Interview – Ian Sanderson talks community and career growth

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The last interview I wrote up was back in 2017, although I’ve made efforts to kick off a continuation of this series, I stalled. I recently went over some of the past interviews and its amazing how in 18 month or so, people’s careers and focuses have changed, never mind the IT industry.

So kicking off the first interview of 2019, I reached out to my friend Ian Sanderson. Ian has 15 years of IT experience under his belt, taking the usual route into the IT industry, “I cut my teeth in the virtualisation world with Hyper-V in 2008, but my focus has been VMware since 2010”, he tells me as we kick off discussing “Ian in his own words.”

Ian and myself became friends and comrades with similar interests due to our activity in the IT community, interactions on twitter soon turned into bumping into one another at events, and catching up over coffee, and late night drinks at vendor community programs.

I ask Ian to define what the IT community means to him, “Community to me is like having an extended family of people who you can bounce ideas off, or call upon for help with other things” he says, “It is not a one way street though. I try my best to give back to people in any way I can help out. It’s really about comradery & helping each other achieve their end goals.”

“The wealth of collective knowledge in the vCommunity honestly amazes me. There is always someone, somewhere who has the solution to a problem you may have.”

So where did it all start for Ian? “My first real interactions with the community kicked off when I became a Veeam Vanguard in 2016. Prior to that I had the odd interaction on twitter and an outdated blog but nothing really significant. Being virtually air dropped into a group of like-minded people who love Veeam really sparked my passion for getting more involved in community events.”

I’m not shocked to find this answer pretty much echos similar answers to others in the IT community. Small steps into twitter; invites to slack groups; and a sense of needing to give back to the community we have all taken so much from. (We’ve all googled for an answer, and ended up at someones personal blog post, finding they have fixed the same issue).

Career progression

It’s no secret that a lot of ambitious IT folk have gone on to do very well in their perspective areas boosted by their work/activity in the IT community. There’s no secret group or handshakes, just purely hard work, a love of technology, and mostly a friendly atmosphere, as Ian equates earlier “Its really about comradery and helping each other achieve their end goals.” Continue reading Interview – Ian Sanderson talks community and career growth →

Virtually Speaking Podcast – Guest appearance – Ep 109 – Fire, Flood, Blood

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I’m delighted to be a guest on the Virtually Speaking podcast, in their latest episode release “Fire, Flood, Blood”. I’m lucky enough to have met the hosts of Virtually Speaking podcast in person. John Nicolson and Pete Fletcher are both great guys and incredibly knowledgable. Whilst we all attended a Veeam Vanguard Summit in Prague, they took an audio recording of myself for the latest podcast.

You can find the full webpage and run through here, and audio below.

  • https://blogs.vmware.com/virtualblocks/2019/03/15/vspeaking-podcast-episode-109-fire-flood-blood/

Regards

Dean


vBrownbag Session – Upgrading from vSphere 5.5 to 6.x

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VMworld 2018, I was lucky enough to get my name down on the list to present on the vBrownbag stage, a community driven source of brilliant knowledge articles, videos, and web meetings, for the community by the community. Read more about vBrownbag here

In the below session I took on the session that had proved to be a hit at VMUGs around the UK. “Upgrading from vSphere 5.5 to 6.x”

This session focuses less on the “how to upgrade the components themselves” but more what you need to cover for planning and preparation, considerations during the upgrades, and calling out known gotchas.

Since the above video, I’ve since joined VMware, and presented the official slide deck covering this subject at the UK VMUG Usercon with Kev Johnson, Technical Marketing Engineer – vSphere Lifecycle.

You can find the official free e-book that accompanies the VMware presentations here;

Regards

Dean


vBrownBag Session – Microsoft Azure for vSphere Admins

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At VMworld 2018 I was invited to speak on the vBrownbag platform, which is a great community focused and run resource. Below is my session “Microsoft Azure for vSphere Admins”

You can find the presentation here – http://vexpert.me/azure

Regards

Dean


Yet another “I’ve got a new job” blog post

General,

So I think I seen someone say on Twitter its silly season as we enter the winter period with people announcing they are moving jobs etc. And given the number of tweets about new jobs and blog posts, I think they are correct.

Well I won’t drag this out.

I’m joining VMware as a Technical Account Manager in December working across the UK. Over the past few years my focus or rather enjoyment of my roles, has been around the customer and building strategies with them. So this role fits in nicely especially for a company whose products I’ve tried my best to specialise in for the past few years.

Thanks to all those who have helped me in my journey or simply just said “don’t worry, you’ll smash the interview”.

Onwards and upwards.

Image Source

 

Regards

Dean