As many of you know, it’s been a while since you have seen or heard much from the Wisconsin VMware User Group. With that in mind I thought I would put together this post to provide an update on meetings and a few other things. Our last meeting was September 21st last year in Madison. For a variety of reasons (mostly due to me just not having much time to spend on the WI-VMUG) not much has happened with the WI-VMUG since then. I hope to avoid any such lulls in our activity in the future. All that being said, there’s been quite a bit more activity behind the scenes lately so let me give you some updates on a few things:
Meetings and our annual User Conference
As you should know, we have our first meeting of 2012 coming up at the Radisson in Memonomee Falls on Tuesday, 2/28. It’s being sponsored by our friends at Ahead,Transcendent and Dell/Compellent. In the four months following that we are working on finalizing plans for two additional half day meetings and our full day User Conference.
The tentative dates and locations for the half day meetings are the Green Bay area on April 4th and the Madison area on May 15th. After that we are looking at having our 3rd annual all day WI-VMUG User Conference the last week of June. Keep in mind all of these dates and locations are tentative until we lock down the venues.
Want to Win a Cool Prize?
Speaking of meetings and User Conferences, we had some discretionary funds available to us as a result of our successful User Conference last year. As a result, you will have a chance to benefit from that and Win with WI-VMUG in 2012 at these upcoming events. Follow the link for more details.
VMware User Group program update
2011 has been a significant growth year for VMUG:
- VMUG membership grew by 33% in 2011 to nearly 75,000 individual members
- 2,700 new members joined at VMworld Copenhagen and Las Vegas alone
- More than 7,400 people participated in 19 VMUG webcasts this year
- 2,000 people signed up for VMUG’s newest offering, VMUG Advantage. Launched this spring, this program provides members with savings on certification exams, training, and software licenses (sign up today!)
- More than 15,000 people have registered to attend local VMUG chapter meetings
- 11,000 registered to attend one of our 22 regional user conferences
- VMUG’s international reach was increased through participation in VMware events around the world, including vForums, VMworld, and Knowledge Series
At the end of 2011 three of the ten VMUG Board of Directors positions were up for election. Board Vice President Charlie Gautreaux (Charlotte) was re-elected while Chris Harney and Viktor van den Berg choose not to run for re-election. Our own Brian Kirsch (Milwaukee, WI) joined Daniel Pfuhl (Leipzig, Germany) as new members of the VMUG Board. Brian has also joined the WI-VMUG Steering Committee.
There continues to be a lot of work being done by the Board, the outstanding staff at VMUG HQ and the VMUG team at VMware. We are continually re-evaluating the VMUG Advantage program, so watch for some changes there in 2012. Work is also being done on the VMUG.com website and you will be seeing some exciting changes there in the coming months. As always we are open to your feedback so feel free to reach out to me, Brian or any other VMUG BoD members.
WI-VMUG Social Media
In addition to this website, there are several other ways to keep up with what’s going on with the Wisconsin VMware Users Group:
- Twitter: We now have 228 followers of @WIVMUG. You can also follow @MyVMUG for updates on the global VMUG program.
- Facebook: There are 54 members of our Facebook group
- LinkedIn: We have 631 people in our LinkedIn group
- VMware Communities: As always you can find out information at the WI-VMUG section of the VMware Communities site. There may be some great changes coming here in 2012.
I would like to a shout out and big Thank You to Sherry Zittel, Nathan Scheunemann and Mike Nelson who have put in a lot of hours helping me as members of the WI-VMUG Steering Committee. As mentioned above, Brian Kirsch has joined the group this year. I also need to thank our VMware Liaison Ben Sier for all of his contributions. If you see them at our events this year, be sure to introduce yourself and to thank them for their time and efforts.
Thanks to all of you for helping to make 2011 a great year for the WI-VMUG and the VMUG program as a whole. It is a User Group after all and without your participation and support it wouldn’t be the premier IT user group that it is. We are looking forward to 2012 being an even better year and I hope to see you at many of our events this year.
Rod
