During VMworld a couple of announcements were made about the vExpert Awards which not many people seem to have blogged, except for Mike Laverick that is.
As many of you know 300 people received this award during VMworld Europe 2009. During VMworld 2009 in San Francisco there was a vExpert “Session” hosted by John Troyer. John invited Steve Herrod for a Q&A session where the vExperts, and especially Mike, challenged Steve Herrod. Now most of these questions were product related but a couple were related to the vExpert Award and this is where I think it got interesting. As of now Steve Herrod is the executive sponsor for the vExpert program. What this will lead to is still unclear but during the session there was talk about Lab access, beta invitations and possibly NFR licenses which should be an incentive to start contributing to the community in any form or way. I guess this all will get shaped in the upcoming months as the new award rounds will most likely be started in November/December. For the next round however the amount of vExperts will be reduced. John has not specified a specific number yet but it will be more exclusive that’s a certainty.