Last week I had the great pleasure to attend the Veeam 100 Summit in Prague Czech Republic.
This event is the highlight of the year for the Veeam Community and the atmosphere and energy it creates is enough to keep one fueled with IT enthusiasm until the next summit.
So what is the Veeam 100? Well I have described it before but such a great Community needs to be mentioned again and again. What’s more there is no reason why you too can’t join the Veeam 100 as well, either as a Veeam Vanguard or a Veeam Legend.
The Veeam Vanguards
“The Veeam Vanguard Program is Veeam’s top-level influencer community”. You can get a full description here: https://www.veeam.com/vanguard.html
The Veeam Legends
“Veeam Legends are Veeam users and data protection industry experts who are passionate about technology, innovation and eager to further develop their career, while sharing their experiences with the community” Again you can get more information from here: https://community.veeam.com/general-information-58/veeam-legends-program-overview-71
Who are the rest of the Veeam 100?
The third group of Veeam 100 members are made of the Veeam MVPs. These are Veeam employees who have earned this distinction by going above and beyond their normal duties to help promote Veeam and its users
All of the Veeam 100 members can be found in the Veeam 100 Directory directorieshttps://community.veeam.com/p/veeam100directory
If you would like to join the Vanguards or Legends take a look at the requirements in the links above and see what you need to do in order to qualify. Believe me you will not regret it. I can honestly state that becoming a Veeam Legend and then a Veeam Vanguard have been the highlight of my IT career.
Being part of the Veeam 100 you not only get to travel to fascinating places but you also get to meet fascinating and diverse people from all over the world. The experiences and friendships that arise out of participating in these programs go beyond just another addition to the resume.
However, lets talk about the Summit itself.
I always take advantage of these trips to also get in a little bit of tourism. Arriving a day early provided that opportunity. One could spent weeks wandering around Prague’s sites. It seemed every time you turned a corner you discovered something new. My camera’s storage was quickly challenged with the influx of “must have” shots.
I could fill this entire blog post with photos and still not be satisfied. Prague is a never ending source of inspiration for photographers, artists and bloggers, its scenes and sounds stir the inner creator in us all.
One of my fellow Veeam 100 colleagues who was experiencing his first summit at one point said what was on everyone’s mind “What a perfect location to have a Data Protection summit!” Great thinking is contagious and Prague’s fantastic architecture and environment rubs off on all of the Summit participants further underlining the importance and the exceptionalism of the event.
Equally as ingenious as their choice of location, Veeam also began the Summit with a half day Kasten K10 workshop hosted by none other than Veeam’s bright star in the Cloud Michael Cade! As expected the workshop was full and the feedback I heard was all very positive.
At the end of day one we had our first social event. Object First hosted a great welcome reception where we spent time greeting old friends and making new ones. I will add that the word reception is very humble, the food and drink was more than abundant and there was no need to make any dinner plans after it.
The Second day was jam packed full. We had an overview of the Veeam Communities and a special double header presentation by Object First and Wasabi. Matt Price from Object First and Drew Schlussel from Wasabi did great presentations. People used to tell me that storage was boring, no longer! Object Storage is the real deal!
The rest of the day was spent going over all the new enhancements in upcoming Veeam VBR 12.1 which are many. I will leave those descriptions for when the release is out which could come by the end of the year.
Tuesday evening was a free night with many later on wandering the down the dark wonderful streets of the old town.
The Third day focused again on Veeam 12.1 and also VBM365 future features. There was also Veeam Salesforce backup presentation and a great Ransomware presentation by none other than Rick Vanover himself.
Not abiding by the actual timeline but other great sessions were on CDP, Linux, Immutability, Object Storage and a very interesting explanation about the new Cirrus by Veeam offering.
Every Veeam event always concludes with a party that encapsulates everything that is so special about Veeam. The Veeam Summit organizers Rick Vanover, Nicola Pejkova, Safiya Mohamed and Madalina Cristil are true Veeam super agents (no pun intended) at finding the perfect spot for the festivities. Hidden away in one of the old town side lanes was a fantastic club. It took me a while to find as I did not get data for my cell phone due to Canadian absorbent overseas telco pricing, which resulted in my online map disappearing when I tried to focus in without WIFI. However, that only added to the adventure. In fact my scout navigation skills were helped enormously when up on my audio radar popped a noisy bunch of happy folks heading down one of the streets, who of course turned out to be part of the Veeam Summit crew.
The club was unique and even had an outside rooftop which was insulated by the buildings around it (I wondered how the neighbors dealt with the lively patrons frequenting the roof). You could easily picture Franz Kafka out on this roof discussing his masterpieces more than a hundred years ago. Fast forward to today and the modern scene is filled with Veeam super user Michael Paul going over deep data protection topics with newly hired Veeam superstar Maximillian Maier and Mr. Veeam Forum Fabian Kessler. Prague’s long intellectual traditions continue and evolve!
Thursday we had half day session and many of us stayed on for a day or two in order to get in a bit more tourism.
Being a Veeam Vanguard, Legend or MVP is not just being part of yet another one of those IT communities. The Veeam Community is truly special and the Veeam 100 Summit encompasses everything about what Veeam does so very well, from bringing us the best Data Protection Software on the Market, to building the best IT community on the Planet!