Mike Laverick – SRM Futures
• Mark Craddock – Cloud: Can you compete?
• Julian Wood – Thinking, building & scripting globally
• Jonathan Medd – How to Save Your Time with PowerCLI
• Simon Gallagher – vTardis5
• Simon Gallagher – VCDX defence
• Jonathan Medd – PowerCLI workshop
• Mike Laverick – Bumps in the Road
• Julian Wood – Upgrading vSphere 4 to 5

…and the following are the winners for the best LonVMUG Community Presentation were… (virtual drum-roll)…

Third prize – Stuart Radnidge (Rethinking Infrastructure) – Winning a £100 Amazon.com voucher

Second prize – Jonathan Medd (How to Save Your Time with PowerCLI) – Winning a £150 Amazon.com voucher

First prize – Julian Wood (Upgrading vSphere 4 to 5) – Winning a £250 Amazon.com voucher

If you are not a regular speaker in your personal or professional life, it doesn’t matter – nor do you have to manage a data centre the size of a small city or be CEO of Amazon to have something interesting to say. your demo’s don’t have to even work every time (believe me, mine didn’t!). it’s a very friendly crowd and even if you feel a little nervous or stumble we are always on-hand to help you out, we are all volunteers and nobody gets paid to run the London VMware User Group, we’re all about the content rather than the glitz.

If you want to see what people have presented at previous events you can browse most of the presentations at http://box.com/londonug likewise, if you’re curious about what happened on the day you can check out Alaric’s slide deck here.

If you have an idea for a future session feel free to drop me an email (address on the about page) with a brief abstract and bio and we’ll be in touch – our upcoming events are;

• May 17th – London
• July 19th – London
• November – National VMUG, date & venue TBC