It's always a good day when I can combine great food with great geekery.  Kansas City kicked off its initial user group meeting in style, serving up some excellent BBQ courtesy of the fine folks at Jack Stack BBQ.  I've dined occasionally at the Overland Park location, but this is my first time at the Freight House.  Everyone says location, location, location, is all that matters, but in this case, it doesn't.  Both locations serve up some mighty fine BBQ.  I steered clear of the ribs (I know, I'm crying) this time since I was presenting, but the turkey and brisket were most excellent.  Surely you can sense my passion for food...which brings me to the reason I was there, one of my other passions, which is all things F5.  I love our gear.  Absolutely love it.  I've been an apologist for this stuff long before I was paid to be.  Since this was the first meeting in KC, the material all came from F5, with local sales engineer Matt digging into some version 10 goodness and following with a presentation on the value of our WebAccelerator product.  I followed with an account of DevCentral's own soup-to-nuts project experience with WebAccelerator, which we documented in the Real IT webisode series.  Afterwards, I took the attendees through a tour of DevCentral.  I think everyone is aware of the forums, but did you know you can upload your masterpiece iRules and iControl applications to the CodeShare?  Did you know you can update the Wiki pages with examples, corrections, etc..or add new pages as appropriate?  Did you know you can write your own tech tips and share with the community?

Getting the chance to meet with customers and discuss the challenges they have and the many ways they are solved with our gear is cool.  Hopefully, the users in KC will see the value in getting together to mindshare and will carry the torch forward.  To their benefit, and the benefit of others.  Isn't that what community is all about? 

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