Informational
EXPLOREing VMunderground 2022
aka, the Obligatory “Know Before You Go” Post
Over here at VMunderground HQ, we’ve switched from counting down the weeks to counting down the hours until “go time” for this renewed edition of the original WarmUp Party before VMware’s week-long confab in the US.
We hope you all have your comfy shoes selected for a week of walking around San Francisco. The weather —according to Weather Underground—is going to be delightful, with cool mornings (56°F/13°C), warmer-but-not-hot days (71°F/22°C), and little precipitation in the forecast. The city is showing a low rate of infection and hospitalization from COVID-19, and while restrictions on gatherings and travel are minimal, the official status is “medium,” so masks are encouraged for indoor events to help reduce spread.
Some things to remember before you head over to VMunderground: our venue—Black Hammer Brewing— has a fairly open floor plan, with roll-up patio doors that open for an nice, airy environment. Although we don’t anticipate the need to formally check for vaccination status, if the City or Black Hammer requires it the evening of the party, we will have the obligation to do so as well.
Black Hammer is an adults-only venue. In the United States—for those of you coming over from other countries—the “drinking age” is 21, and you will need to be able to provide proof of age (government-issued photo ID) for entry. Just having a ticket to the party is not sufficient. We know we can’t control the registration/check-in schedule for the conference, but if you have the opportunity to get your badge before coming to the party, you’re encouraged to wear it so that other attendees have an easier time with connecting names & faces.
Although “adult beverages” are an obvious primary product of a brewery, Black Hammer has a selection of low/non-alcoholic options as well as some low/no gluten choices. One thing that Black Hammer is emphatically not, however, is a restaurant: dinner/hors d’oeuvres/munchies will not be furnished, so please plan accordingly.
The party opens at 7pm, and we ask all our existing ticket holders to arrive by 9pm. At 9pm, we will consider on-premises admissions if we have capacity and feel it’s safe to add more attendees to the venue. Because of this, arriving after 9pm with a ticket will not guarantee entry! We will also permit leave-and-return, but also subject to capacity limits at your return if it’s after 9pm.
Finally, although we’ve scheduled the event to run until 11pm and have budgeted the run-rate for our bar tab to cover the duration, we’ll be announcing “last call” when we near our limit regardless of the time. Black Hammer has told us that they’ll make an “at the moment” decision, based on time and “party feel”, whether or not they’ll remain open for operation on a cash basis as the party wraps up.
Safe travels, and we look forward to seeing you Sunday night!
VMunderground Family Trivia Night, The Second Semester
Three more sessions of our bi-weekly Family Trivia Night!
Tuesday, 8pm EDT (5p PDT)
- May 19, 2020
- June 2, 2020
- June 16, 2020
Same setup as before:
- 10 questions per round (don’t worry, they won’t be focused only on tech)
- 6 rounds with short breaks in-between
- Participate by yourself or as a team with your family/housemates
Here are the details if you want to participate.
Step 1: Register for the Zoom meeting we have setup for this if you haven’t already.
Step 2: Register for the PollEv that we will use to conduct the trivia Q&A if you haven’t already.
Step 3: Thank our sponsors
Step 4: Login to the Zoom and PollEv before the start time. Feel free to turn on the video so we can join all our families together.
Step 5: Relax and have fun. We’re going to trust everyone to not run the board using Google as one of your teammates.
We are providing sponsors the participant lists, but the top 6 participants will receive a prize directly from the sponsors, so make sure to reply to their emails. 😉
VMunderground Family Trivia Night v3
Back for a third edition of our fun night of chitchat and trivia. Our next event is coming up night!
Tuesday, May 5 at 8pm EDT (5p PDT)
A similar setup as before:
- 10 questions per round (don’t worry, they won’t be focused only on tech)
- 6 rounds with short breaks in-between
- Participate by yourself or as a team with your family/housemates
Here are the details if you want to participate.
Step 1: Register for the Zoom meeting we have setup for this if you haven’t already.
Step 2: Register for the PollEv that we will use to conduct the trivia Q&A if you haven’t already.
Step 3: Thank our sponsors
Step 4: Login to the Zoom and PollEv before the start time. Feel free to turn on the video so we can join all our families together.
