 Live from the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas. It's theCUBE, covering VMworld 2016. Brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem sponsors. And welcome back here on theCUBE, the flagship broadcast channel for SiliconANGLE TV as we continue our coverage here at VMworld at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. I'm John Walls along with John Floyer. John, good to see you today, sir. Nice to be here. We're with Brad Tompkins who's the CEO of Vmug who's, of course, a VMware user group. And Brad, good to see you, sir. Thanks for having me, glad to be here. Big week for you, right? Big week. Obviously the show in itself is a roaring success, but Vmug's presence here is quite noticeable. Yeah, well, thank you very much. We obviously have a large presence here. It is one of the signature events that we partake in and we kicked it off with a fantastic party at the House of Blues. It was a member party and a lot of people had a good time, 80s theme. So that was nice for everybody. But we also have some business that we do here. We've got a leader lunch tomorrow. We're really fueled by the community and the leaders and their volunteers what really makes Vmug Vmug and that's the magic. So we try to take care of our leaders while they're here. So we have got some special events for them as well. So John, did you get your invitation to the party? I don't think that mine, hey, must've been lost in the mail. Yeah, certainly got lost in the mail. I know people, though. I'll check on that. Maybe for tonight, we can work on that. For those who are watching, maybe not too familiar with Vmug and the full range of services and offerings that you have, take us through a little bit about the webinars, education, training, all that you do and how big your membership is. Absolutely, we got to. So our membership, first of all, is free and we encourage everybody to engage and get involved in the community. The community is 120,000 members globally and those are active members. So that means that they're participating in some way, either logging into the website or going to a user con. So it's a great community to get tied into. And just for clarification, our members are individuals. So it's not companies, it's individuals. So what we do for that, our goal is education and we do that many different ways. I mentioned that the user cons earlier, so user cons are our full day events. We'll have keynote speakers, breakout sessions, trade show floor, those kind of things. We also have virtual events. We do about 40 of the user cons, so that doesn't, and that's across the globe, but there's some people that can't make it for whatever reason. So the virtual event is the same thing, it's just done virtually. And it is an eight hour show and we do have people that stay logged on the entire eight hours. Our average is about three hours for that, which is really amazing. So we have a tight partnership with VMware. We're an independent organization, but we are tightly aligned. And some of the examples of that is when we do have events, we'll have some pretty good keynote speakers for the likes of Paul Strong, Guido Appenzeller, Scott Lowe, those type people. So it's really great that they support the independent user group as much as they do. It's very tightly aligned. What I also like about the relationship with VMware and the speakers is not only the keynote speakers, is VMware also ships out the very same people that are speaking at a show like here, like VMworld, the very technical, principle architects, office of the CTO. So if people really want to get a technical deep dive into what's going on at VMware and what's going on this year here at VMworld, go to a VMug because the same guys are there and speaking. So, but Brad, I talked to a lot of companies and they come to me and ask, wow, VMug is a very special organization and how do we replicate something like that? I say, well, start in 1999 and completely change the face of the technology industry. Stick around for a long time. And then something like that can develop. But what do you think is responsible for the success of VMug? Why is it such a thing? Why has it grown like it has? And what makes VMug VMug? Well, we joke about it, but a lot of it is the software. And back when ESX came on board, obviously it did revolutionize what was going on in the industry. But I think beyond that, it's just making sure you're connected to the community and to those local volunteers and the leaders. That's where the magic is. That's where those folks are out and they're energized in their local area. And so they bring together, our local meetings are generally 30 to maybe 100 people. And then that kind of builds and everybody sees what's going on. They see the sharing that's going on. They see the peer-to-peer networking. And those kind of things are really attract more people into the group. So then it kind of feeds on itself. And we do a lot of things to try to encourage people to give back to that community by presenting or by running a local chapter, opening up a new one, those kind of things. And it really helps the leaders get out of their comfort zone and add some soft skills to their resume, if you will. It also raises their visibility in their local area and increases their network. And then they can utilize that for their benefit. And sometimes that might be, we have this often where a leader will go off and become an employee, a VMware or a partner, or they will utilize that platform and say, how can I attract the best talent for my company to assemble a good team here? So for me, it's all about the community and all about how do we, on a local level, make sure those connections are happening? Because when they happen at a local level, naturally it's gonna bubble up into larger things like a user con and participation here at VMworld. So who are the members? I mean, we talked about 120,000 various touchpoints with VMware. But for again, for people who are watching to say, is this something in which I can participate is something I want to be involved in? Does your company have to be a VMware client or user service? I mean, what's that membership comprised of? So our membership, we want to include everybody in the community. So obviously that's in users. That's people that are using the product. And it doesn't matter if they're just using Fusion all the way up to full SDDC, full suite of products. It doesn't matter anywhere in between. The other part of that, and this is key is the partners. So the partners play a big role in this as well because it's all an ecosystem. You think about that community, it's a big ecosystem. And then of course, VMware. VMware employees are part of the community and they can be part of V-Monk as well. So any of those three categories, you can be a member, all three categories are free. And so we do encourage everybody to go sign up and get plugged in and learn about how you can, again, feed that community and be a part of it and get what you need out of it. And it's like anything in the world. The more you put in, the more you're gonna get out. I do love the community spirit and how everybody does help each other. You really become better at your job when you're part of the community. And I've seen it happen over and over again. People's careers just take a right turn for the better often when they get involved in the community. But it's important to keep this community grounded, right? And so how are you working? It's a very, you have a central organization, but then each V-Monk is independent too. So what's the balance to keep an individual city V-Monk centered and technical and make that connectivity? And