Now that Synergy has come and gone it’s time to reflect. Don’t worry; I won’t list all announcements, products, technologies etc. that has been done many times over and I think that by now most of you know about the Workspace Cloud, Octoblu, and the renewed love for XenApp etc. to name just a few. I also don’t want to talk about the Keynote(s), this has been chewed on and spit out more times than I can count, which is a good thing, don’t get me wrong. The more the merrier, since we can all benefit from positive as well as negative comments and/or feedback one way or the other. And of course we are all entitled to our opinion.
Citrix User Group
One of the biggest and most exciting Synergy announcements for me personally was the introduction of the Citrix User Group Community, or CUGC in short. Something that a lot of us have been rooting and waiting for. Better (a bit too) late then never. A place where professionals, partners and other Citrix enthusiasts can freely speak their mind, discuss technologies, share industry insights, roadmap information, connect with peers, ask for help, share experiences and above all, take initiative and start their own local Citrix User Groups (CUG’s).
Over 3200 already
Announced and officially launched at Synergy just over three weeks ago it has already been very successfully received by the ‘community’. During Synergy alone over 3200 people signed up, and I’m sure many more will follow. New groups are forming and the discussion forum is already filled with questions, opinions and shared experiences. Right from the get-go people have been keen on sharing their views and insights on what type of content should be shared/discussed on the CUGC forum, how, and in what form, this should be ordered etc. The same goes for the overall look and feel of the CUGC website, ideas and opinions are plentiful, which is great. The more people that feel the need to contribute, the better it will be, because in the end the success of all this will depend on us, the community.
The overall idea behind the CUGC is that Citrix provides us with a global platform, but that it is run and filled with content by the community. Though sponsors will always be needed, which makes perfect sense. Check out some of the membership benefits here. The signup process has been greatly simplified and it is and will stay completely free of charge.
Blogs, Files, Communities and SIG’s
But that’s not all, you’ll find a separate Blog section where Citrix employees, CTP’s and other Citrix minded professionals share their writing with the community, a Files section where all sorts of potential interesting material can be shared, and a Community section where you will find all known Citrix User Groups today ordered by region / country, and there’s more to come. Special Interest Group (SIG’s) for example, I think these pretty much speak for them selves right? I look forward to seeing multiple of these groups emerge in one form or another (of course I already applied for one :)).
BYOCUG
As mentioned, one of the main reasons why the CUGC was founded is to encourage people to engage and collaborate in all sorts of different ways, but also to, when and where possible, form new CUG’s by them selves. For this reason they have put together a so called Code of Conduct and a set of Content Principles for all members, event attendees and presenters to adhere. Although this might make it sound a bit official, certain guidelines are needed and are only here to strengthen the overall community.
Build (or bring) Your Own CUG!
Also make sure to check out the agenda, here you will find a complete overview on all community events scheduled for the months to come. Still far from complete, but let’s give them some time. It’s on the main Home page.
Just this week Citrix was looking for an experienced and talented community program manager (on Twitter facebook etc.) have a look here. Reading the job description it isn’t that hard to put two and two together, meaning… More good stuff is coming.
I think by now you have a general idea on what the CUGC is, what it can do for you and even more importantly, how you can get involved yourself. So without further ado, come on over, sign-up and let yourself be heard!
Don’t ask what CUGC can do for you, but what you can do for CUGC!
The community continued
While we are on the subject, there are a few more community initiatives that I would like to share with you.
What about Frontline Chatter?!
Fellow community die-hards Andrew Morgan and Jarian Gibson started this End User Computing (EUC) community service just a few months ago and already it is a big hit! And with good reason. Here’s a short excerpt I got from their website…
Frontline Chatter is a community podcast focusing on the End User Computing (EUC) market and it’s community. Every fortnight Frontline chatter will bring you the latest news in EUC and interviews with the interesting and (at times) crazy individuals in the EUC community. Facts not guaranteed, hilarity will ensue!
During the past couple of months they have had some very interesting guests, including some big industry names, sharing lots of valuable information, have a look here. Their content (podcasts mostly) is available from the I-Tunes store as well as Soundcloud but can also be downloaded directly from their website, no subscriptions needed! And did I mention that it’s good fun as well?
Also, make sure to follow them on Twitter @FrontlineChat to get direct updates on everything they are up to. To finalize, go visit www.fonrtlinechatter.com check out their separate Blog section and more.
Ask Eric and The Virtual Expo!
