If you were asked what the largest VMUG UserCon event in the US was and the 2nd largest in the world would you have guessed Indianapolis, IN? Probably not. I was always curious as to why that was, you would expect much bigger cities like Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas and Boston to be the biggest but the fact is Indianapolis has consistently had the highest attendance of any VMUG event in the US and the 2nd highest in the world. Indy regularly draws around 900 attendees, the next biggest cities in the US are Chicago (800), Atlanta (700), Kansas City (700) and Charlotte (700). The largest VMUG in the world is in the Netherlands with around 950 attendees.
So why is Indy so well attended? After attending several past VMUGs in Indy and talking to attendees I found out that where Indy is located pulls from several states (IL, IN, KY, OH, MI) and well populated areas including Chicago, Cincinnati and Louisville. This centralized location draws people from all over and is what drives the attendance so high at Indy. I’ve always enjoyed going to the Indy VMUG and will be back again this year. Indy is a very laid back city and the people there are very friendly, it still maintains that Midwest small town feel despite having a population of close to a million people. The airport is easy to navigate and not overly crowded, I was surprised at how early all the restaurants and shops shut down in the airport, usually around 8pm.
So if you are attending the Indy VMUG on 7/20 stop by the HPE booth and say hi, we have a cool drone that we’ll be giving away, I’ll also be doing a session on VVols at 11:00am. I expect other bloggers and community people will be there as well from the agenda I can see that Chris Wahl, Sean Massey, Gina Rosenthal, Eric Shanks, Paul Woodward will be there and I suspect you will see a few more.
