>> From Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts, it's the CUBE. Covering VTUG Winter Warmer 2019. Brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media. >> I'm Stu Miniman, and this is theCUBE's coverage of the VTUG Winter Warmer 2019. Just had Rob Ninkovich from the New England Patriots on the program. And, happy to bring on the program, one of the co-leaders of this VTUG event, Chris Williams. Whose day job is as a cloud architect with GreenPages, but is co-leader here at VTUG, does some user groups, and many other things, and actually a CUBE alum, even. Back four years ago, the first year-- >> That's right. >> -that we did this, we had you on the program, but a few things have changed, you know... You have a little less hair. >> This got a little longer. A little less here. >> More gray hair. Things like that. We were talking, >> Funny how that works out. you know, Rob was, you know, talking about how he's 35, and we were, like, yeah, yeah, 35, I remember 35. >> A child. (laughing) >> Things like that. Just wait til you hit your 40's and stuff starts breaking. >> Oh, so much to look forward to. >> So, Chris, first of all, thank you. We love coming to an event like this. I got to talk to a few users on-air, and I talked to, you know, get a, just, great pulse of what's going on in the industry. Virtualization, cloud computing, and beyond. So, you know, we know these, you know, local events are done, you know, a lot of it is the passion of the people that do it, and therefore we know a lot goes into it. >> I appreciate it, thanks for having me on. >> Alright, so bring people up to speed. What's your life like today? What do you do for work? What do you do for, you know, the passion projects? >> Ah, so the passion projects recently have been a lot of, we're doing a Python for DevOp series on vBrownBag. For the AWS Portsmouth User Group, we're also doing a machine learning and robotics autonomous car driving project, using Python as well. And for VTUG, we're looking at a couple of different tracks, also with the autonomous driving, and some more of the traditional, like, VMware to CAS Cloud Hybrid training kind of things. >> Excellent, so in the near future, the robots will be replacing the users here, and we'll have those running around. >> I have my Skynet t-shirt on underneath here. >> Ah, yes, Skynet. (laughing) You know if you Tweet that out, anything about Skynet, there's bots that respond to you with, like, things from The Terminator movies. >> I built one of them. >> Did you? (laughter) Well, thank you. They always make me laugh, and if there's not a place for snark on Twitter, then, you know, all we have left is kind of horrible politics, so. >> That's true, that's true. >> Great, so, yeah, I mean, Cloud AI, robotics, you know, what's the pulse? When you talk to users here, you know, they started out, you know, virtualization. There's lots of people that are, "I'm rolling out my virtualization, "I'm expanding what use-cases I can use it on, "I might be thinking about how cloud fits into that, "I'm looking at, you know, VmMare and Amazon especially, "or Microsoft, how all those fit together." You know, what are you hearing, what drives some of those passion projects other than, you know, you're interested in 'em? >> So, a lot of what my passion projects are driven, it's kind of a confluence of a couple of different events. I'm passionate about the things that I work on, and when I get into a room with customers, or whatever like that, or with the end users, getting together and talking about, you know, what's the next step? So, we as users, as a user group and as a community, we're here to learn about not just what today is... what's happening today, but, what's going to keep us relevant in the future, what are the new things coming down the pipe. And, a lot of that is bending towards the things that I'm interested in, fortuitously. Learning how to take my infrastructure knowledge and parlay that into a DevOps framework. Learning how to take Python and some of the stuff that I'm learning from the devs on the AWS side, and teaching them the infrastructure stuff. So, it's a bi-directional learning thing, where we all come together to that magical DevOps unicorn in the middle, that doesn't really exist, but... >> Yeah, I tell you, we've had this conversation a few times here, and many times over the last few years especially, is that, there's lots of opportunities to learn. And, you know, >> Too many. >> is your job threatened? And, the only reason your job should be threatened, is if you think you can keep doing, year after year, what you were doing before, because chances are either you will be disrupted in the job, or if not, the people you're working for might be disrupted, because if they're not pushing you along those tracks, and the tools and the communities to be able to learn stuff is, I can learn stuff at a fraction of the cost in faster times. >> Yep. >> Might not learn as much, but I'm saying I can pick up new skills, I can start getting into cloud. You know, it's not $1000 and six months to get the first piece of it. >> Exactly. >> It might be 40 to 60 hours online. >> Yep. >> And, you know, cost you 30 to 100 bucks, so, it's... >> Yeah, the lift in training, is a lot easier because, you're basically swiping your credit card, and with AWS, you have a free tier for 12 months, that you can play with and just, you know, doodle around, and then... And figure things out. You don't have to buy a home lab, you don't have to buy NFR license, or get NFR licenses from Vmware. But, the catch to that is, you do have to do it. There's a... remember Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? >> Of course. >> Remember the dad was doing the toothpaste tubes, he was the guys screwing the toothpaste tubes onto the machines. At the end of the story, he got, you know, automated out of a job, because they had a machine screwing the toothpaste tubes on. And then, at the end, he was the guy fixing the machine that was screwing the toothpaste tubes on. >> Right. >> So, in our world, that infrastructure guy, who's been deploying manually virtual machines, there's a piece of code, there's an infrastructure code, that will do that for them now. They've got to know how to modify and refactor that piece of code, and get good. And, get good at that. >> Yeah, you know, I've talked to a couple of people, we talk about, you know, there's big, you know, vendor shows, and