The New England VMware User Group has nearly doubled in attendance over the past couple years, making it one of the most successful VMUG’s in America. What do you attribute to that success?

I don’t think there is one specific thing I can attribute that success to to. We have great sponsors that deliver amazing technical content for the users. The users community here is second to none. They participate and are truly hungry for knowledge. All of the presentation are merit based. What I mean by that is a group of my peers vote on the topics that the sponsors submit. Plus consistency is key, we try to have the VMUG meetings at the same place around the same time each quarter.

What are your thoughts about Microsoft Hyper V? Are users talking about it & how much interest is there in management of a multi-hypervisor environment?

I think everyone is watching to see what Hyper-v will do, but right now there is so much excitement and new products being developed around VMware why go anywhere else?

Chris, did you tell us that you were involved with a user’s group years ago when you were an AutoCAD user?

Close, When I first graduated I was doing computer aided drafting using Versa Cad. I was amazed at the power of a user group and how with everyone helping you could learn so much very quickly.

What is the most common complaint that you hear from end users? From vendors?

From users that there is not enough time to get to all of the break outs and see all of the sponsors that they want to see. From the sponsors, they have all just been great offering advice on what has worked for them at their events.

Do you ever record (video) any of the sessions or parts of the larger events (Winter Warmer, Clam bake)? Any thoughts on a live video feed?

We have recorded some of the video. I now need to get a web site up so that we can post it there. To date no one has asked us to do a live feed, but I would love to this summer.

When do you think you will start charging users?

Hopefully never. A good friend of mine (Sully) put it best. Charging a user would be like charging your family to come over for Thanksgiving dinner.

What were the 3 top technologies or topics that users were interested about this year?

a. Virtual Desktops
b. “Cloud Computing”
c. Automation (ie powershell)

During the downtime between User Groups, where can people go to get updated information on the next event?

There are a couple of places: They can find us on linked in. On the VMware Community forums. Plus we plan to have a web site up later this year which will be at http://www.nevmug.com/

Or you can email me at NEVMUG@Gmail.com

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Thanks to searchservervirtualization.com / techtarget for the snapshot of Chris.