Firstly I want to thank anyone who purchased a shirt and supported this! I hope you are still enjoying them.
This is one of the things I did in 2018 and was proud of regardless of the vExpert Pro announcement and that was the vExpert shirt run. I never did this to out do any of the other guys doing them as it was awesome in the US as it was supporting a family business. I just could not get my head around the shipping and potential tax once they hit UK soil.
Either was after a few prototype runs I managed to land on a final design as you can see here
I liked really like the two tone style and once I started handing these out at VMworld everyone else seemed to agree too. I did get quite a few people notice them and managed to get a few snaps of people in them below!
Overall it was a success and I had way more shirts to hand out than I originally anticipated! The only down side that there was the loss of one where I assumed someone was picking up and it never made it to the recipient 🙁
Question is will I do it again…. Yes I will! Since getting back from VMworld I have been in contact with the supplier about other styles of shirts and she can even do lounge pants! Maybe I can go to the Gym in vendor and vExpert garments only 😀
My only reservation is I need to do some form of online store with PayPal or SettleUp included so I can also easily track things but I will get the wheels back in motion once the 2019 vExpert applications and announcements have been made.
This year I took a leaf out of a mentor for myself’s book (Ather Beg) who kindly hosted me in my first VMworld so I decided to search out for an AirBNB. Initially this was going to be for one to two of us but after a bit of searching and semi forward planning it ended up being 7 of us! As you can see below
All I can say is thank you too all these guys! They made my VMworld this year. From the left you have Sam McGeown, Bilal Ahmed, Chris, Ryan Harris, Andy Nash & Rob Bishop The best thing was the mix of the group helped keep up spirits even when one of us was unfortunately mugged 🙁 I think it was nicer us all being there to support one another too!
We were all there for different reasons too (well apart from Networking) but some of us were fortunate enough to be Bloggers, So were VCDX Gods and others there to help the VMware team. This also always made for good conversation in the evenings and our own little after parties. I suppose this is one for the #vCommunity mention in the fact we can all come together no matter what!
The other major benefit we learnt was using the MyTaxi app in Barcelona at least it made for very cheap travel especially when we were splitting it 6 ways some days vs using Uber! Also to remind myself next year some of the taxies also had a fixed fare to and from the airport.
All in all I think it ended up being around £65 each for the 4 nights so not bad at all!
Be Prepared
This is an odd one for me as this year as I also flourished from attendee to speaker. I had to very much be prepared and to be fair my last few trips helped with this. I still can not thank the TechReckoning team (John Mark TroyerKat Nelson Troyer) enough for these two items as they always help me travel! I also love the little case Amy White (Also on the team) got made as it stores my spare USB sticks, Presenter Clicker thing, dongles, batteries, MICs, etc in here and I know exactly where they are
Keep Hydrated
This one may sound simple but it is worth doing. All conferences have one major thing in common people and air con so you will dry out! Especially if you are speaking like I was this year. Usually some conferences have food tables or fridges like VMworld but others do not. I have started to carry an aluminium bottle with me so that if things only come out during tea breaks or lunch I can fill my bottle back up. It also helps it stay cold so much more refreshing if the room is hot
The other thing I do daily it take an effervescent (Berocca if looking for a brand) usually a multivitamin or Vitiamin C + Zinc, sometimes at night if I have been out for a few drinks as they help with the hang over too. It also helps with the diet of random stuff and ensure I stay energised usually due to a lack of fruit and vegetables.
Have fun
You of course are there to learn especially if on work time but also find a little bit of time for yourself between the networking or even do it a different way! This year I had a chat with some people whilst playing Pong
Which then one day lead to this! A full on table football tournament but we all had a good chat during parts of this and had a really good rapport after
Take notes….
I have found I need to take notes or write a rough blog post to look back on things but at the same time stay engaged! If the sessions are not recorded grab snippets of video or Audio but do check this is ok first or just do not publish it if you are not sure. I have some of these in Apple Notes/OneNote like things just to jog my memory on things. Also do go back and look, the time there and a few days even weeks after your brain will be overloaded and you may need to go back over things before they stick.
