If you’re new to the virtualization community and want to get ahead of the curve online it’s important to know where the right places to start are!
Here’s a handy guide to the resources that will help you stay informed and also engage with the people that you need to be listening to!
1. The VMware Community VMTN Forums
The VMTN has been the driving force behind the VMware community serving as a great hang out for like minded individuals to share information, have conversation and also post problems you are experiencing or help people with problems you know how to solve!
If you work with, use or just love VMware you need to be here!
Visit https://communities.vmware.com to get started!
2. Community Blogs
It’s also important to be reading the right community blogs. There are lots of great resources in community blogs from how-to articles to documentation of really cool projects that fellow virtualization enthusiasts are working on!
The who’s who of virtualization blogs is without a doubt Eric Siebert’s vLaunchPad website. This lists a comprehensive list of all IT/Tech and Virtualization blogs that are ranked in the order the community votes for them each year!
Visit http://thevpad.com to check it out!
3. Technology News and Digest Websites
News and digest sites are professionally written and maintained websites that aggregate and broadcast all the top news in the industry. Here’s a list of the ones I read each day!
VMblog – http://vmblog.com
Virtualization.info – http://virtualization.info
The Register – http://www.theregister.co.uk
DABCC – http://www.dabcc.com#
Virtualization Review – http://virtualizationreview.com
Tom’s IT Pro – http://www.tomsitpro.com
4. Twitter
Twitter is not to be overlooked as a networking tool. 95% of all of my relationships with technology professionals are maintained via Twitter! It allows you to have personable conversations and easily share info. It also worked well to arrange meet-ups and conferences with multiple people and find people at conferences!
Your best bet to get started is to follow a good cross section of the vExpert community and then just get talking with people!
Arnim van Lieshout has a good directory of vExperts and their Twitter handles here. It’s a bit out of date I think but most on the list are worth following still and are probably vExperts anyway!
http://www.van-lieshout.com/vexpert/
Round Up
I hope this guide helps you make bounds and strides forward in the VMware and virtualization community!
Also don’t forget to follow me (@PatrickRedknap), Rob (@PhillyBobPayne), Joe (@NoonanJN) and PHD Virtual (@PHDVirtual) on Twitter!
You can also find out more about PHD Virtual at PHDVirtual.com and engage with us on the PHD Virtual Communities!