My Path to a Broadcom Knight.

Having worked with Lumen for more than five years, I sought fresh VCF9 certificates towards the end of last year. My Broadcom account team and TAM advised me to pursue a Broadcom Knight certification after our conversation. I began the process of becoming certified after researching the prerequisites. Initially, I had to complete some sales training from Broadcom, which was quite new to me and needed me to pick up a lot of new vocabulary, etc. I had previously worked in sales and completed SOWs, but I needed to learn a few things the "Broadcom" way. I had to submit several SOWs I had previously worked on for approval after completing the pre-sales and sales training and earning my Certified Expert designation.

It was now time to work on the technical side of the certification.  Since i was already a vSan specialist and certified in vSan that was complete, that satisfied the specialty certification.  I had to pass the VCF9 admin exam, and I also passed the VCF9 Architect exam.
After I got all the exams out of the way, I then needed to show my lab at work was built on VCF9 and was fully functional, during a webex with my knight sponsor.

Broadcom Knights are the best of the best

Knights are an organization of technical champions pooled from Broadcom’s best 

partners around the world. They are composed of partner sales and technical engineers 

who are 

driving substantial positive business impact for Broadcom with little to no dependence on 

the Broadcom organization. 

To be the best of the best, prospective Knights must meet demanding program entry

 requirements that prove not just their expertise, but their experience as well. 

The Broadcom Knight designation promotes visible differentiation of a partner company’s 

capabilities, and positions their highly capable technical resources as experts in their field. 

It can result in more revenue growth and an increase in cross-sale opportunities for those 

partner companies with Broadcom Knights in their employ. 

VMUG/Lumen Presentation

 During VMware Explore 2023 I had the pleasure of presenting at the Lumen booth with VMUG President Brad Thompkins about Empowering Community through partnerships.

Where we discussed how VMware partners can help VMUG community ,  and why the VMUG community is Important.

Please visit vmug.com  and sign up for a FREE VMUG membership and join the community.

 Here is a link to my interview with IT Reality Podcast.

This episode is a compilation of many recordings captured in Las Vegas, NV at VMware Explore 2023. We kicked off VMware Explore with a chat from our base of operations primarily discussing the travel challenges thanks to Hurricane Hillary. Then, we share snippets from interviews with Michael Masters, Franky Barragan, & of course NateDawg + HTownVinny. Richard was hard to keep up with but he contributed! While we spent most of the conference in tech pro mode, we did have a little fun via Sandbox VR which we included the selfie clips from. What do you think? Will we see you at VMware Explore 2024?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzBI953ZfP0&t=1161s

VMware Explore

 Arrived in las Vegas this afternoon for my 5th VMware Explore (VMWorld).  My fist one was back in 2018 when it was in Las Vegas.  Nothing bad to say about the past few years being in San Francisco but very expensive for Individuals that have to pay their own way...   Las Vegas is more affordable , and San Francisco has gone downhill the past few years.

Went and got my badge this afternoon, staying in the Best Western Plus Hotel right next to the convention and is a short walk, and was about 1/2 the price for rooms.  Food prices are reasonable along with choices of places to eat on the strip.

I have a full schedule this week, with sessions, Partner meetings with VMware and working the Lumen booth.

More to come.....

View leading into the conference.

Nice backpack, water bottle and t-shirt.

Toronto UserCon

 I was invited to speak at the Toronto UserCon on May 23rd.  First time I have traveled out of the USA in a while. Needless to say the trip there is was good not many delays, but coming back the lines at the airport to get thru customs was very long  and took close to 2 hours to get thru customs.

Arrived on Monday afternoon and had a great dinner with the VMUG Team and other Speakers, and the best views of Toronto from KOST rooftop restaurant.

UserCon Started on Tuesday Morning, and was well attended with some good sessions. My session was at 11 AM and had a full house and good conversation around best practices.

St. Louis UserCon

 

The St. Louis UserCon on March 1st 2023, was a great event this year attendance was up weather was great, overall I would rate it a 8 out of 10.

First off the night before the usercon we had tickets for speakers and distinguished guest to go to a St. Louis Blues Hockey Game. It was great to be able to interact with speakers and other VMUG members before the usercon in a casual environment. everyone enjoyed the game and thought doing something like that is a great idea.

The next day was an early day for the usercon to make it tot he convention center by 7 AM I had to leave my house at 6 AM.  Got there and went over the opening scripts and how we are doing the intro's of people that day. opened up the usercon to the largest crown we have seen since COVID started, and was great to see.

Chris Wolf VMware CIO was our keynote speaker, he is always great to listen to and did a great job. This year our charity of choice we Toys for Tots toy drive, and had a member of the marines Corps Reserve in attendance to talk about what they do.  At the end of the day we collected about 15 toys, and over $500 in monetary donations.

I had two speaking session at the usercon, first one was for the company I work for Lumen, talking about their Private Cloud offering and a second on getting back to the basic's with vSphere.

I cant wait till next year to see how much we grow now that COVID is over !!!

Cincinnati VMUG UserCON - Speaking Session

 Cincinnati VMUG UserCON

December 8th 2022
8am – 4:30pm
In-person at the Sharonville Convention Center

The Cincinnati VMUG community welcomes you back to the Sharonville Convention Center to network and engage in face-to-face conversations with your peers at the Cincinnati VMUG UserCon. Learn about the latest in IT innovations to help you stay on the cutting edge of technology. Advance your knowledge, become a better IT professional and grow as a strategic leader for your organization..

I had the privilege to be invited to speak at the  Cincinnati VMUG UserCON. I was invited last min. not sure if they had a cancelation, but I am grateful to be asked to speak and spread my knowledge when I can.

I used the same topic I have spoken to before.

This is a presentation that goes over some basics/ best practices when building your own ESX hosts that seems to get missed on builds as I have been supporting VMware. And this presentation is short, but i open it up for questions about how to configure ESX hosts and questions about the info I presented. Each time I get a half dozen questions about this topic, and people come to me after saying there were things in the presentation they did not know about.