Congratulations and thank you to all our newly minted VMware vExperts. Email went out tonight informing around 300 hard-working bloggers, user group leaders, and virtualization evangelists of all types that they had received a VMware vExpert Award. VMware vExperts were chosen on the basis of the contributions they had made to the community of VMware and virutaliztion users in 2008.
We are not publishing a list of the awardees right now. There will be a public vExpert Directory where the award winners will be able to publish a professional profile.
This is an amazing group of people. The amount of intelligence, experience, and energy in the entire list of nominees was humbling. I'm grateful that they have such passion around this paradigm-changing technology. A big THANK YOU from everybody here at VMware to everyone who applied.
Choosing the final list was challenging, but we had a limited number of awards. There were highly qualified candidates who were either: (1) deeply experienced VMware experts, but without as much demonstrated or organized community contribution as others — we need to come up with an award for these guys! (2) great bloggers who just recently started — we hope they'll keep it up and join us next year; and (3) early adopters with valuable contributions, but before 2008 — and I hope they'll be able to join us next year as well.
I'm sure we forgot somebody, and I'm going to kick myself when we figure out who. I'm happy to chat with anybody about the process or what you can do to increase your chances next year. (jtroyer@vmware) The online and offline communities have just exploded this year, so there are plenty of opportunities to get involved.
I'm honored to be working with all the vExperts this year. My goal is to help them where I can, make them all more successful in their virtualization efforts, and with a little luck get them big promotions and raises. For those of us not on the vExpert list, I hope we'll be rewarded with deeper blog posts and white papers, more informed and interesting user groups, and amazing new tools.
Community contributions often happen outside of work, and not everybody can spend their nights and weekends telling people why virtualization is so cool. Thanks again for all the hard work and long hours you put in. It's going to be a great, great year.
–John Troyer
VMware Communities Outreach and
VMware vExpert Program Manager
Congrats to all 300 vExperts!
Thanks John for recognizing us with this award. I’m sure it was a lot of work (more than you bargained for I bet) and your effort is truly appreciated.
Yes, congrats to the vExperts!
And thanks John (and the community) for the award.
Dave
Thanks very much to John and the vExpert voting panel for the award. I am truly honored and thankful.
Though he is the program manager, I think John deserves some type of special award for his own contributions to this community!
I don’t envy the position that you guys were put in, knowing it had to be a difficult task. However, I can tell from your email and post, it was also a positive and rewarding experience for you guys to create and offer this award. It is a great idea, and I’m sure we’ll see an increase in evangelists throughout 2008 helping to spread the word.
Thank you John for helping to create and manage this wonderful program! You always go the extra mile for us and for VMware and you deserve an award too!
And, Congratulations to the vExperts! I am honored to be in that company this year!
-David Davis, VCP, vExpert
I don’t know. I *did* feel honored, but then I found out that even David Marshall is a vExpert. I want to see this “qualifications” list 🙂
Congratulations to everyone, I do feel like I am in privileged company.
For those who don’t know, David Marshall and I are good friends and co-workers. I was just giving him a hard time. David being a vExpert only lends more weight to the award. Congrats again, everyone.
Wow – thanks so much – I feel overwhelmed at being included in such lofty company…thanks for the recognition.
How many vExpert awards were granted?
John,
Thanks for the recognition and an even bigger thank you for all of your contributions to the community.
Congrats to the rest of you vExperts. I am truely honored to be in the same group as all of you.
Rod Gabriel
Congrats to all vExperts. I am truly honored and privileged to be in the same group as all of you.
Hi Matt, it looked like John said it was around 300 people total.
It is indeed a pleasure to be part of this community. I still remember when John was setting up the community here with planetplanet and haloscan.
Just to see how this community has evolved (including the quality of the blog here)– it surely will define and resonate in the echorooms as peripheral presence and adjacent perspicacity will strengthen VMware’s presence and re-enforce its “word-of-mouth” reputation which is what made VMware a darling of the masses.
Handing out vExpert awards is one way to give it back and it is truly appreciated. I am very glad to have met David (who I consider a close friend today) and many other honest and decent guys like Stephen Beaver, Jason Boche, Duncan Epping etc, who come forth as honest individuals.
Thanks all and good job, John! You deserve the credit as well!
Tarry
Excellent! – Thank you!
Its not hard to talk and talk and talk about something you really believe in and enjoy working with…VMWare is virtualization!
Congrats to all!!!
Eddy
any news about this 2010?