{"id":2091,"date":"2017-03-11T20:42:06","date_gmt":"2017-03-11T20:42:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tekhead.it\/blog\/?p=2091"},"modified":"2017-03-11T20:42:06","modified_gmt":"2017-03-11T20:42:06","slug":"vexpert-2017-announcement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/tekhead.it\/blog\/2017\/03\/vexpert-2017-announcement\/","title":{"rendered":"VMware vExpert 2017 &#8211; It&#8217;s not just about the schwag!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This year I was fortunate enough to have reached a wee milestone of a\u00a05th vExpert award so it prompted a post!<\/p>\n<p>Needless to say I am honoured to be still counted among such an awesome community of folk who spend their own free time helping others to understand and consume VMware technology.<\/p>\n<p>Looking back to when I\u00a0received my <a href=\"http:\/\/tekhead.it\/blog\/2013\/05\/vmware-vexpert-2013\/\" target=\"_blank\">first vExpert title in May 2013<\/a>, it feels like time has just flown by! As well as being part of the awesome community, getting free licenses from VMware, awesome awesome free training from\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.pluralsight.com\/blog\/career\/success-story-alex-galbraith\" target=\"_blank\">Pluralsight which has helped me loads in my career<\/a>, and a bunch of vendor other schwaaaag, it&#8217;s also opened up a great many opportunities!<\/p>\n<p>For example, I&#8217;ve made loads of great friends, gotten to speak\u00a0at a number of events, and even had the chance to become a\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/techfieldday.com\" target=\"_blank\">Tech Field Day<\/a> delegate, traveling to the US several times to visit a load of\u00a0tech companies and startups, whilst learning from some seriously clever people. What I&#8217;ve put into the community I have easily received back tenfold, and I am massively grateful to be part of it.<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-2105\" src=\"http:\/\/tekhead.it\/wp-uploads\/www.tekhead.org\/2017\/03\/community1-300x243.jpg\" alt=\"community\" width=\"300\" height=\"243\" srcset=\"http:\/\/tekhead.it\/wp-uploads\/www.tekhead.org\/2017\/03\/community1-300x243.jpg 300w, http:\/\/tekhead.it\/wp-uploads\/www.tekhead.org\/2017\/03\/community1-150x122.jpg 150w, http:\/\/tekhead.it\/wp-uploads\/www.tekhead.org\/2017\/03\/community1.jpg 500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n<h5>Do it! Do it now!&#8230;<\/h5>\n<p>If you have the time to put into it, I highly recommend anyone takes the time to share and hopefully\u00a0become part of the community.<\/p>\n<p>Here are a few examples from my entry this year, which might hopefully give people some ideas as to the kinds of things which you could do too!<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Member of a panel at a VMUG<\/li>\n<li>Presented a short 15-minute talk at a VMUG<\/li>\n<li>Ran a &#8220;roundtable&#8221; session at a VMUG (for around 30 people)<\/li>\n<li>Founded a new website on homelabs (<a href=\"http:\/\/openhomelab.org\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/openhomelab.org<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>Started a new podcast with some other VMUG members and vExperts around homelabbing and tech news (<a href=\"http:\/\/opentechcast.com\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/opentechcast.com<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>Posted a blog a week (in the past I have aimed to do one a month and built it up over time)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The entry bar to becoming a vExpert is not massively high; you certainly don&#8217;t have to do all of the above, or even any of the above! That said, if you are not currently a vExpert, and you can achieve just a couple of these kinds of items, you could be well on the way to becoming one too!<\/p>\n<p>Trust me, it&#8217;s worth the effort!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This year I was fortunate enough to have reached a wee milestone of a\u00a05th vExpert award so it prompted a post! Needless to say I am honoured to [..]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2103,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_yoast_wpseo_focuskw":"vExpert 2017","_yoast_wpseo_title":"","_yoast_wpseo_metadesc":"Find out about the latest vExpert announcement, some of the benefits to being a vExpert, and some ideas for how you could become a vExpert too!","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"New Blog Post: #VMware #vExpert 2017 - It's not just about the schwas! #community","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[730,41],"tags":[980,205,219,795,203,540],"class_list":["post-2091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-vmug","category-vmware","tag-980","tag-blogging","tag-community","tag-podcasting","tag-vexpert","tag-vmware"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/tekhead.it\/wp-uploads\/www.tekhead.org\/2017\/03\/vexpert2017.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2l3lU-xJ","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tekhead.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tekhead.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tekhead.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tekhead.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tekhead.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2091"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/tekhead.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2091\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tekhead.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tekhead.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tekhead.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tekhead.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}