We are off to a cold and rainy Monday morning here in Raleigh, so things were already a bit dreary to start the week. I was going about my typical Monday morning catch-up routine (albeit a little bit more slowly due to some birthday celebration yesterday) when David (@davidjasonball) pinged me on IM and asked if I had gotten an email about Veeam Vanguard.
I hadn’t been paying much attention since I had just gotten off a call and was in the middle of working on a couple documents, but didn’t recall seeing anything in my inbox 20 minutes earlier. Either way I checked my email really quick, and low and behold there was an email saying that I had been selected for the Veeam Vanguard program in 2019!
The best part was, not only was I selected, but David got the same email as well! I typically wouldn’t type up a blog post for this, but I wanted to put it into perspective. Both David and I attended VeeamOn 2017 in New Orleans. It was our first Veeam conference and really the beginning of our company being a national Veeam partner. After the first day, we both noticed a number of people wearing Veeam Vanguard golf shirts. On the second day, we sat with a couple of them at lunch and asked the pertinent question: “What is Veeam Vanguard?” They explained the specifics to us, and it was pretty much the first time either of us had really heard what an influencer program really entailed. We both had an Ah ha! moment and proclaimed that we would figure out how to become Veeam Vangaurds!
Shortly thereafter, I began noticing a lot more vExpert logos in some of the blogs I was visiting and figured it was time to actually start doing this blog thing I had often thought about trying. I launched virtualBonzo and hacked away for a while. David eventually took notice and asked to be a contributer. Fast forward to today, where both of us have seen the realization of a goal we set for ourselves just over two years ago.
Neither of us pushed forward with virtualBonzo for the sole purpose of getting into Veeam Vanguard, rather it was a catalyst for us to start painting outside the lines a bit. We began getting more involved with various virtual communities and started putting in extra effort outside of our day to day job duties. We were both lucky enough that we maintained a lot of exposure to Veeam / N2WS during this time and had enough valuable content to provide to the community. I certainly look forward to what 2019 has in store as a Veeam Vanguard member, and plan to keep pushing forward on this path I started down after a lunch conversation in New Orleans two and a half years ago.
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