vExpert 2013 awardees announced

We’re pleased to announce the list of vExperts for 2013. Each of these vExperts have demonstrated significant contributions to the community and a willingness to share their expertise with others. We are blown away by the passion and knowledge in this group, a group that is responsible for much of the virtualization evangelism that is taking place in the world — both publicly in books, blogs, online forums, and VMUGs; and privately inside customers and VMware partners. Congratulations to you all!

We have named 581 vExperts, which is the largest group yet in the 5-year history of the program. For many, this is the first year they’ve been a vExpert, yet they’ve been working with virtualization and VMware products for years. We’ve also seen a large group come in from emerging markets and non-English-speaking regions of the world.

I want to personally thank everyone who applied and point out that a “vExpert” is not a technical certification or even a general measure of VMware expertise. The judges selected people who were particularly engaged with their community and who had developed a substantial personal platform of influence in those communities. There were a lot of very smart, very accomplished people, even VCDXs, that weren’t named as vExpert this year. We’ll be reaching out to you to discuss the program and ways to successfully increase your community involvement.

If you feel like you were not selected in error, that’s entirely possible. The judges may have overlooked or misinterpreted what you wrote in your application. In addition, we used the sophisticated Big Data Platform called Microsoft Excel for much of our analysis, and there was some cutting and pasting, so we could have introduced discrepancies. Email us at [email protected] and we can discuss your situation.

If you were selected as a vExpert 2013, we’ll be conducting the on-boarding throughout this week, so hold tight and expect future communication from us soon. You must successfully be enrolled in our private vExpert community to be listed in the vExpert directory and to be alerted to opportunities like the beta programs and complimentary licenses that we offer to vExperts.

Congratulations to all the vExperts, new and returning. We’re looking forward to working with you this year.

John Troyer, Corey Romero,
and the VMware Social Media & Community Team