I’m proud, that as of today, I can call myself officially a VMUG Leader for the Belgian community. The former VMUG Leader Erik Schils, decided that after 15 years it was time to step aside and leave it over to a new generation of leaders. So first, a big thank you, for doing this by yourself for 15 years and delivering a quality event each year. We have a big responsibility to make sure that we fill in the void that you have left behind. I’m writing “we”, because I’m picking up this leadership together with Maarten Van Driessen (blog/twitter) & Jens Herremans (blog/twitter).
I’m excited to be a VMUG Leader for a lot of things.
First of all, a very simple one, getting out of my comfort zone 🙂 In case you don’t know me yet, I’m a Senior Technical Specialist at Kyndryl. So I’m used talking to customers and fellow peers, however getting in front of an auditorium and start talking to more then hundreds of people, well for now that still scares me.
Another one is the challenge of creating an event that is educational for a variety of different people. Making sure that everyone can go home with having at least one new thing learned. Or having found the right person to network, or just a new good friend.
For sure it will also allow me to grow my own network. The possibility to interact with each and everyone during the event, but also with partners and sponsors. I will also have the opportunity to network with VMUG leaders all over the world and learn from their wisdom on how to create a top notch VMUG event. How we can make VMUG better for “you”.
And last but certainly not least, to make our event grow bigger then ever before and ultimately be bigger then VMUG NL 😀
What is VMUG / vBeers?
Officially launched in August of 2010, the VMware User Group (VMUG) is an independent, global, customer-led organization, created to maximize members’ use of VMware and partner solutions through knowledge sharing, training, collaboration, and events.
In Belgium, this is an annual VMUG event that was hosted in Mechelen. Providing a space for partners, vendors and customers to meet, network and attend sessions hosted by industry and community experts.
On the other hand, we have the concept of “vBeers”, which is a community-based initiative that focuses on connecting like-minded people that have a passion for technology & virtualisation. This is a monthly event (every 3rd Thursday of the month) with 1 or 2 short sessions. These sessions can be technology-related but that’s not required. The goal of vBeers is to provide a low-entry platform for inexperienced public speakers to experience and test public speaking between similar vGeeks, but that doesn’t mean we never invite experienced speakers. 🙂
If you are interested in one of those, be sure to head over to the vCommunityBelux slack workspace for updates on events and meet the other vCommunity folks.
vCommunitBelux slack workspace
What are our goals for 2022?
1.VMUG
Building on the existing foundations we have today, we want to fuse the VMUG and vBeers concepts into one. Creating an event like VMUG with the atmosphere and energy of a vBeers. We want to return to the basics of VMUG and that’s an event by Users for Users. Meaning, how you can get practical value out of the event. As leaders, we are just a small portion of how we see the VMUG concept grow in Belgium.
We also need YOUR input on how we can bring VMUG to the next level. You can help us with filling in a short survey. This will only take a few minutes and provide essential information on what we can do to make VMUG the perfect format for “you”.
We are currently working hard on getting things rolling and hope to host a Physical/Virtual VMUG later on this year in june!
2.Pre-VMUG
We’re also planning to do an online pre-VMUG session. This will be a 2 hour event with lots of community speakers that will present some smaller sessions. And here we will also announce our VMUG event.
3.vBeers
For the vBeers, I’ve already mentioned that we host this every 3rd Thursday of each month. We’re also thinking about organizing a bigger vBeers twice or three times per year. We would then invite a partner that would dive deeper into a specific area.
Stay tuned and looking forward to seeing you on our next vBeers or VMUG!
Kristof's virtual life 