Simply Resilient Conversations

Why IT Communities Matter.

• Geoff

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0:00 | 28:07

We share how a renewal to Veeam Vanguard sparked a deeper look at why IT communities matter, from the early days of Veeam Legends during lockdown to the career lift, access, and trust these groups create. Human originality, not AI polish, is what cuts through and builds lasting influence.

• Veeam Legends, Vanguards, MVPs explained and how Veeam 100 works
• how forums and the Community Hub lead to recognition
• why summits and PM access change career arcs
• building a personal brand that compounds
• value for employers through initiative and faster problem solving
• genuine and stealth influence from community evangelists
• practical ways for newcomers and veterans to start
• limits of AI and the rising premium on human voice
• overcoming nerves and imposter syndrome


Solo Host Sets The Stage

SPEAKER_00

Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Simply Resilience Conversations Podcast. Today is March 5th, and I am recording on March 5th, believe it or not, simply because I've had a very busy month, uh, which led into a busy week. And today is already Thursday, and it's March 5th. I decided to do a different type of podcast today, and uh namely I didn't uh invite anyone, I just invited myself. So it's going to be a solo flight today, uh, but I figured it was appropriate because I wanted to discuss today IT communities. And there's a reason for that, and the reason is that this week on Monday, I believe, or was it Tuesday, it's all a blur to me now, I received an email which had subject congratulations, and uh basically stating that your application to renew as a bean vanguard has been approved. So that was obviously extremely pleasant to get in the mail. Um, and I've always enjoyed getting these renewals uh from IT communities, but of course the Vean Vanguard is is probably my my favorite, to be honest. So I figured that it would be a good day to talk about communities, IT communities in general. I've been involved in quite a few of them, and I have to say that the benefits of joining IT communities are enormous. And I'm gonna run through some of them for you today uh so that you're aware of them. So, first of all, why did I get involved in IT communities? Uh, you know, you've got a full-time job, uh, some people have family, some people have kids, some people just have a lot of things to do. And when you think about it, why would you want to get involved in something else which is kind of work-related, especially if you're in your work in IT and it's an IT community? It seems kind of silly. It seems kind of like tiring, exhausting. But you gotta remember that IT communities are very different from actually working in IT. So obviously there's a relationship, no doubt about it. I work with data protection and I've worked for many years with Veeam software. And obviously, my favorite IT communities, the Veeam Legends and Veeam Vanguards and Veeam 100, well, the Veeam MVPs, Veeam 100, and I'll tell you about them all in a second, uh, are related to Veeam software. So, I mean, you're working all day long with Veeam software, and then you know, in the evening you start writing blog posts and things about Veeam software. I mean, doesn't that become a bit mundane? No, because it's a very different type of activity. So the subject is the same, but IT communities are different. First of all, it's not work, and it's mainly fun, and I am not making that up. Once you start to write blogs or write hub posts or just get involved in the RD forums or do webinars, it becomes very addictive. It is not your day job, especially if you're in operations or if you're a system architect, or if you're the person who gets the phone call at 3 a.m. to do ransomware restores. It's a very different activity. So, first and foremost, let me describe how I got involved in these communities together. And this all started back way back in the days of our pandemic that we had. Uh all of humanity. And this was back in 2021, the spring. And it was a very difficult time. I think all of you remember this. Uh, we were completely locked down here in Toronto. And basically, my routine was to get up in the morning, work in my bedroom, walk around, maybe go somewhere on the street. Everything was closed, the restaurants were closed, bars were closed, uh, the public transport, you know, felt really weird because you'd sit down and it'd be taped next to you because they didn't want people sitting next to each other. It was very strange. And in this rather depressing environment, to put it mildly, one day I saw my inbox an email. Congratulations. And of course, my first instinct was okay, report phishing or report spam. Thank goodness I did not do that. And I actually read through it. I didn't click it, mind you. I didn't go do the you know, click right away, congratulations, and and you know, receive your reward. That reward might not be what you wanted. Um, I saw that it was from Veeam, obviously, and I could tell right away that it was official because it said, congratulations, you've been selected to the inaugural group of Veeam Legends. So it's the first group. The Vanguards already existed. Uh they've been around for a while, I think 2015 or 16. Uh, but Veeam decided to create another group called the Veeam Legends, and I was part of that initial group. And I'll never forget the first call we had, uh, where Rick Vaniver told us, uh, you know, this is gonna be good for you. This is gonna be very good for all of your careers. And I thought, yeah, well, of course he's gonna say that. I wasn't gonna say it's bad for your careers, we all leave. But he actually turned out to be very, very correct