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Unfortunately I wasn’t able to attend the London VMware User Group meeting on the 26th January, the first I’ve missed in a quite a while but hopefully I had a good enough excuse!

However, I was surprised and extremely honoured to hear I had been awarded “Best Community Presentation 2011” award for one of my presentations during the year, Upgrading from vSphere 4 to 5 at the first ever UK VMware User Group. This was a combined meeting of the London, Northern and Scottish VMUGs held in the National Motorcycle Museum in Solihull.

I am a fervent believer in the power of community and the VMware user groups in particular do a fantastic job of bringing together people with a passion for IT and virtualisation in general and in their simplest form allow information to flow and fantastically it’s not just from VMware’s side as the VMUGs are independently run and so are designed to get to please YOU, not VMware. Networking on a human level at a VMUG is not handing out your business card at a cocktail party but rather it’s all about community spirit, sharing ideas, asking questions, getting involved and hopefully getting something out of it at the end of the day. I’m just glad that I’ve been fortunate enough to have a chance to empart some information and give back a little of the deluge of awesome info I have received in the past.

I was going to write a post on how important user groups are and how you really should get involved in any way you can and even take the plunge and put together a presentation yourself or with a colleague or friend but Jonathan Medd, a fellow prize winner and all-round community guru has done such a great job already in his post: Your Local Technical User Group Needs You. All I would add is take the plunge and go for it, mix the knowledge you have gained from others with your bit of magic sprinkle and share it for the greater good. Yes, putting together a presentation takes a huge amount of time but you may surprise yourself with what you learn in the process and it is actually great fun standing up and showing off your work, honestly!

Thanks to the committee of Alaric,  Jane, Simon and Stu who do a phenomenal amount of work behind the scenes to put together such a fantastic day…all for free by the way. They should be getting awards every time.

Hopefully I will have some time this year to contribute to the VMUGs in any way I can but I’m secretly wanting to hear there are no speaking slots available as they have been snapped up already by eager community people who have great stories to tell.

Thanks again!