 From the SiliconANGLE Media office in Boston, Massachusetts, it's theCUBE. Now, here's your host, Stu Miniman. Hi, I'm Stu Miniman, and welcome to a special CUBE conversation here in our Boston area studio. We're in spring 2019, whole lot of shows where theCUBE's going to be on, going to lots of events, so many different technologies we're covering. And one of the areas we always love to be able to dig into is what's happening with users. Many of these shows we go to are user conferences, as well as the community. Really happy to welcome the program, believe first time on the program. Steve Athanus. Athanus, yeah. Athanus. You got it. You're close enough. Steve, who is the newly elected president of Vmug. Yes. So I think most of our audience should know the Vmug organization, the VMware user group. We've done CUBE events at Vmug related events. Absolutely. We've talked about Vmug. We've had the CEO of Vmug on the program and of course the VMware community. 2019 will be the 10th year of theCUBE at VMworld. Still figuring out if we should do a party and stuff like that. We know all the ins and outs to what happened at that show. But the Vmug itself, I've attended many, your Boston Vmug is one that I've been to. But before we get into the Vmug stuff, Steve, just give us a little bit of your background because you're a practitioner, you're a user yourself. Yeah. Well, first, thanks for having me. It's been watching theCUBE for years and it's great to be on this side of the screen, right? So yeah, so I'm Steve Athanas. I show up every day as the Associate Chief Information Officer at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, just 495 here. And that's my day job, that's my career, right? But what I'm excited to be here to talk about and what I'm excited in general with Vmug is it's a community organization. And so it's a volunteer gig, right? And that's true of all of our leadership, right? From the President to the Board of Directors to our local leaders around the world, they're all volunteers. And that's, I think, what makes it special is we're doing this because we're excited about it and we're passionate about it. Yeah, Vmug's, it's created by users, for users. You go to them, let's talk a little bit, it's evolved a lot. It started as just a bunch of independent little events is now, boy, my Twitter feed, I feel like constantly every day it's like, oh wait, who is that, the St. Louis, the Wisconsin one? I'll get ads for like, oh wait, it's the Northeast one. I'm like, oh, is that here in New England that I don't know about? No, no, no, it's in the UK and things like that. So I get ads and friends around the world and love seeing the community. So boy, how do you guys keep it all straight and manage that and allow both the organic nature as well as some of the coordination and understanding of what's going on and how do you balance that? Yeah, that's a great question. So I was a V-Mug member for many, many years before I ever got interested in becoming a leader and you're right, it started, it was 10 of us would get around with a six pack of beer and a box of pizza, right, and we'd be talking shop and that was awesome and that's how it started but you get to a certain scale. When you start talking about having 20,000, 30,000, now over 125,000 members around the world, you've got to coordinate that somehow and you're right on the money with that and so that's why we have a strong coordination effort that is our offices down in Nashville, Tennessee and their role is to enable our leaders to give back to their community and take the burden out of running these things. Sourcing venues and working with hotels and stuff, that is effort that not everybody wants to do all the time and so to do that for them lets them focus on the really cool stuff which is the tech and connecting users. Can you speak a little bit to, what are some of the speeds and feeds of the event, how many do you have, how much it's growing, I'm signed up, I get the newsletter for activities as well as lots of webinars I've spoken on some of the webinars too. Yeah, well first thanks for that. So we have over 30 user cons around the world on three continents, in fact. And what's a user con? Great question, so a user con is user conference, consolidated into user con, right? And those are hundreds of end users getting together around the world around three continents, in fact I was fortunate enough in March, I went to Australia and I spoke at Sydney and Melbourne and that was awesome, getting to meet users, literally almost as far away from Boston as you can get, having the same challenges in the office, day to day solving the same business problems with technology, so that was exciting. And so we've got those all over, we also have local meetings which are smaller in scope and often more focused in content. We've got 235 or more local chapters around the world that are talking about this. And so we're really engaged at multiple levels with this and like you talk about, we have the online events which are global in scope and we do those, we time them so that people in our time zone here in the states can get to them as well as folks in EMEA and APAC, right? Yeah, and I have to imagine the attendees have to vary, I mean, is it geared primarily for, is it still VMware admin, is the primary title there up to, people that are CIOs or wanna be CIOs? Yeah, so that actually, we've seen that change over the past couple years, which is exciting for me being in the role that I'm in is, you're right, historically it was vSphere admins, right? And