As many of you know, VMUG is very important to me. So much so, that I immediately stepped up to become a leader when the previous Belgian leader stepped down. Ever since then, I’ve been very active in the community, hosting several succesful UserCons, vBeers, smaller meetings and presenting at VMUG events online and abroad.
UserCons
Many of you know the big UserCon events and for a lot of people, the UserCon is their sole interaction with VMUG. They’ve been a massive part of the VMUG community all across the globe ever since their first introduction. When I attended my first UserCon, back in 2016, I felt like a kid in the candy store! So many great sessions, inspiring people and just awesome tech and conversations! I knew righ then and there that I wanted to be an active part of this community. Fast forward to 2019, I presented my first talk at the Belgian UserCon. The thought of presenting in front of a crowd made me incredibly nervous, I was afraid people were going to call me out or ask hard questions on purpose, but nothing could be further from the truth! Kristof, who I didn’t know all that well back then, happened to ask the first question and that made me more at ease.
In 2022, we organized our very own UserCon and I got to see the flip side of organizing such a large event. I severly underestimated the amount of work that goes into it! But we managed it with the help of LEF :) Over the past few years, you may have noticed that the usual suspects stopped sponsoring and the amount of swag started going down as well. This made the financial side of things significantly harder. This wasn’t just in Belgium, but a trend that was observed globally.
VMUG Connect
Earlier this year, VMUG hosted the inaugural VMUG Connect event in St. Louis. An event that I was lucky enough to be able to attend and I’m glad I did! I got to know a lot of fellow leaders (the Daves!) and community members. It was very interesting to hear their stories about the same technologies! You can read my entire VMUG Connect experience in this blog post.
Today marks the evolution of these events. Starting in 2026, the UserCons are no more! Instead, VMUG is going to build on the success of Connect in St. Louis and will host 5 paid multi-day events in North America and Europe! The events will be held in:
- Amsterdam
- Minneapolis
- Toronto
- Dallas
- Orlando
I’m very thankful for the VMUG board for selecting a close location to home and for the rest of the cities to have NBA teams! All jokes aside, I’m very much looking forward to this next evolution of VMUG events and I can’t wait to attend and present at them! The sessions at Connect this year were top-notch and I’m positive the sessions at these upcoming events will be great as well.
VMUG Belgium
Some of you will wonder what happens for our Belgian community now. Jens, Kristof and I have been discussing this, ever since we heard the news at VMware Explore in Las Vegas earlier this year. We’ve been doing vBeers every month for quite a while now but want to do more.
We already started planning this at the beginning of the year. We hosted a VCF Experience day in Ghent first. The second installation of this, was Nick Merlevede’s Lunch and Learn session on Packer 2 weeks ago. We’ll publish a recording of that on YouTube soon ;) The next event will be a vSessions edition of vBeers, hosted by our friends at Unit-D. You can still register to attend using this link. It’s going to be an evening focussed on VCF Operations, with sessions by Kate Rychlik and Alain Geenrits!
The goal is to have a knowledge session on the books every quarter and to keep building our community. For that we are looking to you! Follow us on LinkedIn, X or Bluesky to stay up to date with the latest news from VMUG Belgium or join our Discord to participate in conversations. We will admit it gets a bit quiet there sometimes but we want to make this a place for conversations and knowledge sharing.
I’m very excited for the future of VMUG and I hope you are too and hope we’ll see you at our local events and at VMUG Connect!