then there's, you know, regional user groups and meet-up's, and the like. Give us a little insight into, you know, let's start with VTUG specifically, and, you know, what you're doin' up in the Portland area. Would love to hear some of the dynamics now, you know, it feels like there's just been a ground swell for many years now, to drive those, you know, local, and many times, more specialized events, as opposed to bigger, broader events. >> Yeah, it's interesting, because we like the bigger, broader events, because it gets everybody together to talk about, things across a broad spectrum. So, here we have the infrastructure guys, and we have the DevOps guys, and we have a couple of Developers, and stuff like that. And so, getting that group think, that mind share, into one room together, gets everybody's creative juices flowing. So, people are starting to learn from each other, that the Dev's, are getting some ideas about how infrastructure works, the infrastructure guys are getting some ideas about, you know, how to, how to automate a certain piece of their job. To make that, you know, minimize and maximize a thousand times, you know, go away. So, I love... I love the larger groups because of that. The smaller groups are more specialized, more niche. So, like, when you get into a smaller version, then, it's mostly infrastructure guys, or mostly Dev's, or some mixture thereof. So, they both definitely have their place, and that's why I love doing both of them. >> Yeah, and, you know, what can you share, kind of, speeds and feeds of this show here. I know, it's usually over a thousand people >> Yep. >> You know, had, you know, bunch of keynotes going on. You know, we talked about The Patriots, in, you know, quite a number of, you know, technology companies, people that are the, kind of, SI's or VAR's in the mix. >> Yeah, so, we had, I think, 35 sponsers. We had, six different keynotes, or six general sessions. We talked about everything from Azure to AWS, to Vmware. We covered the gamate of the things that the users are interested in. >> You had... don't undersell the general sessions there. (laughing) There was one that was on, like, you know, Blockchain and Quantum computing, I heard. >> Yep, yep. >> There was, an Amazon session, that was just, geekin' out on the database stuff, I think, there. >> Yes, yeah, Graph tier, yep. >> So, I mean, you know, it's not just marketing slideware up there, I saw a bunch of code in many of the sessions. >> Oh yeah, yeah. >> You know, this definitely is, you know, I was talkin' with the Amazon... Randell earlier, here on the program, and said that-- >> The Amazon Randall. (laughing) >> Yeah, yeah, sorry, Randall from Amazon, here. >> He's a very large weber. >> Gettin' at the end of the day, I've done a few of these, but, you know, remember like, four years ago, the first, like, cloud 101 session here? >> Yeah, yep. >> And, I was like, you know, I probably could have given that session, but, everybody here was like, "Oh, my gosh", you know, I just found out about that electricity. >> Right. >> You know, that, this is amazing. And, today, most people, understand a little bit more of... We've gotten the 101, so, you know, I'm getting into more of the pieces of it, but. >> Yeah, it was really gratifiying because, the one that he gave was, all of the service, all of the new services, of which, there were like, more than 100, in 50 minutes or less. And, he talks really, really fast. And, everybody was riveted, we... I mean, people were coming in, even up until the last minute. And, they all got it. It wasn't like, what am I do... what am I going to do with this? It's, this is what I need to know, and this is valuable information. >> Yeah, we were having a lunch conversation, about, like, when you listen to a Podcast, what speed do you listen on? So, I tend to listen at about one and a half speed, normally. >> Me too, yep. >> You know, Frappe was sayin', he listens at 2x, normally. >> Does he really? >> Somebody like, Randall, I think I would, put the video up, and you can actually go into YouTube, and things like that, and adjust the speed settings, I might hit, put him down to 0.75, or something like that, >> Yeah, absolutely. >> Because absolutely, you know, otherwise, you can listen to it at full speed, and just like, pause and rewind, and then things like that. But, definitely, someone... I respect that, I'm from New Jersey, originally, I tend to talk a little faster, on camera I try to keep a steady pace, so that, people can keep up with my excitement. >> I do, I speed up too. He actually, does this everyday. He flies to a new city, does it once a day. So, he's, he's gotten... This is like rapid fire now. >> Alright, want to give you the final word, you know, VTUG, you know, I think, people that don't know it, you go to VTUG.com, A Big Winter Warmer, here. There's The Big Summer one, >> The Summer Slam. >> With the world famous, you know, Lobster Bake Fest, there, I've been to that one a few times. I know people that fly from other countries, to come to that one. What else should we know about? >> So, we're about to revamp the website, we've got some new and interesting stuff coming up on there. Now that, we also have our slack channel, everybody communicates on the backhand through that. We're going to start having some user content, for the website. So, people can start posting blog articles, and things of that nature, there. I'm going to start doing, like a little, AW... like learn AWS, on the VTUG blog, so, people can start, you know, ramping up on some of the basics and everything. And, and if, that gains traction, then, we'll maybe get into some more advanced topics, from Azure, and AwS, and Vmware of course, Vmware is always going to be there, that's... Some of the stuff that Cody is doing, Cody Jarklin is doing, over at Vmware, like the CAS stuff, where it's the shim layer, and the management of all the different clouds. That's some really, really cool stuff. So, I'm excited to showcase some of that on the website. >> Alright, wow. Chris Williams, really appreciate you coming. And, as always, appreaciate the partnership with the VTUG, to have us here. >> Thanks for havin' me. >> Alright, and thank you as always for watching. We always love to bring you the best community content, we go out to all the shows, help extract the signal for the noise. I'm Stu Miniman, thanks for watchin' The CUBE. (energetic music) (energetic music) (energetic music)