Step 5: Relax and have fun. We’re going to trust everyone to not run the board using Google as one of your teammates.
We are providing sponsors the participant lists, but the top 6 participants will receive a prize directly from the sponsors, so make sure to reply to their emails. 😉
VMunderground Family Trivia Night v2
We had a great time two weeks ago hosting a small group for a fun night of chitchat and trivia. Our next event is coming up tomorrow night!
Tuesday, April 21 at 8pm EDT (5p PDT)
A similar setup to what we did last time:
- 10 questions per round (don’t worry, they won’t be focused only on tech)
- 6 rounds with short breaks in-between
- Participate by yourself or as a team with your family/housemates
Here are the details if you want to participate.
Step 1: Register for the Zoom meeting we have setup for this if you haven’t already.
Step 2: Register for the PollEv that we will use to conduct the trivia Q&A if you haven’t already.
Step 3: Thank our sponsor
Step 4: Login to the Zoom and PollEv before the start time. Feel free to turn on the video so we can join all our families together.
Step 5: Relax and have fun. We’re going to trust everyone to not run the board using Google as one of your teammates.
We are providing sponsors the participant lists, but the top 6 participants will receive a prize directly from the sponsors, so make sure to reply to their emails. 😉
VMunderground Family Trivia Night
Update: After a successful first event, we have decided to this as a fortnightly event. So look for future events on April 21, May 5, May 19, etc.
Tuesday, April 7 at 8pm EDT (5p PDT)
Time to try a little fun that combines our in-person families and our online #vCommunity.
- 10 questions per round (don’t worry, they won’t be focused only on tech)
- 6 rounds with short breaks in-between
- Participate by yourself or as a team with your family/housemates
Here are the details if you want to participate.
Step 1: Register for the Zoom meeting we have setup for this.
Step 2: Register for the PollEv that we will use to conduct the trivia Q&A.
Step 3: Thank our sponsors
Step 4: Login to the Zoom and PollEv before the start time. We plan to start promptly at the start time. Feel free to turn on the video so we can join all our families together.
Step 5: Relax and have fun. We’re going to trust everyone to not run the board using Google as one of your teammates.
We are providing sponsors the participant lists, but the top 6 participants will receive a prize directly from the sponsors, so make sure to reply to their emails. 😉
Judging the Green-ness of the Grasses
In the US, on average people stay at the same employer for 4.2 years according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. A LinkedIn study found that tech (specifically software) is the industry with the highest job turnover. They say that turnover is driven by increasing demand for workers and compensation. In other words, right now we’re a hot commodity and employers are willing to pay us for our skills.
This Business Insider article gives the average times employees stay at some of the biggest tech companies: Uber 1.8 years, Dropbox 2.1 years, Facebook 2.5 year, Alphabet 3.2 years, Salesforce 3.3, and Apple 5 years.
It makes you wonder: are employees leaving for better opportunities because of their sweet skills, or is burnout pushing them to make a change? How many people leave tech companies because of unfair treatment (and is that the reason for the lack of diversity in our field)? Does it even matter how long you stay at one company?
If you’ve ever wondered about how to balance the right thing for you personally and your family with your residency at an employer, have we got a panel discussion for you! Please join us at Opening Acts at 2 PM for Should I Stay or Should I Go. I’ll lead a discussion with an outstanding panel who have worked at vendors, partners and customers in the VMware ecosystem (and moved between the three). Let’s have a candid discussion on the optics of changing jobs frequently and the risks of staying in a tech role for too long. We’ll sprinkle how the panel has managed this while they searched for the elusive work-like balance and the landmines they encountered.
The panelists include Lindy Collier @indylindy22, Cody Bunch @cody_bunch, Emad Younis @emad_younis, Theresa Miller @24x7itconnect, Phil Sellers @pbsellers, and Jim Jones. This should be a great discussion!
— Gina Minks (@gminks), moderator
What Is Your Worth?
The average person changes jobs 12 times in their career, averaging out to around once every 4 years. Seem like a lot? Well, in IT it is often even more frequent, but most tech people could not tell you what half of their compensation plan really means to them in the long term. Have you wondered if you should ask for more equity or more salary? Should you be asking about base plus bonus? What’s the bonus based on? Is it actually a sales commission? Is there a retirement matching plan? How much does the cost of healthcare weigh into your total comp plan? If you did get some equity, do you know the difference between a RSU and an option? Do you know what vesting means?
