Hey vExperts please stop Unfollowing Hannah Drake

When Virtualization Pro‘s Hannah Drake published her blog post “VMware hereby dubs you … a vExpert!”, I was present at the VMware community lounge. Bloggers were running to their laptops and pointing at their screens. A few minutes later the first comments were placed and the “Unfollow” button at Tweedeck was hit repeatedly. The stock exchange went down and the VMworld event was cancelled. Ah, it wasn’t that bad, but she created some disturbance. After a good talk with VMware’s vExpert initiator John Troyer, she took her original article offline and placed a new post.

Will the VMware vExpert Award grow to rival the Microsoft MVP?

In a previous blog post with an admittedly light-hearted tone, I congratulated the recipients and asked for more information about the award and the process for receiving one. Reading the few available online resources on vExpert left some of my questions unanswered. (While I did reply in the comment section on the original post, we decided to remove the blog and post this entry instead, because the comment wasn’t visible enough.)

Several community members became upset, however, as the blog post was interpreted by some as a denigration of the vExpert Award or an indication that I didn’t think certain recipients deserved the award. I apologize for writing it in a way that left room for misinterpretation.