Zero Trust or Bust but Community Trust is a Must!
The ransomware avalanche that we have experienced over the last few years has turned most IT people, including Data Protection professionals, into paranoid zero trust fanatics. Everything is viewed through the lens of “beware”.
To some this can become overwhelming, after all we humans like to feel safe and comfortable and that requires a trustful environment. So where can we find that comforting trust zone? The community, that is where!
I had the great pleasure of participating in my 4th V100 Summit this November in Prague Czech republic. Veeam is a special company that does something remarkable for its community heroes each year. They bring them together from around the world to share product updates, and gather feedback. Perhaps most importantly they help the community members bond together.
I could spend time going over the fantastic sessions and the great content that I was present for at the Summit but I wanted to focus on something which I feel is equally important, it is what I call the Trust Vector.
As I pointed out above we live in a world of complete zero trust and unfortunately those optimistic folks who still believe that people are basically good are in for a rude awakening. In order to survive we must be skeptical, somewhat cynical and always on guard.
These tough realities can be psychologically difficult to bear. We humans are not computers - I can’t just write a geoff_mood_today.yaml file with stay "motivated and positive" annotations and expect it to work. We need support and help, even if this comes in the form of words and a pat on the back. That support comes from our communities.
But what is the business value of Communities?
Emotional support is great but you can hardly leverage it in an “convince the boss to send me to …” email. There is always that age old question, what does the business get from your participation in the community?
Enter the Trust Vector! What is the Trust Vector? The Trust Vector is that gut feeling, that deep down sense that I believe in something or someone. Most companies selling software have become experts in slick marketing that can make your head spin. So a natural immunity to this marketing develops and convincing people that your product is good can rely on whether or not you can turn their gut instinct in your favor.
IT Communities are the generators of that instinct, the trust instinct. When members of the V100 community evangelize the Veeam products that they love, it is not some scripted and rehearsed marketing campaign, The Veeam Vanguards for example are not held to disciplined messaging templates to which they adhere as good soldiers on a parade ground.
Instead each community member voices their opinion in her or his style, native language, dialect and most importantly with their own genuine voice. That same trust vector emerges when members of the Veeam community discus their own work solutions. We give each other the time of day.
The Importance of In Person
Most of us should remember the covid era virtual world. Everyone we met felt flat and lifeless in the two dimensions and as one of my colleagues put it “the zest of life seems to have disappeared and we all live in TV screens now”. When we finally got through the pandemic I was shocked about just how different meeting real people was compared to virtual interactions despite having gone a whole lifetime before that precisely in the real world. I don’t know why this came as such a surprise but I assume it was reinforced by finally meeting many of my fellow Veeam 100 community members. People are simply different in person - you get the full version and not some square boxed smiling face. I suspect that very soon we will all grow tired of AI generated assistants and teachers and long for the real eccentric human complete with all of their idiosyncrasies.
Adventure
The V100 Summit though is so much more than just your everyday meetup. Veeam understands that to make this important it has to be something special. Sure you could have a Summit in Vegas like everyone else, but would anyone remember it? Probably it would simply melt into every other “Vegas” like experience and most likely a few years down the road you would be hard pressed to remember which company's event you had actually attended. Not so with Veeam. Veeam will forever stick out in my memory with the wonderful winding streets of Prague's old town, with the view from the Castle hill's heights, with Museum island and Unter Den Linden in Berlin. Veeam makes these events special and they take place in very special places.
So if ever you have some big boss question what dollar value does this community stuff bring in? The answer is, you can't buy trust so the community is priceless!
Photos from the trip:
