Thursday, February 25, 2016

VMware NSX Fundamentals LiveLessons - Behind the Scenes

I am beyond proud to say a project that started in August of 2015 has finally hit the streets! We started down this journey with a plan to make some videos to help customers understand, implement and be successful with NSX and I feel we delivered on that vision.

 
For those who have never been involved in a project like this, it’s not a quick flash, bang, boom and you are done. We all spent many hours discussing, creating, critiquing and finally recording over 14 hours of content. This was the first such project for two of the contributors, Anthony Burke and Andreas la Quiante. I think they were surprised by the level of effort that goes on behind the scenes as the Pearson/VMware Press crew make it all look so easy and polished when it is complete. I've known them both for many years and had no doubts they would deliver as they are consummate professionals.

First and foremost, my wife and kids deserve credit for their sacrifice of time both at home and when I was away recording. They put up with my crazy ideas and support me all the time. Thank you all!

Denise, Chris and Pete were instrumental in all of the phases and I can’t thank them enough.  Denise puts up with all of our collective excuses, especially mine and has been our champion since day 1. Chris is the one who has to deal with our typos, messy slides, formatting questions and last minute reviews of content. Pete is the one who has to suffer with listening to us talk and does all of the video recording work. He’s super patient, provides feedback on how to suck less and even has liquid encouragement for us.  Without these and the countless others on the team, this would have never happened. I can’t thank them all enough for putting up with us and believing we could deliver in such an aggressive time frame.

Finally, last but not least Nikhil, Dom, our immediate managers and the entire product team who answered questions and helped with ideas and content – thank you!
While much of the process is a bit boring, I thought I’d share some pictures I took while we were recording in San Francisco the week after Thanksgiving.

Sunrise over San Francisco and a view into the Starlight Lounge where the NSBU VMworld After Party was.
Anthony and Andreas were all smiles the first morning
Andreas getting straight to work
Anthony is all smiles for his shoot
Paperwork for the next big thing
Time to whiteboard
This is what happens when you ride an elevator with Anthony – you’ve been warned!

This is near and dear to my heart – not to mention Dave Thomas of Wendy’s fast food fame is from Ohio and Wendy’s corporate HQ is in Columbus!
Finally, this is what I bought on the way back to the hotel the last night. I was sick for 3 weeks with whatever bug I caught out there.

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