What is the value of IT Community? This week on the Virtually Speaking Podcast John and I bring in Community leaders John Mark Troyer and Amy Lewis to discuss the difference between advocacy and influencer communities and the benefits of each. Enjoy!

Is IT Community really valuable? Is it just a huge ploy from marketing groups to advertise their products or is there real value for all involved? I certainly have my opinions on the topic, but this week I was really curious about what you (the collective IT Community) get from community. This prompted me to send a quick survey on the benefits of IT Community, and then invite some community leaders to discuss with us.

This week on the Virtually Speaking Podcast John and I bring in community leaders John Mark Troyer and Amy Lewis to discuss the difference between advocacy and influencer communities and the benefits of each.

John Mark Troyer is the founder of TechReckoning, an independent community of enterprise technology professionals. He spends his days working together with people in the IT Community to make IT better and to make IT marketing better. In past lives he was the social media and community guy at VMware, an entrepreneur, and a scientist. You can follow John on Twitter @jtroyer.

Amy Lewis (aside from being a self proclaimed lover of bacon) is an Old-School Open Community Evangelist, host of the @Geek_Whisperers podcast, creator of @PopUpTechTalks and Director of Influence Marketing @SolidFire. Follow Amy on Twitter @CommsNinja.

The Virtually Speaking Podcast

The Virtually Speaking Podcast is a weekly technical podcast dedicated to discussing VMware topics related to storage and availability. Each week Pete Flecha and John Nicholson bring in various subject matter experts from VMware and within the industry to discuss their respective areas of expertise. If you’re new to the Virtually Speaking Podcast check out all episodes on vSpeakingPodcast.com.