Community

As some of you may recall, there was a little bit of a hub bub recently regarding ‘Making VMUG Great Again’; the crux of the issue came down to getting users more involved, particularly on the presenting side. You can read my thoughts on it here, along with some comments that folks left. Shortly after publishing that post I was contacted by an organizer for the upcoming VMUG Virtual Event and was invited to present a short community session. Well, it was time to put my money where my mouth was, so I accepted (along with the fact that I saw I was listed on the schedule). Side Note: Feel free to join me Tuesday, May 17th at 4:00 CT for my session: Make Your Backups Work For You. ...

Recently there has been some talk on Twitter about ‘Making VMUG Great Again’. Along with that, there have been a couple of great blog posts by Alastair Cooke and Eric Siebert, which I recommend you read. I’ve been following the conversation, albeit usually a good 12 hours or so late. https://twitter.com/DemitasseNZ/status/719651965383213056 I wanted to add my $.02 to the topic, but I don’t think Twitter is a great medium for this (largely due to me ‘missing’ the conversations). As a recent first-time co-presenter I was excited to finally be part of a presentation. I have been attending VMUG UserCons for years, and local user group meetings when possible. I have always wanted to contribute back, but I never have until recently. So what changed? In short, I was invited by Rick Vanover to co-present his session. I eagerly accepted. ...

I received some very welcome news in my inbox yesterday as I returned from lunch. I was delighted and thrilled to learn that I had been accepted into the Veeam Vanguard program for 2016. So what is the Vanguard program? According to Google, Vanguard has three definitions: a group of people leading the way in new developments or ideas; a position at the forefront of new developments or ideas; the foremost part of an advancing army or naval force. Going by the third point, it sounds pretty risky (hence the need for shelter). I don’t believe there were any casualties with the 2015 members. With that in mind, I’ll assume that Veeam is using the first two points as a reference. ...

So the first Southwest Ontario Veeam User Group meeting is in the bag. A big thank you to everyone that came out. Also, a big thank you to all the support that I have received from Veeam. In particular Paula Melvin, David Sayavong, and Bob Scott. I wanted to post a quick recap of the event as there were some folks who let me know ahead of time that they could not make it. In no particular order (largely due to my poor memory), a few of the topics we covered were: ...

Veeam TOVMUG 2016 Today was the annual Toronto VMUG UserCon. I believe it is the largest VMUG event in the Southern Ontario area. This year I opted to stay over in Toronto last night for two reasons: What is typically a 1-hour drive would be closer to 3 during rush hour and I was asked to co-host the Veeam session, so I didn’t want to be late. It also turned out to be a great decision given how bad the weather was. ...

The past few weeks have been one of the longest stretches without a post on here. I’ve been quite busy with work, family, sickness and community commitments. I wanted to toss out some information on the community front, so if you happen to see me at any of these events, feel free to yell ‘Hey, Matt! How you doing’ from across the room and I’ll awkwardly give you a half wave in acknowledgement. ...

As I mentioned in a post a little while back, I am super excited to get the Southwest Ontario Veeam User Group (SWOVUG ?) rolling. It has taken some time to coordinate schedules and locations, but we have our first meeting scheduled for Thursday March 3rd. Full details: Where - Waterloo Memorial Recreation Complex / Room 200 Date - Thursday March 3rd, 2016 Time - 11 AM - 2:30 PM (lunch will be provided) ...

December has been an abysmal month for my blogging; this actually marks the first post of the month, and I thought I owed it to at least myself to write up a post as to what has been going on. First off, lots of holiday stuff. My wife and I are of different religious backgrounds, both of which have holidays in December. Combine that with a couple of kids, and all of a sudden you have a bazillion family events to attend. Good news is that they are generally a great time, the kids are kept occupied for a bit, and the adults get to catch up. On the plus side, my kids have received lots of Lego which gives me an excuse to play with it again (see image). ...