People make a lot of jokes about “herding cats,” and when I decided to video a group of our vWire developers for them to talk about their favorite vWire features, I worried it would be hard to get what are often considered the most introverted demographic in the world in front of a camera.

Not so with these guys, however. They were eager and happy to talk about the product they had spent the last several months pouring their hearts and souls into. So far, I’ve recorded three, and the first is live here: http://community.vwire.com/message/1671#1671. In this video, lead vWire developer Andrew Wagner talks about his experience with Tripwire, and how he leveraged what he knew about monitoring infrastructure from a compliance and security perspective, and how he applied this knowledge to managing virtual infrastructure in vWire. He gives a brief introduction and a short demo of what vWire monitors (which, by the way, is extraordinarily comprehensive compared to what and how virtual infrastructure is typically monitored).

Anyway, check it out, and drop Andrew a line in the community about his fantastic performance in this short (less than ten minutes) video.

When we launched OpsCheck a few weeks ago, we decided to include a short registration form that had to be filled out in order to complete the download. The form didn’t ask for much, but we did want to capture some information so we could (a) learn more about the people interested in OpsCheck, and (b) deliver product-related updates to users of OpsCheck. However, only about half the number of people who clicked to download OpsCheck actually filled out the form — meaning we lost 50% of the people who expressed an interest.

We knew when we started this project that people don’t like forms (heck, I don’t like to fill out forms either, and I’m in marketing!), but it turns out… people who might use OpsCheck REALLY REALLY don’t like forms — so much so that they would forgo the download of a useful free tool to avoid completing a form.

And you know what? That’s fair. Although it would be a marketer’s dream to know who’s downloading our tools, it’s far more important to simply get our tools out there, which is why we will be taking down the form and actually putting our free tools on free download sites as well. Honestly, if I could drop OpsCheck and ConfigCheck CDs from a plane I would do it.

There’s a balance between driving awareness and capture names/market data. And honestly, at this point for vWire - a startup within Tripwire — we need all the awareness we can get. And we won’t get much from behind a registration form.

I’m finally back from a whirlwind week at VMworld! What an incredible adventure - full of fun, new friends, also eye-opening bits of feedback in terms of what we’re doing with OpsCheck and the vWire project. Regarding OpsCheck, (besides the typical “Cool, I’ll check it out”) there were two comments at the booth that really stood out:

1. “I don’t have any problems with VMotion so why should I use OpsCheck?”
2. “I tried OpsCheck and was shocked to find I had a couple of things misconfigured.”

Both comments speak to the same thing: overconfidence! But, couple statement #1 with statement #2, and the need for something like OpsCheck really stands out, especially since VMotion is so critical to virtual environments.

Therefore, I challenge those who are confident about their VMotion configurations to test out OpsCheck anyway. OpsCheck takes just a short while to run. As one person joked at our booth… “he likes to move it move it… he likes to move it move it.” And if you like to move it, better make sure you actually can. : )

I’m writing this on the actual show floor… there has been a flurry of activity the past couple of days, and we’ve had a great time connecting with other virtualization bloggers & enthusiasts. Last night we had a great dinner with Mike Laverick, Jason Boche, Alan Renouf, Wil van Antwerpen, Gabrie van Zanten, Brenda (@B_renda) among others. A bizarre logistical issue with the restaurant didn’t slow us down, as the pictures will attest… (note Mike modeling our new shirt — “he’s a model if you know what I mean and he does his little turn on the catwalk…”)

1. Twitter lets you be a real person. In fact, that’s all Twitter lets you do. Anything else and you won’t get interested followers. It forces a marketing person to come out from behind the website and the words and get real with people. It’s been good for me.

2. The more followers you have, the bigger your billboard. This doesn’t mean anyone reads your billboard. But they might.

3. You can learn a lot about your target customers by following them. I recommend using Tweetdeck to segment these people apart from everyone else. Because (see #1) Twitter is about actual people, you can learn who these actual people are. Actually. No amount of aggregated market data can give you that.

4. Connections on Twitter are meaningful, meaning that friendships can actually form, connections can actually be made, and Twitter can easily turn into a forum for meeting people in real life. It only takes a few DMs or @’s to feel connected.

5. It’s all about feeling connected. In real time. Twitter isn’t just “social media” — it’s real life, in a new dimension.

