UK VMUG: Call for Papers is Open

Lots of hard work is already being put into organising this year’s UKVMUG. One of the best attributes of these type of events is the community content - real world content from real people, i.e. not Vendor A, B or C telling you that their latest product will solve all of your problems. (Of course that’s there too if you want to hear about that kind of thing)

A critical aspect of community content is that you are always trying to bring new people through to bring content from different areas / backgrounds / experience. It’s quite easy for these things to turn into relying on the same people to produce community content all the time.  This doesn’t necessarily need to be a Powerpoint based session if you are not keen on standing up in front of a bunch of people, since other opportunities are available such as discussion groups or other interactive content. For instance maybe you are interested in finding out what challenges other people who work in the same industry (healthcare / banking / government)  as you have and lead a discussion forum for that, or perhaps a discussion group around certain technologies you use, maybe VDI, Storage, Backups etc. If you haven’t done anything like this before it can be quite daunting, but I can say from personal experience that the benefits that you will gain from doing so (increased presenting confidence / get to know the topic better / opportunities arising since people will start to consider you an expert at something etc….) will be worth it - and the audiences are always very friendly :-)

So to help keep things fresh, I’m encouraging you to consider bringing your own content (BYOC?!) to this event. Of course this needs to be done in  a structured fashion so Simon Gallagher on behalf of the event has released a call for papers. Fill out the form there with your idea and put yourself in with a chance of helping make this event great!

I’ve submitted a session, but I’d be more than happy if it was turned down in favour of lots of sessions from new contributors.