in what he said. Uh, from that initial Veeam legend group, people's careers have just skyrocketed. There are people who a whole bunch have joined Veeam now. Others are in very high positions in their companies. Uh, so it was very, very much a prophetic statement by Rick Vanover. So obviously, there were no in-person events that year. It was all online, and you're meeting all these people and you're discussing it, and this really became a help, a crutch, because we felt so isolated from everything. We were like little incubators uh that suddenly virtually we're expanding all over the world. Remember, these Veeam legends came from all over the world. Um, and so you know, we could discuss issues, we could discuss Veeam, we could discuss how you know companies and nations were dealing with this crisis, and it was very, very helpful. It was that kind of shining light in this dark space. And then, of course, um, well, soon after that, in 2022, I was also selected as a Veeam Vanguard. So, again, enormous, you know, joy when I saw in the inbox, congratulations uh from Veeam. And that's because I'd started to do some external things. Then let me explain a little bit about the Veeam 100, which is the Veeam uh umbrella group called the Veeam 100, which comprises of three different community groups within Veeam: the Veeam Legends, the Veeam Vanguards, and the Veeam MVPs. So, who are they? The Veeam Legends are selected from people who are very active in the RD forums. So, Veeam has an excellent RD forums, uh great place for knowledge. Uh, very specific though. It's not somewhere where you're gonna put a blog because it's a forum. Uh, it's a place where you can ask questions, you can put in feature requests, there's also things you things you can do there. And it's very well maintained. Veeam have their product managers watching it, they have some very, very smart people who are answering questions, two of whom, by the way, who I'll name here, um Fabian Kessler and Michael Paul, were part of that original Veeam Legend group. In fact, in fact, I think there's a third one. I can't remember uh if he answers there or not, so I won't name the name. But and just to show you how some of these people's careers uh exploded for the good, good in a good way after joining the Legends. So that's the Veeam Legends, and they also, by the way, select from the Veeam Community Hub. Now, Veeam Community Hub is a really great, unique experience, I'd say, because for instance, if you're just starting out and you don't have uh a blog site and you don't want to pay for one, uh you don't know how to set it up, you can post in the Veeam Community Hub. You can post blogs in there basically, and they'll be hosted there and they'll get noticed. And they have a weekly recap that Rick Vanover and Madelina Christille do. Um sometimes Stefan Mohammed joins as well. And they basically go over the posts they thought they were the most interesting during the week. So if you post a lot there, or if you do a lot of work in the RD forums, you also answer questions, you'll get noticed, and you could be selected as a Veeam legend. Now the Veeam Vanguards are different. The Veeam Vanguards, and and let's let's underline that they're all equal. All these groups, these three groups, are considered equal. They're just different in their focus. The Veeam Vanguards, or what they call external facing, externally facing evangelists. So these are people who have their own blogs and blog about Veeam, obviously, or data protection or security, data security, or people who take part in webinars or do any kind of online activity, uh basically things that are facing outwards. Whereas the forums, the RD forums and the Veeam hub are inwards, these are facing outwards. And then the third group are the Veeam MVPs, and these are Veeam employees. So only Veeam employees can join or can be selected to the Veeam MVPs, and they are people in Veeam who have gone above and beyond uh normal requirements and get selected to the Veeam MVPs. And this whole group is called the Veeam 100, and one of the fantastic things that Veeam does is every year they bring together all three of these groups somewhere in the world and let them meet up, talk to product managers, uh, get information about what Veeam's plans are in the future, what direction it's going, give feedback on things. It's an incredible experience. Last year was in Prague, the year before that was in Berlin, it was in Prague before that. It's a great, it's a great experience. The locations are fantastic. What I always say about the Veeam 100 Summit is it's not just an incredible meeting of very smart people, experts, top experts in the data protection field, but the location, as I say in real estate, location, location, location. The setting for these meetings is Prague, Berlin. You know, I I can't even tell you how much fun that is and how interesting it is. So that's a huge benefit. Now you're gonna ask, what other benefits do you get? Well, exposure. So if you join these communities, if you're especially the legends or the vanguards, you're gonna get a lot more exposure. And I don't need to tell you that in today's world, very competitive, job point of view, exposure, having your own brand is extremely important. You have to have your own signature that people say, okay, that's Jeff Burke. I know Jeff Burke. He does that, that, that, or whatever. That helps enormously because otherwise, you're in the pack with everybody else, and there's a lot of competition. So that alone should be uh and it's something that should give you enough enthusiasm to try to join. But they're also goodies, there's swag, um, really good swag too. In fact, I have to admit it, because I've been in a few IT communities, I don't have