Damian Karlson

public cloud, code, and random things

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RFC: What needs do you see in the VMware community?

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One of my personal goals for 2011 is to increase my contributions to the VMware community at large. If you’re visiting this site, you’ll know that I tend to blog fairly regularly about PowerCLI and how I leverage it at my current employer. While I will most likely continue to do so, admittedly, it’s tough for me to find things to blog about PowerCLI. There are already many giants in this particular area of expertise: Luc Dekens, Alan Renouf, Arne Fokkema, Hal Rottenberg, and the VMware PowerCLI blog itself — just to name a few. I made a decision shortly after I got started that even if someone else had already "solved" a particular problem, I would still blog about my solution — that is, if there was more than one way to do it. I think I’ve done a good job so far, and I have provided some coverage on a couple of different areas that was lacking.

With those thoughts in mind, I started thinking more about what I could do to benefit the community, myself, and ultimately (hopefully) be awarded the title of VMware vExpert. I’ve chatted with a few folks over Twitter about this, but Twitter isn’t very well suited for in-depth discussions. Therefore I’ve decided to put a blog post together in the hopes that some folks will take a moment to stop by and offer their ideas.

So, in closing, here’s the question: What needs or areas of improvement/clarification/education do you see in the VMware community at large? Would it be blogging about a particular VMware product? Blogging more about PowerCLI and other types of VMware infrastructure automation? Comparing products, virtualization, or otherwise, from a non-vendor point of view? FUD busting? I’m all ears, and all comments are welcome.

Thanks for taking the time to read this and comment. I really do appreciate it!

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. I’d largely concur with the above comments – find your niche and try to add something new to the conversation. As another customer (rather than vendor) I’m coming from a very similar angle to you.
    How about more Netapp articles? EMC are all over the blogosphere whereas Netapp have a lower profile at least in the number of technical posts. There’s plenty to blog about – Flexclones, the SnapManager suite, FlexPods etc. If time permits that’s one area I may focus on. Good luck whatever you do.

  2. I could not agree w/this any more.. excellent advice, at least from my point of view, as an insider.


    Jason Linden:

    Damian,
    First – what not to do:
    1) Be a follower. These is more noise in the VMware community than any I have ever see. The number of truly great blogs/blog posts are few and far between.
    2) Be arrogant. There are far too many “look at me” bloggers/dim twits in the VMware community, don’t ask me to list the twits I once follow but had to unfollow because of their arrogance. Many are out for personal recognition and admiration vs truly serving the community, their simply looking to “blow the minds” of the community. They focus on retweeting the praise they receive from others when they do something that is actually special. Instead of a simple thanks, they focus on perpetuating the praise the receive.
    What to do:
    1) Be different – As @jtroyer said, you have to be a standout. In fact, I feel there are too many vExperts today. VMware either needs to have two tiers (vExpert and vExpert Rockstar) or shorten the list. For their own self-perptetuaing marketing, they probably don’t want to do this. Just typing this has inspired me to write a whole blog post about it this weekend (we’ll see if I actually get it done).
    2) What is the community missing? Business, business, business. Why does IT even exist? What is IT’s function? Simple – to make money, by creating efficiencies, for the companies we serve. When I started blogging 2 years ago, my focus was going to be on how virtualization and cloud computing would change the way we do business. Unfortunately, do to my crazy schedule and lake of free time to think and write at the same time, my post are few and far between (and when I do write, it’s hardly insightful).
    As I type, it sounds like I just trying to find someone to fill my small shoes. Hardly the case. I truly feel the best of the engineers in our space are still focused on the bits and bytes, rather than helping build, write, and disseminate business cases.
    When I talk to our customers, I spend 10% of the time on the bits and bytes, 50% on the business, and the remaining 40% on why our company is absolute best to provide them extreme business value and innovation through technology.
    Virtualization/cloud (private/public) is business game changing. Find a way to translate technology into business solutions and then into words in a blog. If you can do this, you’ll be targeting a different audience, and potentially more important.
    Best of luck to you!

  3. Damian,

    First – what not to do:

    1) Be a follower. These is more noise in the VMware community than any I have ever see. The number of truly great blogs/blog posts are few and far between.

    2) Be arrogant. There are far too many “look at me” bloggers/dim twits in the VMware community, don’t ask me to list the twits I once follow but had to unfollow because of their arrogance. Many are out for personal recognition and admiration vs truly serving the community, their simply looking to “blow the minds” of the community. They focus on retweeting the praise they receive from others when they do something that is actually special. Instead of a simple thanks, they focus on perpetuating the praise the receive.

    What to do:

    1) Be different – As @jtroyer said, you have to be a standout. In fact, I feel there are too many vExperts today. VMware either needs to have two tiers (vExpert and vExpert Rockstar) or shorten the list. For their own self-perptetuaing marketing, they probably don’t want to do this. Just typing this has inspired me to write a whole blog post about it this weekend (we’ll see if I actually get it done).

    2) What is the community missing? Business, business, business. Why does IT even exist? What is IT’s function? Simple – to make money, by creating efficiencies, for the companies we serve. When I started blogging 2 years ago, my focus was going to be on how virtualization and cloud computing would change the way we do business. Unfortunately, do to my crazy schedule and lake of free time to think and write at the same time, my post are few and far between (and when I do write, it’s hardly insightful).

    As I type, it sounds like I just trying to find someone to fill my small shoes. Hardly the case. I truly feel the best of the engineers in our space are still focused on the bits and bytes, rather than helping build, write, and disseminate business cases.

    When I talk to our customers, I spend 10% of the time on the bits and bytes, 50% on the business, and the remaining 40% on why our company is absolute best to provide them extreme business value and innovation through technology.

    Virtualization/cloud (private/public) is business game changing. Find a way to translate technology into business solutions and then into words in a blog. If you can do this, you’ll be targeting a different audience, and potentially more important.

    Best of luck to you!

  4. Hi Damian, go for it!
    Make use of the fact that there are always multiple ways of doing stuff in PowerShell and PowerCLI. Pick up whatever you like from the blogs, twist it around, offer alternatives, improve it, extend it…
    And I’m sure the vExpert 2011 thingy will be a piece of cake 😉

  5. I’d second the above. Find something you are passionate about and write about it. I personally had the same question of sorts to myself when I started blogging just last June.

    If you can find a niche that matches your passions then that would be ideal but it is certainly hard to do. I ended up with all the VCAP-DCA stuff simply as result of the timing of my studies and the fact that really no one else was yet doing it.

    Again as the above poster mentioned, you being a customer is a very unique aspect. I work for a partner and so do most of the bloggers out there I’ve seen.

    BTW I also decided before I took the test I would no longer be keeping the VCAP-DCA study guide up to date. Knowing what is on the test now I thought it would be difficult along with all the other stuff I have to focus on now. If you were going down the VCAP route and interested let me know. As I understand the exam will soon become based on 4.1 and my study guide would definitely need some updating and maintenance.

  6. Damian, write about things you care about. That way you’ll make sure, conscious or not, that you provide quality content. Who cares if it’s been covered before, you’ll be sure to have your own twist on it, if not you won’t be posting it will you? 😉

    You have also have another advantage; You’re a customer. A real admin, in a huge environment. Use that to your own advantage, we all love the real world from the trenches stories. After all, more and more of us in the blogger world end up working for vendors, we’re becoming a endangered species!

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