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

The 4th annual UK-wide VMware User Group Conference is in a couple of weeks, on Tuesday 18th November several hundred (last year it was over 500!) of your peers will travel to the National Motorcycle Museum in Solihull.

The venue is just down the road from Birmingham airport, and a short taxi ride from the local train station – or easy to get to by road with free parking.

As part of the committee that puts this event on I’d like to point out some of the highlights of the agenda; as per-every year, we have the usual array of headlining technical super-stars from the virtualization community – Duncan Epping, Frank Denneman, Mike Laverick and Chris Wahl. But, over the years we’ve continued to build-up the community mezzanine area to deliver highly interactive face to face discussion groups and white board sessions – small groups of people talking brain-bendingly deep tech, or just introductions for n00bs – the guys staffing these tables are volunteers from all areas of industry and are the best brains in the biz – take advantage!

These are taking place on the mezzanine level and are noted as side-sessions on the main agenda. The mezzanine is the raised area at the back of the solutions-exchange & will be sign-posted on the day – there are way too many for me to detail on this blog post – 20 sessions in total!!!

    • VMware GSS are running a drop-in clinic – this is your chance to ask the tricky questions of VMware support, they are excellent supporters of VMUG and are sending two of their top level support & escalation engineers to field your questions face to face.
    • Designing real-world workflows for vRealize automation center (vCAC) with Jon Medd – if, like me – you’ve struggled to find practical examples & resources for this sort of project – Jon is your man; he’s done it for real – ask him the tricky questions and he’s an absolute wizz at PowerCLI!
    • Ask the CTO anything; this is your chance to have a face to face discussion with VMware EMEA CTO Joe Baguley – Joe is an avid VMUG supporter and general all-round expert at all things technical – he’s game for any questions – even non-VMware related ones (hint: ask him about fireworks or Robot Wars, or even SDDC) – how often do you get that opportunity! (he is also our keynote speaker).

We start early on the Tuesday, and as such we are repeating the popular vCurry the night before – check the box when you sign up to attend; we’ll be laying on curry and there will be a light-hearted quiz, this was a hoot last year – although we have already decided the guys from VMware GSS are excluded from winning 🙂 – although beware they may set some of the questions :).

Please note the event is on a Tuesday (not the typical Thursday) – but it’s early enough in the week to hopefully get your boss to agree that you can go to what is effectively a mini-VMworld in the UK.

You can see the full agenda online at http://www.vmug.com/p/cm/ld/fid=5166 and you can sign-up at http://www.vmug.com/p/cm/ld/fid=7267