Normally people claim you can’t talk about money – it’s taboo! – but do you care what your colleague makes or do you just want your compensation to be fair? We think it’s about time some of the darker side of these discussions to come into the light. Everyone on the panel has succeeded once or twice and failed in negotiating at least that many times and have all agreed to be an open book. (We do ask you don’t share all the bloody details on Twitter, because that’s just not classy.)
So if any of those questions above were either totally confusing or mildly intriguing, then you should join us for a lively panel around how the group has either succeeded or failed when negotiating the next next move. Or maybe you are just curious what we think success means, it doesn’t matter the reason why you come but hopefully our small session will give you some insight into how you can do better for your family, your career, and in this case most importantly, your wallet.
“Financial Matters in IT Careers” will be featured during Opening Acts at 3p on Sunday, August 25, 2019, and includes Jeramiah Dooley (@jdooley_clt), Jeff Polczynski, Ron Singler (@rsingler_), Jody Tyrus (@jtyrus), John Marrone (@jjmarrone), Josh Atwell (@josh_atwell), and Josh de Jong (@eurobrew) as panelists.
— Michael Letschin (@mletschin), Moderator
Career Compass
Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. —Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
When Ferris Bueller spoke those words, he was referring to the adventure he was going to have while skipping a day of school; little did he realize that it would echo life in IT. Most start with a few interests and skills, such as break/fix or helpdesk. As you get involved with other tech, you learn skills accordingly. Maybe learn some PowerShell, networking, storage, or other skills along the way and get into a SysAdmin job. What’s this virtualization stuff? Should you learn about VMware or AWS? How about containers? You ask yourself, “Do I want to learn how to code?” Where is this all going, and how do I know where to focus my energies to advance my career? With all of these options available, it can be very confusing. Understanding the landscape and how to navigate through these varying skills and technologies can be a daunting task. But there is good news: help is available!
On Sunday, August 25th, I will be at Opening Acts 2019, the premier tech community roundtable event before VMworld US in San Francisco. I will be moderating the 1:00 PM panel titled “Where are our careers going?” As you read above, there are many pivots one can make in their career as new technologies and training become available. We will be discussing the future of work in technology, where we see the upcoming trends, and how to gain the skills and abilities to take advantage of the shifting sands of the technology landscape.
We have some amazing panelists lined up from across the industry to lend their perspectives and insights, such as Tracee Edgmon, Stu Miniman (@stu), John White (@johna_white), Steve Kaplan (@stvkpln), Mandy Botsko-Wilson (@virtualMBW), and the incomparable Scott Lowe (@scott_lowe). If you are in San Francisco on Sunday afternoon, I hope that you will stop by the Tabletop Taphouse at 1:00 PM and attend our panel at Opening Acts 2019. I look forward to seeing you and engaging in some great conversations.
—Tim Antonowitz (@timantz), Moderator
T-minus One Month
Well, we’re one month out from the start of VMworld 2019 US, as well as Opening Acts and VMunderground.
Probably a good time to get the tickets & such out there, eh?
Your wish is my command…
Opening Acts Reservations: https://vsquaredb.ticketleap.com/opening-acts-2019/
VMunderground Tickets: https://vsquaredb.ticketleap.com/vmunderground-2019/
As in previous years, we’re limiting the number of tickets any person can acquire at one time. If you want more rules & blah-blah-blah, then scroll back through previous years‘ ticket release info. TL;DR: Don’t bogart the tickets; buy one for yourself, and let others fend for themselves.
Let it be known…
Opening Acts and VMunderground will be held at
Tabletop Tap House
175 4th Street
San Francisco, CA 94103
http://tabletopsf.com/
If that seems like a new location, but you recognize the address, you’re not wrong: the last time VMworld was in San Francisco, the space was a restaurant called “Jillian’s” and was the site of VMunderground back in 2012. It has been rebranded as a tap house, and some remodeling has been done, but it’s still well within the “walking distance” circle for the Moscone-area hotels.
#VMunderground 