Well, its a New Year and as ever my thoughts are turning to my commitment to the VMware User Group. I’ve got a couple of things on the slow boil. Firstly, meetings – I’m going to be at the following events:
23rd Jan – London (London VMUG)
30th Jan – Leeds (Yorkshire VMUG)
18th Feb – Bristol (South-West VMUG)
I’ll be running an informal “training” session at Leeds focusing on an introduction to vSphere. I did a similar session in Manchester last year which was quite successful. It’s second trial run at the idea of delivering more “educational” content at VMUG events where the venue/session/layout permits an extended session in the morning, followed by the VMUG proper in the afternoon. At this stage its very much focused on those who are new vSphere, and perhaps have never had any authorised training in the past. For me its chance get in front of folks in a more “instructional” format – something that was my regular day job from the early 90s until about 2009. Call it “Instructor Nostalgia” if you like!
One of my goals this year is to attend EVERY VMUG event in the UK. That’s a lofty goal I know, but I’m going to try. For this year, I will be focusing on the UK/Europe, and scaling back my commitments to US events.
Tonight I’m going to my local “ToastMaster” event as part of my research into #FeedForward. In case you don’t know Toastmaster is a not-for-profit that tries to link people together to learn more about and improve their public speaking abilities. One of my pet projects is trying to get members to speak at VMUGs more frequently. My idea is to see how Toastmasters do there thing – and see if there’s anything to be learned from how the mentor people. Perhaps prospective VMUG speakers might like to attend their local Toastmaster group or alternatively there maybe tips and tricks we can learn from Toastmaster that can be shared within our wider community. FeedForward is just my snappy name for trying provide some sort ‘mentoring’ upfront/before someone speaks at a VMUG. The idea is to boost the speakers confidence and prepare them for their presentation…