A Local User Group Goes Virtual with Virtualization Alliance

Written on Jan 20 2010 Filed under: Virtualization 2,519 views, 7 comments

by Tim Mangan

So I'm helping run this local user group, Virtualization Boston, here in the Boston area.  Being based on Virtualization, we like to use whatever virtualization we can.  Now we have decided to put on an event and make it virtually available to others.  Some people have heard about it and asked me why I haven't blogged about it, so here it is.

When we started a year ago, we decided that we not only wanted to work locally, but we wanted to create an alliance with other local user groups, to share training and speaker resources when it made sense.  Over the year we have been playing with recording, streaming, and even remote presenter situations to get a handle on the technology we would need.  While we normally meet one night a month, once a year we put on an all-day event that we call "Virtualization Deep Dive Day", which is coming up on February 12th.  So it became time to put our technology and ideas to the test -- we went virtual with our "Virtualization Alliance".  We put out feelers (quietly, because we didn't want to get overwhelmed on our first try) to other user groups to see if they would like to work with us.

The response to our event has been tremendous.  For the live audience in Massachusetts, we have lined up an awesome 5-track, 5 session event, plus keynote.  In addition to several other area user groups helping us there, we have made arrangements and are streaming one of the tracks live to user groups in New York City, St. Louis, Calgary, and Toronto.  Those sessions are also being recorded, as will (hopefully!) a second track, which by demand we are making available for a small fee also.  Interest has come from as far as Germany and Dubai!  We cannot add any more locations for this event at this point, but are interested in contacts for the future.  There is a contact point on the main page under "Virtualization Alliance".

By the way, if you were thinking of registering to attend at one of these sites, you might need to act quickly.  This virtualization stuff seems like it might just catch on!

Comments

awedio wrote re: A Local User Group Goes Virtual with Virtualization Alliance

on Wed, Jan 20 2010 2:03 PM

how about us folks in Los Angeles, CA?

Patrick Rouse wrote re: A Local User Group Goes Virtual with Virtualization Alliance

on Wed, Jan 20 2010 2:35 PM

I'm looking forward to seeing everyone there.

Tim Mangan wrote re: A Local User Group Goes Virtual with Virtualization Alliance

on Wed, Jan 20 2010 2:55 PM

@Patrick - Shoot.  We had to make a last minute switch in the schedule and now I can't see your sesion because I'm on in a different room at the same time!  If you're in town long enough we'll have to catch dinner.

@awedio: maybe next year?

Doug Lane wrote re: A Local User Group Goes Virtual with Virtualization Alliance

on Wed, Jan 20 2010 7:32 PM

Congrats Tim--the event seems to really be taking off.  I am really looking forward to participating in Boston.  The only thing that could make it better is if you changed the name to TimForum.  ;)

It wouldn't be a BrianMadden.com thread without a little friendly debate, so here is my question.  Where is the center of the virtualization universe?  Through I think many would immediately point to Palo Alto, I actually think Boston has a solid case based on all of the cool virtualization startups popping up, a number of established ecosystem players such as Stratus and Marathon, plus a strong virtualization presence from the likes of Citrix, Oracle (incl. Virtual Iron folks), Microsoft (App-V team), etc.

Also, EMC is based here, so Palo Alto is really just a colonal territory of Boston, right?

Patrick Rouse wrote re: A Local User Group Goes Virtual with Virtualization Alliance

on Sat, Jan 23 2010 3:49 AM

@ Tim - I'll try to arrive the evening before, so we can meet for dinner.  

Mr. Incredible wrote re: A Local User Group Goes Virtual with Virtualization Alliance

on Sat, Jan 23 2010 1:26 PM

Here's another vote for Dubai... The weather's great here at this time of year!

Chafic wrote re: A Local User Group Goes Virtual with Virtualization Alliance

on Thu, Feb 4 2010 1:43 PM

St Louis is a young virtualizaion group.  We have arranged for a simulcast of on eof the tracks from Boston and are holding an all day event around that.  we are adding our own speakers mainly because of the time difference and having to reshuffle some events.  I urge everyone in the St. Louis area to attend the meeting and join our virtualization group.  it is called St Louis Virtualization Group.  look us up on LinkedIn.

(Note: You must be logged in to post a comment.)

If you log in and nothing happens, delete your cookies from BrianMadden.com and try again. Sorry about that, but we had to make a one-time change to the cookie path when we migrated web servers.