With the below announcement, nominations are now open for winner #5
It is my pleasure to announce the newest VMware Technology Network Community Warrior Badge is being awarded to one of VMware’s very own, William Lam.
Congratulations William! @Lamw is well-known for his blog, virtuallyGhetto, but has also been actively contributing to VMTN for almost 10 years. He has earned nearly 25,000 points in this time and attained the Guru badge, consistently supporting others in their endeavors to achieve automation. He has been instrumental in helping the VMware {code} developer program take-off, presents at VMUGs all over the world, and has been a vExpert since the start of the program.
In exploring his online presence, and reading the wonderful nominations I received for him from @LucD, @arielsanchezmor, and @Nscuola, who described William’s following as “cult-like,” I decided I needed to find out more about the man behind the scripts first-hand.
I had the chance to ask him a few questions…
K: William, you are a very decorated community member, you were just named one of the Top 50 Overall VMware Influencers this year, and you’ve been a vExpert for all 8 years – why and how did you start as a VMware evangelist?
W: The evangelism was really a by-product of the work I had been doing over the years rather than a specific goal I had in mind. Like many in the VMware Community, my career started out as a regular Systems Administrator and at the time, I was supporting a mix of Linux/UNIX and VMware-based infrastructures. Having worked for several large Enterprises, I was exposed to a multitude of challenges which gave me a great opportunity to learn about news things and solve some really hard problems.
I am a huge believer in sharing what you have learned so that others can build on top of that knowledge and do even greater things. This constant learning and sharing of VMware knowledge has always been something I enjoyed and as I mentioned earlier, the evangelism for VMware and their solutions just sort of happened naturally.
K: Very cool! I’m sure a lot of our readers can relate. How did you get to where you are today – with almost 17,000 followers on Twitter and one of the most popular blogs in the community?
W: To be perfectly honest, I still ask myself that every day. I think for me personally; I have always enjoyed learning about new things and sharing that back with the community whether that is explaining a complex topic or building creative solutions to solve real customer problems. I think being passionate about what you do really helps, regardless if you are the #1 blogger or 2,013th blogger. Find that one thing you really love and just keep at it, you may not see it right away, but it will pay dividends in the future in ways you cannot even imagine.
K: That’s great advice. What has your passion led you to lately… What are you currently working on?
W: I had just recently finished a fun little project with my good friend Alan Renouf called USB to SDDC which we also got to present for the first time in public at both the Sydney and Melbourne VMUG a couple of weeks ago. The idea is quite simple, how cool would it be if you could simply plug in a USB key into a server and have automatically provision and configure ESXi, the vCenter Server Appliance and vSAN without any additional user interaction? That is what Project USB to SDDC is all about. You can find more details in this blog post here: http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2017/04/project-usb-to-sddc-part-1.html
Do you have questions for William? Reach out to him:
Over Twitter: @lamw
On VMTN: @lamw
Check out his blog: http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/
And for fun, his video of a 109-mile bike ride for charity he participated in: https://vimeo.com/106775852
Then be sure to submit your nominations for Community Warrior #5. Who has stood out in your favorite community lately? What warrior has been knocking down questions left and right? Contact the Community Manager @KTbradley on VMTN or through email at [email protected] to nominate.
