You can follow me on all networks. Where I’m really active is Facebook and Mastodon. I do have a presence on other platforms – but that’s more “publishing”. If you want to chat with me about music – the best places to get my attention are Facebook and Mastodon.

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Disclaimer:

Initially, when I started blogging it was all about my day job in IT. Whilst I still work in IT, I want to change this blog to more about music – either that I recreate or others create.

I regard it quite rightly that michellelaverick.com is my own personal blog. I’m responsible for all the content here. Only by subscribing to these principles can we hope to make the blogger-sphere a place of independently-minded and trustworthy views. I personally believe that any content should be based on personal, first-hand experience.

I’m borderline dyslexic and my blog does NOT have an external proofreader – so I apologize for that upfront…

About Me:

As you might gather my name is Michelle Laverick, I was born in the area of the UK called “Teesside” and I currently live in Derbyshire. You can take the lass out of Teesside, but you can never take Teesside out of the lass.

I’m a big fan of music – both listening and playing. I play the guitar (6, 12, Baritone, Slide), 8-string uke and tinker with mandola, mandolin, and cigar box guitars too. I’m also the host of a regular acoustic session that I run in my town – as well as hosting DJ slot for Radio Free Matlock during the pandemonium that shines a light on the local Derbyshire Session scene – I’m also a member of the local community choir “Raise Your Voices” where our choir master is Lester Simpson (of the famous for folk circles Coope, Boyes & Simpson) and my local uke group. In my spare time, I hosted a monthly radio show on Radio Free Matlock – called “The Dark Sessions“. It basically showcases local performers in the session scene in the County of Derbyshire. I’m also the self-appointed (opinionated?) chair of the Wirksworth LGBTQIA+ group more popularly known as “Out and Proud of Wussa” – I helped put together the very first “Pride Float” for our annual carnival and helped curate monthly movie events for the group at the North Lights Cinema.

My day job is in IT. I would describe myself as a “TechKnowologist”. Sharing my understanding and knowledge of technology with others. As such the blog represents my views, and should not be seen as being reflective of my company’s position.

I work for Droplet Computing where I am the Chief Technology Officer (CTO). Yes, it’s a bit of a grand title but all that really means is helping people fix their problems, and dreaming up new and better ways of using our technology, pushing it into every nook and cranny of people’s end-user computing needs.

From 2012-15, I worked for VMware as their Senior Cloud Infrastructure Evangelist, in the Competitive Marketing Team. In Sept 2014 I switched to the vxRAIL team at VMware, with general technical marketing responsibilities. In Dec 2015 I left VMware to take what I called a “grown-up gap year”. This allowed me to do some small amount of travelling through physical space, and a large amount of travelling in the mind. I also spent time on creative projects including writing and performing. During my time volunteering for a charity and at two museums in my local area – whilst I worked on what to next and think about my next gig.

Before joining VMware I was an independent for 10 years. I’m a former freelance instructor with 27 years of experience in technologies such as Novell (NCT), Windows (MCT), Citrix (CCI), and of course VMware (VCI). From 2003-2015, I was heavily involved with the VMware community. I was a VMware Forum Moderator and member of the London VMware User Group – and I was active on the Steering Committee there. I was a VMwarevExpert from 2009-2018. I helped found the Scottish VMware user groups and in 2009-2012 spoke each month at larger regional events (UserCons) organized by the Global VMUG in North America, EMEA, and APAC. I’ve published several books on VMware Virtual Infrastructure, vSphere, Site Recovery Manager, and Horizon View.

I was also the person behind the virtualization website and blog RTFM Education, where I published free guides and utilities for VMware customers. RTFM Education was sold to TechTarget, Inc a media company in Boston, MA. For two years I contributed articles, How-Tos, and Ebooks for them. After affiliating to TechTarget (2009-2012) I found the time to run a weekly podcast called the Chinwag and the Vendorwag. I had intended to carry on Chinwagging whilst I was at VMware. But I kind of ran out of time and ran out of puff for doing it. So that’s been dormant for some time now.