If you have been involved in ‘doing’ Citrix for the last couple of years or so you probably know or heard about a website / company named xenappblog.com. If not go here, sign-up and check out some of his amazing (free as well as paid) content.
Eric is well known within the community, and not just for his work at xenappblog.com. He is a frequent speaker at various events throughout the year; he is a Citrix CTP and an overall fun guy to hang with. One of things I like about Eric is that, while promoting his company of course :) he is always searching for new and original ways to support the community, and truth be told, he doesn’t disappoint. For example, not that long ago he introduced a concept called ‘Ask Eric’.
Eric gets a lot of questions from his students, that’s how he came up with a way to publically answer some of these frequently asked questions. If you go to the ‘Ask Eric’ subsection on xenappblog.com you will find a short textual introduction and a voice recorder, which you can use to live record your question. You can start over as many times as you like by the way. Eric will then provide you with a (spoken) answer himself or he will find someone else to answer the question for him, one of his fellow Citrix CTP’s for example.
2015 Virtual Expo
Another thing he has been working on and launched/announced about two months ago is the Worlds first Virtual Expo! A full day tech conference, which includes a line up of 8 speakers (MVP’s, vExperts, CTP’s and, well… me) each presenting a 45 minute session on various subjects with a few short (sponsored) sessions (and breaks) in between. Best thing is, it’s completely virtual! You can be right there where the action is, following one, a few, or perhaps all the sessions, directly from behind your desk or the comfort of your own couch.
Have a look at the session agenda. Make sure to claim your spot early as there are only a 1000 seats available, go here.
E2EVC
Stands for Expert to Expert Virtualisation Conference (from their website) is a non-commercial, virtualisation community Event. Our main goal is to bring the best virtualisation experts together to exchange knowledge and to establish new connections. E2EVC is a weekend crammed with presentations, Master Classes and discussions delivered by both virtualisation vendors product teams and independent experts. Started in 2003 with just 4 people and after 24 very successful events grown to awell-recognized event with over 150 attendees.
In the last 12 years and 24 events, our conference has taken place in cities such as Munich, London, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Brussels, Frankfurt, Dublin, Orlando, Paris, Los Angeles, Munich, Nice, Lisbon, Rome, Hamburg and Vienna. On average we have 30 sessions at each event. Topics are – server, application, desktop, storage virtualisation with products from vendors like Microsoft, VMware, Citrix and many more. Over 25 of the best virtualisation community experts present their topics. Many current virtualisation community leaders participated or still participate in our events. It’s the people that attend, presenters that present and our sponsors who make this event possible.
A few months ago I already wrote an extensive article on E2EVC, underlining its importance for the community and beyond, you can read it here.
Nutanix Community Edition (CE)
Hah! What’s in a name. Ever wanted to try out the latest and greatest from the awesome Nutanix portfolio? Well now you can! Although still in (public) Beta you can join and try out CE whenever you like, just go here, sign-up, download, install and you are good to go! No strings attached. You can deploy CE on up to four machines in total but it also works with one just as easy, and I know that must be great news for a lot of you out there (me included). As you probably know Nutanix is actually a software company, and now with CE everybody can experience the Nutanix software, including PRISM, without any limitations as far as functionality goes. So what is stopping you? And while you’re at it, also make sure to signup for the Nutanix Community at next.community.com there won’t be many questions that stay unanswered over there.
UPDATE 02-06-2015
Desktop Virtualisation Best Practice Analyser
How could I forget about the recently announced Desktop Virtualisation Best Practice Analyser?! Well here you go, check out their website here. Another great community effort originated at the earlier mention E2Evc conference, it’s where experts meet and ideas get shaped :)
Webster
Although he’s probably better know as the scripting guru, or the E2E grand-dad, Carl has written numerous documentation scripts helping us to inventory our AD, DHCP, NetScaler, XenApp, XenDesktop, Provisioning Services deployments and more. Have a look at his documentation script download section over at carlwebster.com it’s impressive. If I interpret the number correctly all his scripts combined have almost been downloaded 30.000 times already! Make sure to donate and buy him a virtual ginger-ale, he loves those :)
Wrap up
For now that’s it. I know that there are many more great community initiatives out there, and I really don’t want to leave anybody out, but it’s just too much to mention. It’s great to see so many IT folks dedicating so much of their free spare time to these awesome projects. Because not only do these guys and gals invest a lot of their spare time (sure, there is some marketing involved as well) the content they deliver is also of a very high standard! Please feel free to add, perhaps we can come up with some sort of a joined community resource list of all the initiatives and efforts out there.