Once in a while, I’m a witness to acts of extraordinary kindness from a person or group of persons.  It may not occur on a regular basis, but when it does, it is something special to behold.  It happened this afternoon at the Minneapolis Area VMware Users Group (VMUG) meeting.

It started out as a fairly typical event.  I called the meeting to order, briefly went through some general business and current events in the VMware virtualization community, and then turned the meeting over to our first speakers Craig Drugge and Pavan Jhamnani of Syncsort.  I took a seat, prepared to learn about Syncsort’s data protection and rapid recovery technologies.  However that was not to be, at least not right away.  Instead, Pavan invited Michael Cardinal of ThinLaunch up on stage.  I was curious about what was transpiring since this was Syncsort’s hour and I wasn’t aware that ThinLaunch had any ties to Syncsort’s technology.

Michael took the stage with a white paper bag in hand and began speaking to the audience about a person he has known for a few years.  A person who diggs virtualization.  A person whom he’d bumped into at VMware Partner Exchange early Wednesday morning at Starbucks Mandalay Bay.  I caught on pretty quickly that he was referring to me.  Michael proceeded to announce my recent VCDX certification accomplishment.  I thought that was extremely generous of him, but there was more.  Michael asked me to come up on stage where he presented me with a gift.  This was something that he, his wife, and Bill Hinkens (Territory Manager, VMware) collaborated on.  Michael turned the bag around to reveal the VMware diamond plate artwork along with my name and VCDX #34 on it.  Inside the bag was a black VMware fleece sweater, again with my name, VCDX, and #34 on it.  I was at a loss for words.  I accpeted the gift, thanked Michael, and we took our seats. The meeting continued from its brief diversion.

The sweater, the bag, the presentation, the planning, the thought, these were all wonderful gifts from a group of people who went out of their way which I will remember for a long time.  Virtualization, for me, has built a great community of people and in many cases has yielded friendships at a professional as well as a personal level.  For that I am very thankful and each day I look forard to what the future brings.

Thank you.

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