Month: August 2018
2018 Opening Acts—Live Stream
Of course, the best way to experience Opening Acts is live-and-in-person, joining in on the interaction with panelists and peers. But if you’re unable to come, either because of conflicting meetings at VMworld, or you’re unable to join in the fun in Las Vegas, we’ve got you covered: we’ll be recording and live-streaming the panel sessions for “place- & time-shift” content consumers.
We’ll post links to the recorded content at a later time, but the live stream will be available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJJJ_9C_vkE
Opening Acts 2018—Why Are There So Many Clouds in My Infrastructure?
If there’s one word that sums up the current state of IT, it would be “complexity.” With so many moving pieces needed to support a company’s applications and data, it’s no wonder there are so many companies aiming to solve this mess. But we’re not going to get into that (there’s plenty of marketing messages already covering this).
The topic we’ll be discussing during the Tips for Multi-Cloud Success panel at Opening Acts 2018 is a relatively new wrinkle in the IT complexity puzzle: having to manage multiple clouds. We’ve all heard the stories of shadow IT: marketing departments swiping their credit cards for Software as a Service applications and developers running up tabs on AWS, but now we have official uses of public cloud infrastructure: VMs running in Azure, email being hosted by Office 365, and backup/DR to the cloud solutions. And all of this is on top of our on-premises virtual infrastructure and/or private cloud.
But is this multi-cloud future inevitable? What does the future of IT look like with multiple clouds running our applications and data? Our panelists will discuss how we got into this situation, what it’s likely to mean to all of us, and how we get our arms around all of these different and disparate extensions to our infrastructure. Any well-run infrastructure is built on solid management tools and processes, so they’ll also discuss how our tools and processes will need to change in order to properly manage these extended IT components.
Other questions we expect our elite group of panelists might discuss:
- Are there particular cloud providers that people have had greater success with? Which uses cases are each best suited for?
- What if our migration to the cloud fails? What does it take to move back or to another cloud?
- How are VMware and other traditional on-premises vendors helping to ease this new paradigm?
- What skillsets should we all be focusing on building/improving to best equip ourselves for this?
- What about security and cost?!?
Speaking of panelists, here’s who we’ll have on stage to help answer these questions:
- Moderating: Stu Miniman – @stu
- David Burton – @HeyvBurt
- Joshua Stenhouse – @joshuastenhouse
- Phoummala Schmitt – @ExchangeGoddess
- Brian Knudtson – @bknudtson
- Tim Jabaut – @timjabaut
Whether you fear the cloud or not, this is a topic I expect many people will have to deal with in the next several years. Bring your questions and experiences, and join this information packed session.
2018 “last minute stuff”
We’re one week out from VMworld 2018 US, which also means we’re one week out from Opening Acts and VMunderground. And while you may have become tired of advice, suggestions, and “before you go” tweets, blogposts and emails, we need to get this one out to everyone planning on attending our community events…
Opening Acts and VMunderground are two very different events at the same great venue. Review the information on the respective info “perma-pages” for timing and logistics for each event.
While we hope these pages are pretty comprehensive, we have thrown in some last-minute changes to VMunderground and some logistic requests to share.
First: Thanks to the generous support of VTUG, we’re opening to our sponsors and their guests at 7pm for an hour-long pre-party.
General admission for the party—whether you have a purchased ticket or a free entry thanks to a sponsor—is from 8pm to midnight.
Second: Although both Opening Acts and VMunderground are “come-and-go” events, we ask that you show respect for panelists and attendees at Opening Acts by minimizing your entry and exit while the sessions are in progress.
Finally: Both of these events are community-organized and community-attended. We hope that you’ll enjoy meeting new friends and re-acquainting yourself with old friends! If you’re anything like me, however, you may have trouble connecting faces and names (and Twitter handles!) with people you only get to see in person once a year. For that reason, you should plan to wear your conference badge so that people can take advantage of the (maybe not so) subtle cue on who you are.
Opening Acts 2018—Beating IT Burnout
The last Opening Acts panel of 2018 will be the Beating IT Burnout panel, to help you handle some of the challenges of working in an IT organization. The panel is formed with a mix of expertise, people working in IT who have suffered burn out and people who teach skills to avoid burn out. We will address questions like:
- What causes IT burnout?
- How is stress different from burnout?
- What are the early (and late) symptoms of IT burnout?
- How can I handle the causes better?
- Is my job really sending me mad?
- How do I help my partner understand my stress and burn out?
Moderator:
Alastair Cooke, I have been self-employed for the last twelve years, you might think that burn out and stress are a thing of the past, nothing could be further from the truth.
Panelists:
- Eric Lee, the title of the panel came from Eric’s presentation at the Indy VMUG and the accompanying blog post that outlines how Eric has dealt with his IT burnout.
- Kat Troyer, a career coach and organizational development consultant who teaches leaders how to build strong teams and constructive cultures. She is the founder of Gently Moving Forward and co-founder of The Influence Marketing Council.
- Alicia Preston, along with Sonia Cuff, was the instigator of the mindfulness and IT burnout efforts at VMworld. Alicia is the founder of Mindful Roots, who specializes in applying mindfulness techniques to help youth & adults reduce stress and anxiety.
- Thom Greene, a member of the vBrownBag crew and has recently taken on a couple of new roles in quick succession, learning a lot about what does and doesn’t make him happy along the way.
- Lindy Collier-Grady, the founder vLadies and has a podcast called Hello from My Home Lab. She does speaking engagements all across the US in regards to women and technology.
Opening Acts 2018—Do you have the skills?
A technology career has multiple stages that one goes through from their first internship or admin job to senior technical positions or into the executive ranks, but each stage has its own special skillset. During our 1pm panel on 2018 Skills for Engineers/Architects/IT Executives at Opening 
Acts 2018 we will talk through what it takes to grow your career. Equally important, we’ll discuss why sometimes you have to evaluate if the next level is right for you or if a change of perspective (to sales, to product management/development, or to a different specialty) is the next step in your career. Learn from the group if more education has mattered, or if it has been mentorship or some other form of growth that has helped their career.
Join a star-studded group of panelists that have done everything from running their own companies to being in sales to product management to hands-on technical, and everywhere in between. I have the pleasure of moderating this panel and will weave in a little of my transition from system admin to sales to product to executive ranks, and we will compare and contrast each of our stories. Take a look at the amazing list of panelists below and if you have questions you know you want asked please click the link below to submit questions.
#VMunderground 