we're all getting together and we're talking about how do we partition our LUNs appropriately, right? And now it has switched, we see a lot more architect titles, we see more director titles coming in because I said the other day, I was in Charlotte talking and I said, business is being written in code, right? And so there's a lot more emphasis on what is happening with VMware and as VMware's portfolio expands, we've got a lot of new type of members coming in to the group, which is exciting. Yeah, and what about the content sense? How much of it is user-generated content versus VMware content and then understand sponsorships are part of it and the vendor ecosystem which VMware has a robust ecosystem, help make sure that it's financially viable for things to happen and as well as participate in the content. Yeah, so I feel like I almost planted that question because it's such a good one. So, in 2018, we started putting a strong emphasis on community content because we heard from our members that awesome VMware content, awesome partner content but we're starting to miss some of the user-to-user from the trenches, battle war stories, right? And so we put an emphasis on getting that back in in 2018 and we've doubled down in 2019 in a big way. So I don't know if you've been to a user-kind yet in 2019 but we've limited the number of sponsored sessions that we have, right? So that we have more room for community content. We're actually able to get people from around the world to these events. So again, me and a couple of folks from the States went to Australia to share our story and end user story, right? And at the end of the day, we used to have sponsored sessions to sort of close it out. Now we have a community hour, right? And so V-Mug provides food and beverages and a chance to get together and network. And so that is a great community hour. And I was at one recently and I was able to watch a couple folks get together and we were talking about different problems they were having. They said, well, let me get your card so we can touch base on this later, which at the end of the day, that's what gets me motivated. That's what it's about. And Steve, I want to touch on that for a second. What gets you motivated? You've been doing this for years, putting your time in, your president. I know when I attended your Boston V-Mug, at the end of the day, it was a good community member talking about career and got some real good, somebody we both know and it really gets you pumped up in something very, a little bit different from there. So talk a little bit about that and kind of your goals as president of V-Mug. Sure. So I get excited about V-Mug because it's a community organization, right? And because, I've said this a bunch of times, but for me, what excites me is it's a community of people with similar interests growing together, right? And reinforcing each other. I know for a fact that I can call a whole bunch of people around the world and say, hey, I'm having a problem technically or hey, I'm looking for some career advice or hey, one of my buddies is looking for work. Do you know of any opening somewhere? And that's really powerful, right? Because at the end of the day, I think V-Mug is about names and people and not logos, right? And so that's what motivates me is seeing the change and the transformation of people and their career growth that V-Mug can provide. In fact, I know a ton of people from Boston. In fact, several of them have, they were administrators at a local organization. Maybe they moved into partners. Maybe they moved into vendors. Maybe they stayed where they are and they kept accelerating their growth. But I've seen tons of career growth and that gets me excited. Watching people take the next step to be able to build a career. Yeah, I tell you, most conferences I go to, the kind of jobs type boards, especially if you're kind of in the hot, cool new space, they're all trying to hire. But especially when you go to a local on the smaller events, it's so much about the networking and the people when I go to a local user event, it's, hey, what kind of jobs are you hiring for? Who are you looking for? And who do I know that's looking for those kind of things and trying to help connect people and companies? Cause, yeah, I mean, we all sometime in our career, we'll need help along those lines. I know something that's personally that I always love to help. I have a friend who said it, I think best and I can't take credit for this, right? But it's, it can be easy to get dismissed from your day job, right? One errant click could be the career limiting click. It is nigh impossible to be fired from the community, right? And that to me is a powerful differentiator for folks that are plugged into a community versus those that are trying to go it alone. Yeah, there are some community guidelines that if you don't follow them, you might be ejected from the community. But no, if we're there in good faith and we're doing everything like that. Tell me, speaking, you know, this is such, you know, change is the constant in our world. You know, I've been around in the industry long enough that it's like, geez, you know, I remember when VMware was this tiny little company that had, you know, once a week, they had a barbecue for everybody in the company because there were like 100 of them. And, you know, desktop was what they started working on first and, you know, we also hear stories about when we first heard about VMotion and the like. But, you know, today, you know, VMworld is so many different aspects. The