a t-shirt that's not swag anymore. So this gets me in trouble at home at times. So I have to actually refuse swag, uh, but still, it's it's nice. And you get these jackets and you walk around, it says Veeam Vanguard, whatnot. Um, although it does create issues sometimes. I have a a neighbor who I think she's now, she must be 85. She's in great shape. She's out there shoveling snow the other day. But um, the first time she saw me with my Veeam swag on. So, Veeam, is it like a vacuum cleaner or something? So, so you know, people might not recognize you if you're wearing your Veeam Vanguard. They might not understand just how important you are. But, you know, take it with a grain of salt. So that's really important. Now, the next question that comes up often, and this is more of the managerial question, is like, okay, wonderful. This is a great ego trip for you know, Jeff. But what does this give the company? I mean, what do we get from this? You know, well, there's an answer to that as well. Remember, whoever your employee is who's been able to join uh one of these groups, you have to remember that shows a lot of initiative. That shows, you know, somebody who's doing something, who's who's not lethargic, who's interested. That alone is a plus because if they're that way towards joining a community, they're gonna be that way in their everyday work environment. At least that's the way I've seen in my career. You know, people get into habits of doing things. So that's one thing. Second of all, remember, you know, you're gonna face issues. There are gonna be questions of what directions to go in your data protection. And here's somebody who will not only, you know, be getting maybe certifications and learning, but can also ask other people who have done it. Okay. Now I know people can say, well, AI can answer everything. Well, you know, I'd give that a caveat because I would still trust asking the experienced human to verify whatever AI has told me. So this is extremely viable. This is this is like hiring one person but getting like 15 or in the case of Veeam 100, 100 minds to help out. That's a bit of a stretch, but still, you see what I'm saying. Um, so that in itself is good. Also, from an advertising point of view, if you're selling a product, if you're selling data protection or or whatever, you can state, well, I've got this person who's a Veeam Vanguard or Veeam legend. Also shows that you're hiring good people, people who have achieved something and you know, you can be proud of. Okay. Now, I'll let you know the secret. Some people know this. I also run a community now, um, an object first, and and also talking about career, uh, object first wanted to create a community. And what they did was they wanted to find somebody who could run this community. They need somebody who could run the community, who knew communities, but also knew technology to work there. And so my working in data protection was one aspect, but the other huge aspect was all my involvements in different IT communities. So there you go. I got a job out of all this at the end of the day. So it's wonderful. Now I run a community called the ACES, object first ACEs, and I'm gonna answer now the question of the company that actually creates an IT community. What does this give us? What's and I've heard this before, not here, but in other communities that I've been in uh from other managers, that they'll get this question well, what's the does this generate revenue and what's the percentage approximate and all that kind of stuff? And the answer is this I answer with one word. Well, actually, it'd say two words. So one word, what's the value of this? Genuine. Genuine. And I'll explain that to you in a second. The second word I'm gonna use is stealth. Okay. So when people want figures, they want how much is this generating revenue, whatnot. I say no. This is a very nuanced situation. And what do I mean by that? Well, first of all, let's talk about stealth and genuine. Companies sell. Well, they sell through marketing, advertising, salespeople. And that's great. And there's a place for that, and it's very important. However, my personal experience, and I think there are a lot of people like me, when I'm at a conference, I can see the salespe and the marketing people from a million miles away. Even if they're very good, they still sound a bit scripted. They have to because they're under a kind of disciplined plan. There's a marketing plan, there's a sales plan. They have to give this message. They have to be. And after a while, if you've been in the business for a while, you get to sense this and you can feel it. And it's not that it's bad, it's just that you know, you get a little firewall that goes up in your brain saying, well, of course they're gonna say that, of course they're gonna say that. Enter the community, the IT community. When you have an IT community, and people join this community because they like your product. I mean, if I hated the product, I'm not gonna join the community, obviously, right? Um, but if people like the product and they're happy in the community, they'll go out and they'll evangelize your product. But they'll do it in their own style, in their own native language, in their dialect, in their mannerisms, however they portray themselves in the world. And what is that? Another single word. That's believable. Not to mention that they probably have a lot of followers to begin with who trust them. So, right there and then you are getting exposure to a very powerful messaging system, which is not going to be intercepted by firewalls stopping messages coming through because these people are trusted. Now, how much revenue does that generate? I don't know. But I do know for a fact that people who I have blogged