TL.DR : I’m moving internally in Veeam from Evangelist in the Technical Product Marketing to the EMEA Pre-Sales team as Cloud Architect.
Why would you give up a role like a Technical Evangelist???
This is the question I’ve got a couple of times already internally, and I’m sure it’s going to be the one I will receive for the next months. High visibility, attendance to almost any world conference, writing blog posts and white papers, interaction with journalists and analysts, and so on. Yes, this is the list of the things I’ve just quit doing, but it’s not because I’ve become tired of the things I was doing, it’s more about the new things I will be able to do.
In my new role I will focus my activities on the Cloud and Hosting business here at Veeam. It means working closely with Service Providers all over Europe (and beyond when needed), and help them to use our technologies more and more. I was already focusing on these topics lately in the Technical Marketing team, so for me this is a step further into my “personal journey to the cloud”: more field activities, more connections with the service providers, even more feedback to bring back to our R&D to make our solutions always better.
And don’t think the content creation or attendance to conferences will be completely removed: part of my time will still be dedicated to create content, just this time will be even more focused on the technical aspects of Veeam solutions. I already have some interesting topics in my pipeline, just like some topics I want to learn even more: RESTful API, Powershell, Automation tools, and refresh my knowledge on topics like VMware vCloud Director or NSX. There are lots of new things to learn, and this makes me feel really happy!
Advocacy is not just a job
I think one is an Evangelist regardless his title. I’ve just listened to Episode 113 of the Geek Whisperers Podcast, and one phrase fits perfectly here:
we don’t need to have a title of evangelist to make an impact, and in fact he gives the recommendation that most of us shouldn’t take that title. You can certainly leverage social media without the title, and you may make more of an impact in the unofficial conversation