I have been asked about where the odd name for my blog came from, and how do I do the newsletter. So here is the info on this blog, and my newsletter. In no special order, just what I remember.
- I gather articles wherever I see them, and if I think they would be useful, I capture the article or the link in Evernote.
- I have a blogging notebook in Evernote where I keep all my ideas and one page is where all the newsletter stuff goes. And like 10 pages that are the archive!
- My audience started out as system engineers that worked at VMware’s partners. It has grown much bigger than that but still SE’s, sys admins, and technical people are what I am trying to reach. These are the people or the target group but I am trying to provide interesting and useful information to anyone.
- My co-workers are often where I get additional ideas from – when they cannot find something, or have trouble with something, or are irritated or pissed off about something, or when they have bad ideas about something.
- There is a number of people that send me ideas, or ask me questions that often make me think it worth writing down and making an article about it.
- When I am at an event, especially things like VMUGs or VMworld, I try and talk to people and hear what they are having trouble with and what I can help with. I often get ideas in situations like that – for example, in the SouthWestern Ontario Veeam User Group I heard that only one or two in a group of 60 Veeam users knew what a SureBackup job was. So that night I started writing this article in the hope that it would help. I often get ideas in these places for things to share as well.
- It takes me most of a day to organize, write, proofread, and publish a newsletter.
- When I say someones first name, like Ken or Mike or Alan it means I know them. Meaning, I worked with them, or eaten with them, and have spent lots of time chatting with them over the years.
- Why did I start doing this? I started with VMware as a Partner SE, which means I enabled SE’s who worked for VMware partners. I did not think they got enough from VMware to enable them. So I started a weekly email newsletter. Did that for roughly 5 years, and took some time off before I started the blog. That time was in R&D and mostly dealing with stuff I could not talk about.
- The newsletter was called Notes from VMware, so when I did the blog I called it Notes from MWhite.
- What will you hear about in the new year from me? Some of the same – I will keep doing newsletters to share out cool and useful info for a long time yet. But, as I work more in the public with my product you will start to learn more about it from me in this blog.
I hope that this works as an answer for the questions I get about my blog.
Have a great day, and a wonderful Christmas!
Michael
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Merry Christmas Michael and all the best for Happy and Great New Year in 2017.
Thanks Dave! Much appreciated, and all the best for you too! I look forward to working with you in 2017 too!
Michael
I very much look forward to the email notification every week! Many of your articles have made me a much better engineer!
Merry Christmas and very fantastic new year!
Mark
Thanks very much Mark, I really appreciate it. Merry Christmas to you as well – and Happy New Year!
Michael