to or talked to or spoken to or been at webinars to have later, after listening to me, gone to those salespeople, gone to those marketing people, and dealt with them directly when they've made a decision to go one step further. They might not have done that if they hadn't spoken to me or another evangelist or another IT community person. So that's a huge advantage. And I called it stealth. Why? And it's not a sneaky stealth thing. It's just that you're not, these people are not paid by your company. They're just part of your community. So it is stealth in a way that they're not coming from the marketing department, they're not coming from the sales department, they're coming from themselves. That has huge value, I think, in my opinion. And I I've seen companies that don't do anything in community space and companies that do, and I'm 100% certain that there's a big difference. In fact, you look at most major companies have communities, they they realize this is important. So I think those reasons are pretty strong for having a community, for joining a community, and then you know, promoting communities. So, what has my experience been? It's been fantastic. I've been in Veeam communities, I've been in a lot of Kubernetes communities, and there are different types of communities. Veeam is kind of like the creme de la creme, okay? It's it's way up there at the top. I mean, it's run by some super community manager professionals. You've got Rick Vannever, Madalena Christille, Sofia Mohamed, Nikola Peshkova. They just they make the playbook which others follow. Okay. That's the top. Different communities. And and remember, some communities come from very small companies, they don't have a lot of money, and they can't do very much. So they get by what they can. A community is not necessarily just giving swag or big trips. If you're a company and you're thinking of starting a community, just giving out information is also valuable. If you bring in a trusted group of community people and you give them certain rules that we're going to tell you about some of our plans in the future, but you're not allowed to blog about this yet. But you will be prepared and you will know beforehand. So if your business or your job you do is involved with this, that's an advantage. That alone is a plus, even without any swag. Just being involved in something, if it's a hobby, if these people just love a certain technology, let's say it's Kubernetes or let's say it's firewalls, um, you know, they might just like to be involved with a company that does that, you know, for per perhaps for the future of trying to get a job. Who knows? But that's also a possibility. There are different sizes of communities, there are different communities with different capabilities and finances, obviously, but they all have value, in my opinion. Okay, so what if you're new? Well, here's the next group I'm gonna talk to. Brand new people in IT, and veterans have been around for a long time, but they both share the fact they've never been involved in any communities and they've never done any kind of blogging or anything of that nature. What do I say to each group? So, first of all, to the veterans. Routine and mundane drive us all crazy. So just by starting to blog, just by starting to join communities, get involved in them, you're gonna open up a new aspect of your life and your career. You might even start looking at your job in a new manner. So it's a plus right there and then. For people just starting out, this is a great way to get a name much faster. Instead of spending like 15 years in the trenches of data protection, you can get ahead a lot faster if you get a name out there. So that alone is another great advantage. Also remember that when you join these communities, they're gonna be a lot of people who are working in a lot of different companies. That's a lot of possibilities. So if you start the job search, whatever, you can leverage these people. And you could probably leverage them as references too. Not that you worked with them, but you could say, they could say, okay, and I've done this before. I was in a community with this person, this person is an expert on this type of technology. I've just seen it. That in itself is very valuable. That could be the tipping point of you getting a job and somebody else not getting a job. So that is reason enough. Start thinking about this. I'll add in another factor, which I think we all know and are talking about AI. Every day I read in newspapers, well, not newspapers anymore, I guess, but online and blogs, whatnot, about AI. And I see YouTube videos with all sorts of predictions, some catastrophic, some a little bit more, you know, rosy colored glasses. Either way, we know that something's going to change. It is already changing, and it's going to affect our profession. So, what's my sense of this? So, first of all, I very much doubt that we will ever hand over all the reins to AI. That would be, in my opinion, very, very silly and foolhardy. Uh, control is everything. Now, whether we create something that can get out of control, that's a different topic. But when it comes to human things, and let's remember that for the time being at least, and I think for a long time going forward, it's humans who decide the end of the day to buy or not to buy. There's one area I'm never going to give AI any power over, and that's my wallet. You can be assured of that. So if the human is still deciding whether or not to spend the money or not, then human factors are still very important. What do I mean by human factors? I mean the phony baloney stuff of AI can become very annoying very fast. It's not an accident that there's this term AI slop, which has emerged recently. And you know what I'm talking