The Veeam Legend programme is due to have its second intake in the coming weeks/months, and I wanted to put together a small collection of resources for people to find out more about this amazing sub-community.
What is the Veeam Legends Programme?
The Veeam Legends programme is at its heart, a Veeam community, its a sub-group of the wider Veeam Community Hub & R&D forums’ users. It was created as part of the ongoing recognition that Veeam wanted to give to its most active Veeam experts within these spaces.
The Veeam Legends programme is one of three sub-communities within the ‘Veeam 100’ collective, with the other two being Veeam Vanguard and VeeaMVP. But whilst Veeam Vanguard focuses on external evangelism & activity, and VeeaMVP celebrates Veeam staff that contribute externally to the Veeam community, Veeam Legends is focused on Veeam platform-based activity.
Are there perks to becoming a Veeam Legend?
Of course there are! To date I’ve witnessed the following perks from the Veeam Legend programme:
- Sponsored (Free) training of VMCE/VMCA courses and exam attempts. Note: This isn’t unlimited and tends to be a once a year event.
- NFR licensees for all Veeam products.
- Veeam Legends SWAG
- Access to private betas of upcoming products & releases
- Prelaunch briefings for new products and events.
- Access to the Veeam product teams
- Third-party affiliate perks
- Speaking/Advocacy engagements
- Related skills training
- Annual Veeam100 Summit
- Free entry to VeeamON + VIP Area (oh, and snackboxes!)
Those are the Veeam sponsored perks, but there’s also the community created perks.
We have an optional Teams call every fortnight which sometimes has guest appearances from key Veeam staff. We’ve built a strong support network between each other to try and help each other when we need it, it’s like a globally distributed VIP support package as these people are all experts! We also create community focused projects too such as the Veeam Legend Pocketbook, a great opportunity to get your name on the contributors list! I also want to say that just because these perks are listed above, doesn’t guarantee Veeam will do these again, I’m not being held liable if times change and some things do/don’t happen!
Examples:
It wouldn’t be any good if I just told you about these things, how about some real examples?
Veeam Legend Pocketbook:
Training:
Last year Veeam Legends had the opportunity to attend the VMCE 2021, VMCA 2022 and gain other curated training both Veeam and unrelated such as technical sessions with the product strategy teams and even a social media training course straight from Veeam’s marketing department!
Speaking/Advocacy Engagements:
There’s never been a shortage of advocacy opportunities within the Veeam Legend programme, such as:
Community at Veeam: First Six Months - LinkedIn Live
Sysadmin Day: Past, Present and Future
Friday Tech Bites: Data Protection Best Practices - Data Encryption
(No Link) VeeamON Speaking opportunities, I did a session with Rick Vanover last year called “Hold My Beer While I Recover to the Cloud”
Contributions to technical whitepapers: https://www.veeam.com/physical_servers_backup_best_practices_configuration_wpp.pdf
Guest Author opportunities on the Veeam official blog
Veeam Community Recap Guest Appearances: (here, here, here)
Veeam Legend Responsibilities:
You best believe that all these perks come with responsibilities, so what are they?
They’re nothing too serious, be kind & helpful, provide feedback to Veeam from the opportunities they provide in a constructive way, and don’t violate any NDAs for content that is confidential! 
All sounds great, what do I do?
As cliché as it may sound, be yourself! Contribute content to the R&D forums and community hub, answer questions if you can, or at least try to be helpful, get involved in the overall Veeam community, and get noticed!
Further Reading:
Further questions? Or just interested, some of the below links might give you the answer you’re looking for 
That’s all from me, hopefully see you at the next intake!