Just back from a busy few days at vForum, after attending my first VMworld this year I decided to trying something different this time.

I started the catchup series of interviews for several reasons, but I think the main one is to try and raise awareness of the VMware community in our region (being APAC), I noticed that the community activity in the US (via VMworld) and the UK (via LonVMUG with there UKVMUG event) seemed more mature and the take-up of social media tools like twitter, YouTube and Facebook more advanced.

It is my belief that the APAC region will quickly catch up with these trends, but I thought I might try and assist with this development by interviewing some local community members and try to elevate their presence.

As the Melbourne VMUG leader I’m in tune with our community locally and after being involved with organising a full day User Conference I became acutely aware of the lack of local rockstars (I had to recruit from overseas to cover this, but was very thankful to get both Mike Laverick @Mike_Laverick and Scott Lowe @Scott_Lowe to participate).

It was while participating on a ‘miniwag’ with Mike Laverick at VMworld when I hit on a eureka moment of taking the one-on-one interview technique Mike has developed with the well known ‘chinwag’ podcasts and adapting it as a means for the APAC community to better get to know its local talent and maybe even elevate them towards rockstar status.

The first thing to do was to talk it through with Mike and get some advice, I also wanted to ask for his ‘consent’ if you like as although his response was ‘there’s no copyright on two people having a conversation in front of a camera’, I believe I owed him the right to refuse.

That’s the great thing about this community, the more you give, the more you are given, it’s infectious!

The other big influence on all this would be the great work the vBrownBag guys are doing, specifically Alastair Cooke @DemitasseNZ and Nick Marshall @NickMarshall9, Alastair has been a great influence on this, firstly for letting me share his hotel room at VMworld. As I had no support from my employer I had to cover Flight and Accommodation costs (VMUG helped with the entry ticket) but Alastair offered to share accommodation, I understand someone did it for him and he wanted to ‘pay it forward’ which I’m very thankful for.

I’ve also been helping Alastair with hosting the APACvirtual podcast and was able to assist with the VMDownUnderground event this year at vForum, being on the door with Andrew Daunce @Daunce_ was a lot of fun!

vForum has been a great opportunity to start the Catchup series off with some interviews of well know names in the industry leading onto some local talent…

My experiences of vForum and our community was around the VMDownUnderground party, which was just great, no music, just vBeers style chat and free beer! I was also able to ‘pay it forward’ and offer a bed to a regular Melbourne VMUG attended and have dinner with a really good friend and a company who’s technology is already starting to be a big disruption in the storage space.

Lets get this show on the road… Watch out for my next blog post and my first catchup with… Scott Drummonds, EMC (@drummonds).