about. You go onto Lincoln, and everybody are doing these cartoon characters of themselves. At first it was kind of nice, and then it was a little bit cute, and now it's become quite annoying. They all look the same, there's no originality. And whatever the purpose is of it, I think they're self-inflicting damage themselves. Because when I see one of those things, like, oh, not again, right? Now, this goes for other aspects of AI, which you think might take over. And I'll give you another great example. AI courses. Now I'm not talking about AI courses when you're actually studying AI. I'm talking about when they actually create an AI, I don't even know to call it, that's teaching you. So I had a horrible experience. And I do a lot of online courses. I'm I'm I'm in Udemy. You know, I'm one of those people who has like 50 Udemy courses purchased, and there's like 20 still waiting to be done. Well, okay, let's be honest, Jeff. 30 still waiting to be done, and a bunch that have been half done, whatnot. Okay. So I'm a Udemy junkie. I get it. Um, but I also go for free courses whenever they're offered in companies. And there was one course which was offered um by a company, and they were using AI, AI-generated people to teach the course. And, you know, it just you sense it from second one. So, first of all, they'll be talking, and then suddenly they'll make a huge pronunciation error, just which is just like it reminded me of, you know, when the olden days you'd have one of those vinyl records and you'd scratch it, you know. Uh so there was this one, and it was this AI thing talking, and it's like, yeah, and today we will study this in Kubernetes. It's like, whoa, what the what was that? And I don't know what happened, but it couldn't say Kubernetes. And there was a few of those episodes. So that was, you know, how would you say unnerving? Uh, but then it was even worse. I started to notice that something was off. I couldn't, I couldn't take it. And maybe I watched too many films, you know, when I was growing up, like Terminator and you know, all these, you know, things where these robots go crazy and start attacking you. But the whole time that this person was trying to teach me, um, apart from the weird muscle movements would take place at times, it's like it's almost like there was one where you know it looked as for a second as if the person that suddenly put on Botox, like, yeah, they all went weird. So that was, you know, I couldn't concentrate on the subject. But then the other thing that I noticed was like I I couldn't put my finger on it, and I thought, yes, it's the soulless stare. That's I actually I should put a trademark on that. But you know, you're talking to your teacher, or well, I wasn't talking to this, but you know, listening to your teacher and you're watching, and you look at the eyes occasionally. And I realized those eyes, they're just empty eyes. I mean, I, you know, this is it was it was scary. And so basically, I did not learn anything from that course. Long story short, I don't think that's gonna work for very long unless they have huge improvements, but I just can't see this made up uh thing, I don't want to call it, you know, being able to teach or or acting. You know, they make films with AI with with so-called human characters. It doesn't work for me. I think we have a human intuition, and uh you can't, you know, you can't trick us. So, what does that mean coming back to our profession? Human factor is gonna become is gonna be more important. Originality, human originality is gonna be more important, okay? It's not gonna be in the ever-changing landscape of no, that's not gonna work. And so practicing your originality in communities, in blogs, in webinars, on webinars, everywhere, that's gonna become more and more valuable because that'll be the difference. You're real, real. And when you're buying something, you want the real deal. You don't want something that's kind of put together with with clay or plastic or whatever. So, long story short, communities are fantastic. You've got every reason to join. Another thing I'll say too is uh, you know, some people are extroverts, some people introverts. You get all types in IT communities. There are people who don't talk very much uh at these meetings, but they they'll type or whatever. It doesn't matter. If you're self-conscious, don't be. I have never met in all my time in IT communities anyone who was mean to somebody else in their own community because then it's like a club, it's it's like a a group of friends, you know. And so there's nothing to worry about. And in fact, uh you'll get more people trying to help you uh than you you think. Like if you go into these environments, you think, oh my goodness, you know, maybe I don't sound good or maybe I'm not smart enough. That's another thing too. You get everybody I've ever met almost thinks, you know, they they have the imposter syndrome, right? Um, the only way to get over the imposter syndrome is just to say, okay, I'm an imposter, I'll just live with it. Fine, you know, who cares? And after a while, you you realize you're not an imposter, that you know, that that whole thing was just your you know, normal, by the way, very normal, self-conscious, you know, self-esteem issues. We all have them. Um, so again, all I can say about communities is I think they're the best thing uh that can happen to anybody in any point in their career, even if you're gonna retire like next year, join, you know, because that life experience, very valuable, very valuable. Okay, folks, it's been a short one today. I'm leaving this under 30 minutes because I can only talk to myself so much. Uh, but we'll have another episode next month on simply resilient conversations. Thank you very much.