Out of the box Interview Rick Vanover. Part 2
The Rickatron Part 2 “The Next Day”
Running IT communities
Geoffrey Burke: We are back with the one and only Rickatron! If you missed the first part of our series, go back and find out how he got that nickname. Let’s get back to talking about IT communities.
One thing people don't understand is how hard it is to get these community programs going and then maintain them. Then there is the justification part. I have seen some CEOs not understand the value of IT communities and the costs associated with them.
Rick Vanover: I agree with all of that. It is the hardest thing to justify to people who don’t get it from the start. I have done all the work to justify it financially. Leadership here at Veeam gets it, and it's because it's come in so good. Honestly, the best thing going for us, and this is also our biggest challenge, is the Gartner Magic Quadrant.
They give every vendor three strengths and three cautions.
Last year's number one strength for us was a very loyal customer base and a very strong community.
Holy buckets, I mean, visibility is up there.
The Traveling Rickatron
Geoffrey Burke: You have probably been to every country in the world by now. Do you often get to go to a new country and are there any left that you have not been to?
Rick Vanover: I won't say it's often, but it's been rare for me to go to a new country in the last few years. However, this year, I'm going to a new country, Chile, for the VeeamON tour in Santiago.
In fact, I'm doing 4 VeeamON tours this year.
Denmark, Sweden, then Chile, which is new, and Argentina.
I think that I have been to 55 countries worldwide.
What's really scary is that I still have not been to three U.S. States!
Alaska, North Dakota, and Vermont.
VEEAMON
Geoffrey Burke: You mentioned VeeamON, which is another major thing that you do apart from the community. I remember when I first became a Veeam Legend and was at VeeamON, the other community members told me, “If you see Rick, don't bug him. He will be running around like crazy, but he's not ignoring you.” You were crazy busy!
Rick Vanover: I have a much better role at VeeamON now, much more balanced because before, I was one of the very few people; in fact, I can't think of anybody actually who was involved both in the mechanics of the event and in the delivery of the event. As well as Press and dealing with Analysts.
I had my fingers in everything, and honestly, it was too much. To give you some perspective, up until VeeamON 2023, two virtual ones I'm just going to table as they were different. But up until VeeamON 2023, every day from January 1st all the way up until the event, I would give almost 2 hours of the day to planning for the event.
Rick Vanover: This year the content trifecta team was two individuals from product marketing and myself. They of course both have nicknames too. They're on the list of approved persons, Lady Blades and Little Bear. They were instrumental and it was way more balanced and I'll be honest with you, it was the right way to do things. I feel like this VeeamON was really good, especially because every year we're given new parameters from leadership.
There are some standard things like budget space and place. There are also some soft ones like missions and messages like messages we want to push out.
VeeamON: it's the biggest puzzle I have ever put together.
By the way it also feeds a lot of things around the world, so the VeeamON forums and VeeamON tours. They work from its this kind of body of content, sometimes they'll do it in local language.
It is the second most awesome honor burden that I have here at Veeam, the number one being the work to enter the Gartner Magic Quadrant.
The Future
Geoffrey Burke: I want to wrap this up with a question about the future.
What do you think is the future of IT communities in general?
Secondly, what do you think is going to happen with Veeam?
Rick Vanover: So I'm going to answer that question two ways.
What's going to happen to Veeam?
We will still release products and updates and go into new ecosystems. I'll spoil the secrets without spoiling the secrets. It's more prevalent in the cloud, data centers, enterprise apps, software as a service, and unstructured data.
When it comes to the Community my biggest challenge is finding the community heroes and the new things. I have this one guy who rocks the Kubernetes world; you right. But there's not that many. You know, it's like that's harder to find.
Also, with Microsoft 365, it's harder to find the heroes there. Linux and things like that.
If you have this full portfolio of products, you want it balanced. I don't have any Salesforce gurus. So I have some challenges and the biggest challenge is finding these new people and new places. You know, just yesterday there was a big user group meeting in France, actually Monaco more specifically. We had a couple of people from my team there and a full house.
You know, they did great.
And then when I look at, you know, the US, I got a lot of opportunities there.
I'm building some user groups there and people are want to engage in their own way and we've made a huge investment in our community hub platform, right. So it's like when you think about user groups, you think about a platform. If you think about it. External resources, especially what Vanguards do, there the community's future, is strong. And then we also have to make improvements, not changes, right, and give them more things.
And one of the things I just launched to the Veeam 100 community is our feature request forum, this is a good new vehicle. So I’m about a lot more transparency there. It is happening so you know we're in in good shape.
The future of community is strong and but I'm always looking to try to and be one step ahead. I will do experiments. I will listen to ideas from the platforms we use.
Geoffrey Burke: One person I met recently told me that they were working for a different backup company, and we were talking about marketing community strategies.
He admitted that they did not even try to compete with Veeam as it was a lost cause.
Rick Vanover: That's, that's what I say.
If I do get a run for the top position, then I'm going to double down. I already have some investments coming, people and strategy for next year.
So there's only one place to go from the top, and that is down, but I'm not going to let that happen.
Geoffrey Burke:
That's great.
Well, thank you very much.
Folks, that is it, The Veeam Communities are the Veeam Vanguards and the Veeam Legends. There is also the Veeam Internal Champions program, the Veeam MVPs.
I think you will all agree that the Rickatron could easily be called a Legend in the Veeam world, a Vanguard when it comes to the evolution of IT evangelism and the ultimate MVP of knowing how to run IT communities! In Summary, Rickatron is 100% a community champion and builder. The Real Veeam 100 percent!