community is, you know, in many ways fragmented through so many different pieces. What are some of the hot and interesting things? How does Vmug deal with the, oh, hey, I want the AI or the DevOps or the, you know, where's the VMC cloud versus all these various flavors? How do you balance all that out and all these different, you know, pieces of the community? Yeah, it's an interesting question. And to be fair with you, I think that's an area that we're still getting better at and we're still adapting to, right? You know, if you look at Vmug five years ago, we were the, you know, it was vSphere sort of first, last and always, right? And now, you know, especially as Vmware's portfolio keeps increasing and they keep moving into new areas, that's new areas for us too. And so, you know, we've got a big initiative over the next year to, you know, really reach out and see where we can connect with, you know, the Kubernetes environment, right? Because the Heptio acquisition is a really big deal. And I think fundamentally changes our potential community, right? And so, you know, we've launched a bunch of special interest groups over the span of the past couple of years. And I think that's a big piece of it, which is if you're really interested in networking and security, here's an area that you can connect in and folks that are like-minded, if you're really interested in end user computing, here's what you can connect into. And so I think, you know, as we continue to grow, and you know, we're, you know, hundreds of thousands of people now around the world, so that, you know, can be a challenge, but I think it's also a huge opportunity for us to be able to keep building that connection with folks and saying, hey, you know, as you continue to move through your career, it's not always gonna be this, you're right. Change is constant. So, hey, what's on the horizon for you? Yeah, when I look at like the field organization for VMware, it's like, boy, I wonder when we're gonna have VSAN and NSX user groups, just because there's such a strong emphasis on those pieces of the business right now. Yeah, yeah. All right, Steve, let's change that for a second. Sure. I think you said, you know, you've got, CIO is part of your title there, as what you're doing. Tell me about, you know, your life these days, and you know, the stresses and the strains and what's changing these days and what's exciting you. Sure, so, you know, it's exciting to have moved from my career, cause I'm an old school admin, right? I mean, that's my background. So, you know, as I've progressed, you know, I keep getting different things in my portfolio, right? So, it started out as I was the, you know, I was the admin and then I was managing the systems engineering team, and then they added desktop support, and that was out of necessity. I was like, I'm not really a desktop person, right? So, it's something new you need to learn, but then you start seeing where these synergies are, right? And not to, I don't even like the word synergies, but the reality is that's where we launched our VDI project at UMass Lowell, and that has been transformative for how we deliver education, and it has in a lot of ways reduced barriers to students to get access to things they couldn't before. So, we had engineering students that would have to go out and finance a three, $4,000 laptop to get the horsepower to do their work. Now they can use a Chromebook, right? They don't have to have that cause we do that for them, and just they have to have any device to get access via more horizon, right? So, that happened, and then they moved in our services operation, right? So, what I'm interested now is how do we deliver applications seamlessly to users to give them the best possible experience without needing to think about it, right? Cause if you and I have been around long enough that it used to be a hassle to figure out, okay, I need to get this done, that means I need to get this new applications, I have to go to IT, they're gonna have my laptop, and now it's, the expectation is just like you and I, right? I wanna pull out my phone now and go to the app store and get it, right? So, how do we enable that to make it very seamless and remove any friction to people getting their work done? Yeah, absolutely. The enterprise app store is something we've talked about for a while. Big deal. Isn't that just the Amazon marketplace these days? In some ways it is, so not all applications, right? Some applications are more specific to platforms, and so that's a challenge which is, I'm a professor, I really like my iPad, well how do I get SPSS on that? Okay, well let me come up with some solutions. Yeah, it's interesting, I'm curious if you have any thoughts just from the education standpoint and how that ties into IT. Personally, myself, I think I was in my second job out of school before I realized I was in the IT industry because I studied engineering, they didn't teach us about, oh, well here's the industry's you're working, I knew tech and I knew various pieces of it and was learning networking and all these various pieces there, but the industry viewpoint as a technology person wasn't something I spend a lot of time at. I was just at a conference this week and they were talking about some of the machine learning pieces, there was an analyst got up at the stage and he's like, here I have a life hack for you. He said, what you need to do is get a summer intern that's been at least a junior in college that's studied this stuff and they can educate you on all these cool new things because