>> Hi. I'm Stew Minimum. And this is a special on the ground here at the V Tug Summer Slam 2019. It is the 16th year of the event. We had hosted the Cube many times at the veto. Winter warmer and sad to say this actually the final interview for V tug it into the final V tug event. But before we can wrap up a friend of mine, Sean to lean, who is a vey architect with Delhi emcee. I've been promising him for years that we would one of these days do an interview on the Cube at the V tug. So it is the absolute final interview. So, Sean, welcome to the program. Thank you for having me. All right. So, uh, not only do you work for Delhi emcee, but you're part of the social team, you know, here at the V tug event, I had conversations with Lee Ji. It was also his first time in a program on Matt. You know who I've spoken with in the past? Eso, you know, give us a little bit about your background at this event and what this community has meant to you. >> Oh, sure. Um So I'm trying to remember I think this is my fifth or sixth summer Slam. Um I mean, I basically once I started my professional career. You know, one of the first things that you know we did was look for user groups. And so when they usedto hold this event back a Gillette that was very close to home. Um and that was my first experience with the I think back then it was the New England V mug, but it's still the same community and community has always been a big part of my life and my career. I mean, I even joined, you know, AMC, Social Media Community team to basically work with influencers in the broader I t community. But I always make sure that I could do events like this, you know, in the New England area, because it's so important to be a part of this community and the I t crowd. Everybody knows everybody, and you can always learn something new just by talking to people. So, like I purposely go like during lunch and sit down with people who have never met before and introduce myself and see what they do for a living, and it's been a wonderful experience every year. It's a great >> point, you know, community is so important in these events, and especially in a regional event with local on your shirt doesn't matter as much because for the years we've been attending this, almost everybody has changed jobs. You know, companies have been acquired, companies go public, you know, people change their jobs. So it's about the learning as a community, the growth of what's happening, our careers more than kind of some of that day to day battle that, like you might happen in the storage community. >> Yeah, yeah, you got to be able to separate, Say, you know, your professional competitiveness and be able to, you know, just embrace people as people and be able to talk to them and share knowledge. And I think anyone else who's a part of the community is able to do that themselves as >> well. Yeah, it's been interesting. Virtualization was one of those galvanizing technology that brought a lot of people, you know, bloggers and people. Helping to participate in Cloud's been interesting in many ways. You know, there's some fragmentation. There's some tough competition out there yet we're all learning and you know it is most customers today. They've got, you know, hybrid cloud. They've got multi club, they've got lots of environment and therefore the user's, you know, don't necessarily look at some of those battles are going on, But they're looking to help run their business on and, you know, how are you seeing that environ? What? What? What do you hear from you know, users that you speak with today? >> So I'm here in a variety of things. There's a lot of people that are on different points. We'll call it in their cloud journey. There are some people who have just kind of gotten the edict from the board or upper management that says Cloud First, where we're gonna do everything in the cloud on dhe. Some people you know who have jumped all in with that are learning a very painful lesson, especially with their wallet. Um, we found that kind of the sweet spot in it is that hybrid cloud. There are some workloads that are absolutely great for cloud, and there are some that is just expensive. And so depending on the size of your infrastructure, you can actually save a good amount of money by setting up something local and having a cloud strategy as well. It's all about evaluating the workload. And I think earlier today during the keynotes this morning, that message was really coming across that it's not all about the cloud or even just one cloud. I mean, there's countless cloud providers out there with all sorts of different Ma operating models and pricing models. And the beauty of it is we're in a place now with the technology that people can almost nickel and dime and do what is best for them and not necessarily be told. This is how it's gonna be. This is your only option. >> Yeah. One of the things I took away from the keynotes this morning is you know, it is oh, so easy to get caught up on the latest cool tool or, you know, the wave or what people are talking about. But it's you know, what skill sets do I have? How do I make sure I understand what valuable for my business and my career? You know, it is. We bring this one to a close. You know, Sean, you know what you have on that >> Well, it's funny you brought up skill sets because a lot of that can be learned from the community. You know, if you don't have the professional skill sets Or maybe, you know, your employer might not pay the empty up for, you know, organized training. There are so many community based free trainings and webinar Siri's and stuff like that that can get you learned up in this. I remember, you know, in my career I was talking with a customer who was like, You know, we're making a shift. We're going to start being more cloud focused on here. My, I'm doing like updating their VM wear environment, and he's like, I need to get better at this. And I rattled off a few different community programs. I talked to him again six months later. He went through all that, and now he's playing around in Azure and Amazon and starting to learn some of that, and they almost gave him a promotion. They reorg, um, into a new role, where he's got more cloud responsibilities and effectively saved his job because he went to the out to the community and learned these skills. >> Yeah, but I always find in these events, right? If if you if you were open Thio, you know, new ideas, that intellectual curiosity. There is so much opportunity in tech these days. Sean won't want to give you the final word any, you know, memories you have from these events. Either you know, the main or the winter event. You know that you want to share, we bring our coverage to a close. >> I mean, you know, this event has been going on for so long, and it's always good stuff every single time. I'm going to miss the rubber chickens that that has always stuck out and to Mia's as one of the guys don't >> know that that's Hans from GM, where, you know, brings the rubber chickens will throw the little key chains at you when you go, Yeah, >> but you know, in general, you know, there's a lot of events out there where, you know, it's it's, you know, the morning and maybe the afternoon, the party afterwards and I'm not here to be like Party party party, but is almost just as important as the event itself. And I've never seen any other user group or event like that that really puts Satan's that time for networking. You get almost just as much business done. You know, they're talking to people, you know, when you're waiting in line for lobster and stuff like that Here, um, as you know, just kind of mingling around during the day. You meet so many people and make business connections and everything at the after party, Which is why I keep thinking they invest so much money in the after hours. Piece >> of it, I think Great point to end on, Shawn. The community is really central to what goes on there. This event. Listen to the customers and, you know, grew that the breath of the topics that they covered, they kept to keep on it. So 16 years of phenomenal run. I wanna have a big shout out to everyone that helped put the Vita gone. Of course, that is Chris and Don Harney at the court. Chris Williams did a lot of work there, but many other people that helped behind the scenes to make it happen. And of course, it was always the users at this event that with drivers for it, as well as the sponsors that helped participate And through this so Sean to lean. Thank you so much for joining us. Welcome to the Cube alumni. And I'm still minimum. Thank you. As always, for watching this program has been our pleasure. Tiu c All of the V tugs. If you go to the cube dot net, go up in the search bar in touch via tug. You could see previous years We've had so many great guests on the program. You know, I got to interview some of the alumni from the Patriots, which were some definite highlight for me as well as great technical content and good friends that I've made over the years. So with that, we're signing off from the final V tug here in Maine and thank you, as always for watching the Cube.