Some free t-shirts are cool, and some are for polishing your car. I’ve been working with a design firm on a t-shirt that falls into the former category, so that when we pass out t-shirts at VMworld Cannes, it’ll be swag that you actually want to keep. The t-shirts will be black, they’ll have the logo for our new community that we’re building, they’ll relate to virtualization, and they’ll have some words that are so frackin’ clever people won’t be able to help themselves and they’ll have to wear them. At least, that’s the goal.

We came close to “All your VM are belong to us,” which started this huge debate as to whether this reference was too “done.” I personally think it’s timeless, and was about to make this a done deal until Dwayne Melancon gave me his idea. I won’t tell you what it was, just that it was hilarious, because Dwayne’s sense of humor tops all. To find out for yourself what t-shirt we are going with, you can get one by visiting our community (once it’s live) (be patient) (it’s coming very soon) or by visiting us at the Tripwire booth in Cannes.

AND… I’m still on the lookout for ideas! If you have any ideas for a fantastic and hilarious virtualization-themed t-shirt, drop me a line. Otherwise, uh, all your t-shirt are belong to me. And I’m not all that clever.

Most of my background is in product marketing — emphasis on the word PRODUCT. I never had much in common with, or much interest in, the type of marketing that’s all about the glitz & scheduling. But my friends, now that I am in the throws of launching a product ( I guess the cat is out of the bag to a certain extent that Tripwire is up to something in virtualization), my life has become 100% about the Calendar (note the capital “C”). Everything I work on these days is an deadline contingent upon a deadline contingent upon another deadline and all leading to various connected events. Needless to say I’m having to think very creatively about pace, buzz, and activities in an entirely new way.

I figure all this stuff is good for me, but traditional product marketing lets me geek out on the technology, and I miss that. All those little things I love like creating a demo database, finding what’s cool and what’s not cool about the product… the more I get swept up in design decisions and media planning, the less I have to spend some time lovin’ the actual product I am marketing.

The good thing about a Calendar like mine is that it does show progress in a pretty concrete way. I’m looking forward to the day not too far from now when everything has already arrived. Then I can sit and fiddle with the technology. Like how you can’t really play with a baby until after its born.

We all know that in an IT organization, the “security person” has very different concerns than the “VMware person.” The “security person” cares about, well, security. New threats emerge every day,  this person’s job could be at risk if a threat gets through. It’s a scary life, if you ask me!

The VMware person has less to worry about in some senses, and more to worry about in others. In the VMware professional’s life, there’s tons to manage, much that could be optimized, and it’s a challenge to continuously provide excellent service availability in a constantly changing datacenter.

…At least, these are the assumptions I have been making. I am beginning to think there is a lot more overlap between security and VMware professionals than traditionally assumed, or maybe this overlap is a growing trend. For one, I think VMware professionals DO care about being secure—they just don’t live and breathe this worry every day. And I think IT security managers do understand that VMware can be secure—they just don’t know how VMware works.

So how well are these two worlds communicating with each other? Below are two responses from the ConfigCheck survey I conduced just before the holidays, and I think the results indicate two things:

• VMware professionals care about security even when they don’t have to report about it to a security manager.
• There is not a lot of dialogue between VMware professionals and security managers—so it’s a damn good thing VMware professionals care about security!
  

So… am I right? If you are reading this and manage VMware, are my assumptions correct? How much do you care about security?

2009 is going to be an exciting year for Tripwire. Until now, much of what we have been working on has been behind-the-scenes, but 2009 will be the year of kicking exciting new virtualization projects into high gear. I won’t say too much, except that it’s going to be a wild ride and I’m not expecting to get much sleep. Just yesterday I bought a giant 2009 calendar and started scribbling all over it. It seems every day we’ve got something new going on. Stay tuned… The adventure’s just getting started…

Last week I sent out a 15-question survey to 750 of our most esteemed ConfigCheck customers. Common marketing sense told me that I should offer an incentive for completing the survey (the most usual incentive is to entered all respondents into a drawing for a hot-toy-of-the-week like an Apple TV). This time, I decided to not offer an incentive-because I wanted the responses to be from people who already are enthusiastic enough about ConfigCheck that they would complete the survey of their own volition. Was this hubris? So far I have received far fewer responses than I would have expected, even without a giveaway. Is it the holidays? The economy? The cold snap? I would like to think that even without a giveaway, there are enough people helpful by nature who want to help drive future product direction. Each day however I do receive more responses. Stay tuned… we’ll have those results yet.