vSWUG - All Things Virtual

A long time ago in a reality far, far away…

SolarWinds User Groups (SWUGs) are pretty cool. There’s free food, and more. Much more.

Planning and delivering a SWUG requires a huge investment, not just financial.
A relatively small team is involved in the planning: basically Danielle, Kevin, and some experienced folks from our events team. By the way, those are the people who use magic in the background to make sure there are enough t-shirts and swag at events and conferences we attend.

Finding a location is very time-consuming. First, we check your feedback in spaces like here. And while most SWUGs take place in the U.S., we did our fair share of travel. We’re not Iron Maiden, with their own 747, but shipping a few people around the globe isn’t always easy.

Once we agree on a city, we start looking into various hotel options. This process contains basic questions, like “Do you have enough space for 150 people?” up to the really important ones, like “Show us your catering menu.”

Also don’t forget we need to ship some swag. A lot!

A lot of thinking goes into the schedule. What content could be interesting? Are there new releases worth mentioning? Who is the best person to deliver it? Does their personal schedule allow travel? Do we need 20 minutes for a session or a full hour? The content itself is created by the individual contributors who are presenting it later, and the process requires a significant amount of time.

In a nutshell, a SWUG costs a lot of time, effort, and money. And we finalized everything for our next European tour to visit London, Berlin, and Munich. Done and dusted, safe and sound.

And now we’re here, in May 2020, sitting at home and not going anywhere.

But we thought, “Hey, let’s do something. Anything is better than nothing.” So, we came up with the idea to virtualize it. A virtual SWUG, a vSWUG—catchy, isn’t it?

Instead of a 1-to 2-day event, it’s now four Wednesday afternoons during May. Let me define afternoon: the events start at 01:10 pm CEST, Central European Summer Time. You know what, let me just call it 13:00 Berlin time. Bingo.

For some speakers it means they must get up very early, as it’s 06:00 in the morning in Austin.
Bad luck guys, but hey, it’s an EMEA event, after all.

It’s a completely new thing for us. Many things can go wrong—some surely will—but let’s give it a try.

Our fantastic video team helps us delivering it, and while they are experienced with all the SolarWinds Labs and THWACKcamp events, this time it’s different, as it’s live, and remote. Erik (with a K) was asking for a challenge.

All details, the registration, and the agenda are available here. Join us, have a cup of coffee or an early afternoon tea, and let’s have fun in the chat.

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