“I was pleased to serve with Ben on the VMUG Board and look forward to his leadership as VMUG President. Ben is well positioned to assume the role as he has been on the board since its inception in 2010, and has held multiple roles all of which have contributed greatly to VMUG’s success in growing from 30k to over 100k+ members. I look forward to seeing VMUG thrive under Ben’s leadership.” – Mariano Maluf, past-president of VMUG
VMUG Members,
As many of you know I have accepted the position of President of the VMUG Board of Directors for 2017. As a longtime leader of the Kansas City User Group for nearly 10 years, and member of the Board of Directors since we first met to form a steering committee 7 years ago, I am greatly honored.
It has been an honor to work side-by-side with our first and past-previous president, Mariano Maluf. I am excited to be second President of the Board, following in the footsteps of Mariano, whose leadership was instrumental in VMUG’s incredible growth.
A couple of things about me: in my day job I am a cloud strategist for a large financial services company in Kansas City. I love punk rock, KU basketball, chess, collecting video games, and old computers. I’ve been married for 15 years to my wife Stephanie, and we have a 12-year daughter named Stella and a 6-year-old son named Eli.
The Kansas City VMUG team would most likely talk about my leadership style as “we do all the work, and he takes all the credit”! I like to think that I remove the hurdles behind the scenes so that they can focus on creating and innovating. Before UserCons were around, one of the leaders in the Kansas City Community came to me and said “let’s put on an all-day event”. We put a plan together and developed the event into an early road map for UserCons across the community. Another leader said “Let’s get Steve Wozniak to do our keynote”, which we all thought was impossible, but pulled it off anyway.
I plan to bring that same creative thinking to the VMUG Board- and with your help AND participation, we can share successful strategies that will benefit all VMUG members. Now that you know my story, I look forward to hearing yours!
In less than a decade, we’ve seen this community grow from a handful of local groups to a global organization of over 100,000 members. We are the best place to go for networking and learning about VMware and the surrounding technologies, and all of that is a testament to our strength as a community. I still think we’ve only scratched the surface of what we can become.
I’m looking forward to getting to know each of you in 2017. I’m excited about what we can do together, and don’t be afraid to share your ideas. If it works for your local group, there are probably other groups that could benefit. Let’s keep the conversation going.
Ben Clayton
President, VMUG
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