I'm kind of asking, because I do talk to other vendors and they have trouble with, well, either the central headquarters says, you have to talk about this or a channel partner, the salespeople get a little excited. Do you have to go out and tell people to calm down sometimes? Sure, well, that does happen from time to time. And it is, you've got to strike that balance between letting the user group naturally do what it needs to do and be hands-off and just let it be what it is. Now there's times that we get involved for a couple of reasons. One might be that local leader reaches out to us. Hey, I might need help with logistics on whatever it is. And this is just back office stuff that we can help out with. Or sometimes it might be a situation where we hear a lot of feedback that the pitches I'm getting are too salesy. Our members are technical. They're engineers. They're system admins. They want technical, technical content. So in that scenario, we then go and talk to the vendor and say, hey, here's a better way where you can be engaged to community better. And so we do have programs that they can go and look at and learn how, okay, this is what our leaders and our members want to hear. And we've actually got some YouTube videos out there that just speaks directly to partners on how they can be a better community member when it comes to presenting to the local BMUGs. Thank you very much. That training is needed across the board and everybody could use a refresher, right? That's right. Too much marketing, too heavy-handed in that kind of context. People will walk out and then they will walk out. Everybody's wasting everybody's time. That's right. I'm going to a breakfast actually this week and we're going to talk about a little feedback on community and user envy in my organization. I think part of the conversation will be around the V-Mug user cons, which I love and we've seen each other on a couple of them. I've keynoteed a few user cons, all-day conferences, multi-track. Frankly, some of the same speakers here at VMworld, they're super deep. I really love them. It's an innovation in a user group. How, what do you see as the future of user cons and how do you keep them user-centered? Because VMWare also has the V-Forms, slightly different beast. How do you keep user V-Mug's user groups? Yeah, that's a great question and that is something that the board spends a lot of time on and trying to understand and see how we can evolve our user cons. At the center, it always has to be the end users. We do want that technical content and so we, as I mentioned, we work with partners on that, but we also have a different program that we work with our members to really encourage them to present and encourage them to be that person that's gonna stand up and talk about whatever project is that they're doing. I mean, that right there is user group gold, if you will. So we really try to encourage that and we have different programs that do that. You're familiar probably with the VMug Advantage and part of that, you get a license key for HomeLab. So we give a lot of those away at user cons and part of the stipulation is, if you win this, you've got to go and build that HomeLab and then come back and talk to us about what you did and how you ran it and it doesn't matter if it's vSphere or vSan or NSX and whatever, just come back and talk to the community and share what you have. Do you have an example that you can point to of anecdotally within your sphere of maybe a small conversation or one of these experiments that turned into something much broader, much bigger and much more helpful for the whole community or just something you like to point to as being useful as an example of just how this community can encourage growth, whether it's professional within one person or within a company. Sure, I think that the best example is really when Vima got started and it's a long, long story on how it got there but if you just back up say five or six years, that's when we really started exploding in membership and it was just allowing the folks to just kind of let it happen and be there enough to kind of guide it where it needs to go but have a really wide road and then you can kind of collect that up and say, all right, now we're in a situation where we can do things like larger user con and it has more formalness around it but let the user groups and the local groups really be grassroots, people that are standing up and talking about what they're doing. Some of the things that we're doing now that seem to be more successful is panels. Have a panel, have a group of people up there, sprinkle in a little VMware, sprinkle in a little partner and then a few people that are actually doing it where our members really, really love that. Another thing we're thinking about is a lot of our conferences, it might be a 45 minute session or a 60 minute session, let's reduce that down and get more content out there and more those snackable type content because people are gonna need to go take a deep dive on that later and that's the purpose of a follow-up meeting and those kind of things. So those are some of the things that we're seeing that is really starting to resonate with our members. Over the 11 years or so, I've been involved with the VMware community and I don't wanna name names, I don't wanna embarrass anybody. I have seen multiple examples of somebody, they're just an admin, they're just doing their thing, they get involved with a V-Mug, all of a sudden they start to speak or they start to like blog or they start to go to events. Pretty soon they're invited to events, pretty soon I've snuck some people, the people I snuck in here in 2006 or seven just with free passes are now principal architects, they're speaking, all of a sudden they switch roles and they're working for a vendor and crazy amazing things happen when you get involved in V-Mug, very good things. Absolutely and that's something we do see a lot of, I'm glad you brought that up, John, of people just taking it, taking V-Mug and that really accelerates their success and that's something that we really, we like seeing that. It does propose a problem of we've got it now, a local leader that we need to backfill that position but you know what? That's a good problem to have. That is a good problem to have. Another thing that we do is not all technical is, and you've been a part of this, John, is we call it a career corner, we've done some of these at our user cons and getting people one-on-one time with some industry experts like John and say, this is their situation at their particular career, how can they increase to the next level? We even do things like have a photographer there and get your LinkedIn photo. They'll email you a nice headshot and everything and we're like, you know, we're making LinkedIn prettier one picture at a time. This is your soup to nuts. You're taking care of all of it. It's soup to nuts because to be successful, it's more than just the technical side of things and our members do a good job of telling us, hey, this is what we want. This is what we want from partners. This is what we want from vendors and then we try to return that favor and say, okay, this is what you need to know about that's coming down the road. It's not up to BMUG to tell you what software to deploy or this and that. Just be aware of it and have the answer and then you can make that decision for your company, for your company's best interest. It's all about building community and you're certainly doing a great job of that. Continuous success, good job with that. Thank you very much. Thanks, Brad. Back with more coverage here from VMworld in Las Vegas and just a bit here on theCUBE.