those of us that have been here a while, there's all new tools and they're teaching them at the universities and therefore that's one of those areas that even if you have years, well if you need to get that retraining they can help with that. No, that to me is one of the most exciting parts about working in education is that our faculty are constantly pushing us in new directions that we haven't even contemplated yet. So we were buying GPU arrays in order to start doing AI before I even knew why we were doing it. They're just like, hey, I need this and I was like, are you doing like a Quake server? They were mining Bitcoin, we know what they were doing. I don't think so, but it was, that was a new area for us and now we're old hat at this stuff, right? So that is a exciting thing to be able to partner with people that are on the bleeding edge of innovation and hear about the work that they're doing and not just in the tech field but how technology is enabling other. There's been doing some groundbreaking research in the life sciences space that the technology is enabling in a way that it wasn't possible before. In fact, I had one faculty member tell me, geez, maybe six months ago that said the laboratory of the past is beakers and oscilloscopes, right? The laboratory of the future is, how many cores can you get? Yeah. All right, so next week is Dell Technologies World. Exciting. So, you know, the show, the combination of what used to be EMC world and Dell world put together a big show expecting around 15,000 people in Las Vegas. It'd be the 10th year actually of what used to be EMC world. We actually did a bunch of Dell worlds together. For me personally, it's like 17 or 18 of the EMC worlds that I've been to just because disclaimer, I'm former EMC employee. So, Vmug's there and maybe explain, you know, Vmug's role there, what you're looking to accomplish and what you get out of a show like that. Sure, so Vmug is a part of the affiliation of Dell Technologies user communities, right? And what I love about user communities is they're not mutually exclusive, right? You absolutely can be in a converged and a Vmug and a data protection user group. It's all about what fits your needs and what you're doing back in the office. And, you know, we're excited to be there because there's a ton of Vmug members that are coming to Dell Tech world, right? And so we're there to support our community and be a resource for them. And that's exciting for us because, you know, Dell Technologies world is a whole bunch of really cool tech that we're seeing people run VMware on, right? We're seeing VMware partner with. And so that's exciting for us. Yeah, and to try, I hadn't realized because like I've been to one of the converged user group events before. I didn't realize that there was kind of an affiliation between those but makes all the sense in the world. Yeah, right? And it's, you know, again, it's an open hand thing, right? B and one, B and the other utilize them both for what they're great at. Connecting with people that are doing the same thing. There's a ton of people running VMware on a myriad, like you talked about earlier, VMware's partner ecosystem is massive, right? But many, many, many, in fact, I would say a huge majority of converged folks are running VMware on it, right? All right, so Steve, I want to give you the final word. What's the call to action? I understand a lot of people in the community but always looking for more, always ways for people to get involved. So where do they go, what do you recommend? Yeah, thanks. So if you are not plugged into a user community now and you're in the tech field, I would strongly encourage you to do so, right? Vmug obviously is the one that's closest to my heart, right? If you're in that space, we'd love to have you as part of our community and it's really easy, go to vmug.com and sign up and see where the next meetup is and go there, right? If you're not into the VMware space and I know you have lots of folks that are doing different things, go check out your community, right? But I tell you, the career advantages to being in a user community are immense and I frankly was able to track my career growth from admin to manager to director to associate CIO right alongside my community involvement and so it's something I'm passionate about and I would encourage everybody to check out. Yeah, and Steve, thank you so much for joining us. Yeah, I'll give a personal plug on this. There are a lot of communities out there. The virtualization community, especially the VM-1 specifically, is a little bit special from the rest. I've seen that it's not the only one but is definitely more of, it's definitely welcoming. They're always looking for feedback and it's a good collaborative environment. I've done surveys in the group that you get way better feedback than I do in certain other sectors and just so many people that are looking to get involved. So it's one that I'm not only interviewing but I can personally vouch for it. So Steve, thank you so much, always a pleasure to see you. Thanks for having me, Steve. All right, and be sure to check out theCUBE.net. Of course, we've got Dell Technologies World in the immediate future, not that long until we get to the end of summer and VMworld 2019 back in San Francisco. theCUBE will be there, double set. So for both Dell Technologies World and VMworld, so come find us in Las Vegas. If you're at Dell or Moscone West in the lobby is where we'll be for VMworld 2019 and lots and lots of other shows. So thank you so much for watching theCUBE.