VMware | The HVC Community remains strong and active

2024-07-13 617 words 3 minutes

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Contents

Highly Successful Event and a very positive customer discussion about VMware Cloud Foundation

On July 12, 2024, the Healthcare Virtualization Community (HVC) hosted an in-person event for Healthcare Organizations in and around the Philadelphia Area. Some attendees traveled 2+ hours to attend. The event brought together professionals from various hospitals and medical institutions.

The HVC events have been running since 2011, providing a platform for healthcare IT professionals to connect, learn, and share knowledge. I personally started attending in 2013. An easy way to describe the HVC events for people within the VMware vCommunity, it’s like a VMUG for Healthcare without any sales pitches and the content is driven by the people attending. Healthcare organizations all have similar rules and requirements with their IT infrastructure, so attending the HVC events have been a great way to learn what other people do, share what you do and build vCommunity relationships.

This event was particularly significant as it marked the first in-person gathering after a hiatus caused by COVID-19 restrictions and the acquisition of VMware by Broadcom. With these changes behind us, the VMware Healthcare Teams in the area thought it would be a good time to start up the HVC events again. VMware customers ask for these events to be scheduled. They enjoy attending the events to learn from each other.

What I personally witnessed yesterday at the VMware HVC event, was that the culture that surrounds the VMware Products is alive and well.

Here are my Key Takeaways:

A VMware Healthcare Customer took the time out of their busy schedule to tell their story and journey with VCF, that started in 2021. The good and the bad were discussed. I can honestly say that the customers pointed out that there was more positive than negative. One example was upgrades and patching. Far less time spent doing these activities. Engineers spend more time doing Engineering work. Upgrades and patching become more of a monitoring activity.
Everyone was shaking hands, hugs, laughing, and just catching up.
Attendees engaged in lively discussions, networking, and sharing project updates.
The food and drink provided was awesome.
The event had zero negativity, reflecting a strong sense of community among the attendees.

Personal Highlights:

I was able to meet a co-worker that I have known for almost 5 years, in person. Brock Peterson and I are both VCF Aria Specialists. We help VMware Healthcare and Life Sciences customers with Automation, Monitoring and Logging. Brock has been a Role Model/Mentor of mine and it was nice to personally say thanks for all the help he has provided these past couple of years and being a valuable resource for me. If you use the VMware product Aria Operations (vROPS), I can guarantee you have read at least one of the awesome blogs that he has written about the product.
The event’s organizers, Marcus Roberts and Dan Thomas, deserve special recognition for their hard work in making the event a success. Marcus provided a good conversation at the beginning of the event to give everyone updates and Dan had great fireside chat with the customer discussing their VCF journey, see pic below.