A little late to this review party, but better late than sorry š
If I would need to say in one word how was my 2022, I would probably say “Unexpected”.
VMUG Romania
Together with my colleagues Razvan and Mihai, we hosted three VMware User Group Romania meetings in 2022. We started early in the year, with an online meeting in February, sponsored by Pure Storage. Cristian Stan and Cristian Radu talked to us about VMware on FlashArray, Portworx as CSI orchestrator, and using Velero to backup a Tanzu cluster.
At the beginning of July 2022, we checked in at PointHub in Bucharest for a new meeting. Tanzu was the main speaking point, starting with the keynote speaker, Oren Penso, Field CISO at VMware Tanzu, and continuing with Kobi Shamama, Sales Director at VMware Tanzu, and Yaniv Norman, Senior Solution Engineer at VMware Tanzu. Cristian Radu And Adrian Lazar (both from VMware Romania) had a powerful conversation about journey to multi-cloud. I had my slot as well, talking about community power and about my journey from VMUG spectator to VMware Explore speaker.
Middle of October had us meet for the last time in 2022, in a special location, VMAX Karting track in Bucharest. Unfortunately Cormac Hogan, our keynote speaker, was not able to attend the event in person, so we had to stream him to the huge screen from the track. Cristian Radu told us about the news coming with vSphere 8, and then Razvan Ionescu, VMUG leader, told us a story from the beginning of the IT industry.
vExpert 2022
In February, VMware announced the members of the vExpert 2022 program. vExpert is VMware’s global evangelism and advocacy program. I was proud to be recognized as vExpert for the 6th time in a row. I was also proud of my Romanian vExpert fellows:
- Aylin Sali
- Bogdan Ionut Buruiana
- Michael Stoica
- Razvan Ionescu
VMware Explore US 2022
Between August 29 and September 1, I was in San Francisco attending VMware Explore US 2022. If you had told me at the beginning of the year that I will present later that year at VMware Explore, I would had just replied “Wishful thinking!”. But here I am, first day of the conference, hosting my own Explore session: “Accelerate Time to Business Value and Achieve Faster Deployment with Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Deployer”. And few hours later, doing another session at Lenovo’s booth. I wrote more details about the road to the conference in this article: VMware Explore ā Confessions of a First-Time Speaker.
VMUG Leader Lunch was one event from the conference that showed the great importance that VMware leadership is giving to the community. For one hour and a half, we had a panel of 3 key VMware executives responding to all our questions:
- Raghu Raghuram, CEO
- Sumit Dhawan, President
- Kit Colbert, CTO
I was happy to finally meet the other Romanian co-founder of from Runecast, Ionut Rada, Technical Partnerships Manager. It was time, after I met years ago Aylin Sali, Runecast CTO.
I met few of my colleague from Lenovo, awesome team! So nice to put a face next to a voice and so refreshing just to drink a coffee together!
Last, but not least, I want to mention the long chat I had with Vladimir Velikov, staff engineer at VMware. We finally met face to face and I have to say it was a blast!
The other me
I was attracted to the sea for as long as I can remember. 2022 was a good year in this regard too.
I expanded my sailing skills on a 7 days training cruise in Greece. Thanks to my friends from SetSail NauticSchool, I enjoyed a beautiful 47-foot sailing yacht Dufour 470, model 2022. Being a 2022 model seems nice, but we had to fix a lot of broken stuff during the passage. Which was good since we were in a training cruise š
We were an armada of around 20 sailing yachts, leaving from Marina Alimos, Athens, and then checking in to beautiful places, both in Saronic Gulf and in Cyclades Islands:
- Poros – always cool to return, beautiful town
- Hydra – the donkeys island, the coolest sunset ever
- Porto Cheli – huge protected gulf, perfect for a night at raft
- Kythnos – finally into Cyclades Islands, quiet place after a day-long passage
- Kea – lively marina, great restaurants
The second type of activity was scuba diving. In 2022 I earned a PADI Advanced Open Water Diver certification, allowing me to dive up to 30 meters. Thanks to my friends from Intro Dive Tolo, I really appreciate your support! I did 2 diving trips last year, both in Greece (you may recognize a pattern here), 12 dives, and I dove to my first shipwreck: the cargo ship Avantis III, 80 meters long, sank in 2004 after a direct hit to Dorousa Island, currently located at a depth of 17 to 48 meters.
Next…
I have no idea what 2023 will bring for me. After a surprising 2022, I think I can only expect the unexpected.
