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

I’m passionate about getting people to come and experience all the great things you can get from a VMUG, whilst the London and UK VMUG are very lucky to have great support from VMware and our sponsors it’s hard to find people in the community who are willing to ‘stand-up’ and talk about their experiences.

So, I’d like to announce that we are intending to run our vFACTOR initiative at the UK VMUG in November this year – it’s a whole-day multi-track event held at the National Space Centre (our 2nd year there and I think our 9th UK VMUG event in total) – click here for some videos of previous events for a flavour of what goes on).

In exchange, for you preparing and delivering a short (up to 10min) presentation we are offering the following fantastic prizes..

• 1st Prize: Ticket & Travel/Hotel to VMworld 2020 (EU/US)

• 2nd Prize: iPhone X (or whatever latest available model is by Oct 31st)

• 3rd Prize: £500 Amazon voucher

• 4th & 5th Prize £100 Amazon voucher

• The Rules

  • New community presenters who have never presented at a VMUG before
  • Not open to VMware staff or sponsors (although we love you too)
  • 5 slots at UKVMUG on 27th November (Leicester), organising team will shortlist and announce 5 finalists + 1 reserve by 5th October
  • 10 min. slot per entrance
  • Once entrance per person accepted for entry, but feel free to submit multiple sessions
  • Entry via http://tinyurl.com/VMUG-CFP before September 30th (EXTENDED from 15th!)
  • Support, mentoring, preparation are offered from LonVMUG team and we’ll help you through the process of preparation and delivery
• Winner decided by audience vote on the day

We ran this once before at the London VMUG in 2014 and I have to say since then, all participants have gone on to further their own professional brand and career – one of the winners (@bfd_diplomacy) is now on the VMUG board of directors and helps organise the London & UK VMUGs others have gone on to other subsequent greatness like passing their VCDX.

vFACTOR is intended to encourage, cajole and frankly… bribe! people (in a non-HR or compliance department related sense) to come and share their experiences – I’ve written about this in the past, so please read on if you instantly think you don’t have something to offer.. all we ask for is that spark of imagination..

I’m nervous, I’m no Duncan Epping, or Frank Dennemann  I can’t do public speaking

We all have been here, we’re a friendly crowd and it’s an excellent way to learn some important life & professional skills. To help with this, we – the organising committee would like to help, we can help you prepare, dry-run and fine-tune your presentation prior to the event.

I cant think of anything to talk about

We all have great experience from environments small and massive – I’ve personally found the best way to capitalise on this knowledge is to share it with others, having to distil it down to a presentation or blog post is a great way to help you focus on the important facts of what you did and how you did it – I have a tendency to whitter on (if you’ve read this blog for a while you already know this!) and doing this is an excellent tool, especially if you have to explain it to someone outside of your organisation

I work for a 3 man band company, nobody is interested in what I do

Wrong, I started my VMUGging talking about my 1 node home lab, you don’t have to have a data centre the size of the starship enterprise to have something interesting to say. Infact – I’d say from personal experience people from SMB type organisations have much more limited budgets and have to find far more creative ways to get things done

I work in a nuclear bunker, and I have access to your home address and browser history – I can’t talk about what I do

Now I know some of you maybe do work in nuclear bunkers, 3-letter govt. agencies or centres of commercial finance and are unable to talk about what you do for fear of exposing commercial secrets – I understand this, so do I.. My suggestion is that if you want to submit a talk – anonymise what you do – if you work for Goliath National Bank, just say you work for “a major bank”, or “an airline” – this is a VMUG, not Panorama. VMUG attendees are interested in the tech, what you did, how you did it & what could have gone better; not what impact it had on your Q4 financial results.

If you take this approach and remember to say you are not there as a company spokesperson, this is my own opinion etc. this is usually acceptable.

So, in closing I encourage you to submit a proposal and participate, what’s the worst that could happen? oh, and there are some great prizes on-offer!