Finally.. Travel different ways
As they say variety is the spice of life right… well on some of these trips despite being able to claim some things I have taken the easier approach and sometimes paid myself. For example I got the bus to the airport on some trips and yes this does hamper times but I do then get to rest on the bus either way and no worries about parking!
Sometime this can even go as far as leaving 40 minutes early and walk, especially if in London and I was travelling light. I could then get off a stop or two before. It helps stretch your legs before what could be a day of sitting and then makes sure I can smash that step goal!
I have been debating for sometime where I start putting my new projects and potentially move some of my blogs so I can start using some CDNs and one of my thoughts was AWS. I think you can get away with the free tier but it does involve some work. I would also want a few blogs on one server too so that makes some of the management is easier along with cost benefit!
I highly suggest you do look at AWS Lightsail as its very competitive and the only reason I have not done it in this post is because at the time of writing you can not adjust the AWS Lightsail Firewall rules for full automation with Terraform
I may also end up using Lightsail as the Plesk image can be built in the UK on this platform but again at time of writing this post I could not find the AMI within the marketplace for the UK region. The version I was using was available in North California called “Plesk Onyx on Ubuntu 16.04 (Web Admin Edition – FREE)” as this EC2 image attracts the free tier and also you do not pay for Plesk like the other versions. I also hear its good for up to 3 website but any more needs a bigger EC2 and you of course do not get any support!
I have the code based over here at GitHub if you wish to give it a go!
I also have a video with a step by step guide on how to do this
At some stage I want to work on more of the automation and scale along with the load balancing.
So the next two days I lost some of my content for hence the delay in posting but I want to get some of this up there! Mainly so I can also reflect prior to hopefully attending next year.
For me this below was one of my personal highlighted sessions but I don’t think it was recorded as I got to see some of my heroes
I was also fortune enough to take party in the vExpert daily chat with the amazing Angelo
I then popped over to a few sessions and then mentally prepared myself for my next talk! Also since doing this I have refined (I think) and I have now done it at the UKVMUG. I am sure there will be one final version of this with some more exciting code someday
The day did not stop there and the party was not too far ahead but we recorded a new vMashup edition where can be found here and this personally was a great thing for me as I love the Virtually Speaking guys podcast
This then proceeded for a quick dash to the Rubrik booth as I was on their #vRockstar cards this year and I wanted to sadly get the full collection to display at home
It was then party time! We all dropped off our bags and for once it was a VMworld party I could enjoy! No rushing off for a flight or jet lag and we have some great memories from it, one of mine are here below
Now if you are here for the VR bits here they are, I think they turned out well especially when the confetti falls! It looks great on my Oculus. I would have gotten more but shall we say I think the UKVMUG or all of the UK VMUGs/vExperts were trying to drink the bar dry and cause a scene near the photo booth! You can use your mouse to look around too if you click on them and open them on YouTube!
Whilst we were waiting I did get this awesome caricature done though
The next day I am sure we all felt a little fragile but I managed to get some more sessions done and follow up great talks I have with people! I also managed to get this VR Tour done around the solutions exchange. I did this during a quiet time as usually it very busy and I didn’t want to trip over people so usually its much more busier than this
After this a few of us did the last few sessions and then a vendor crawl to see what we could get for the UKVMUG Charity Bag
One awesome stand was the VMUG stand where they were printing T-Shirts
I have a few more separate posts still to come such as the vExpert Shirts and also a few tips about conference and specifically VMworld but this year they made it for me. I will just leave a small gallery of any of the photos I haven’t used just for memories really and to try and inspire the next person to go!
I just hope I can make it next year and I will be much more on point with the uploads!
So I recently gave my Terraform talk at the UKVMUG so thank you to the team and also anyone who came. It was also nice that people interacted with me and also approched me later with questions. I also don’t mind once you have watch the better res version of the videos if you want to ask more.
I will also probably add to this post as I may do a series if my other code works out
There is a PDF of my slides here and then the videos below, I am also sure someone asked for the source of the dart video! It does not want to embed in WP 5!
