2014 top VMware & virtualization blog voting results

So the voting has ended, the results have been tabulated and here they are. There were almost 80 new blogs on the ballot this year and 5 new blogs to make the top 25. This year there was over 1400 votes compared to around 1300 last year. You can read more stats about this years voting here. Voters were asked to pick their top 10 favorite blogs and them rank them from 1 to 10. The votes are weighted so a #1 vote is worth 10 points, a #2 vote is worth 9 points all the way down to a #10 vote being worth 1 point. The total points for each blog were added up to determine the results. It’s a pretty time consuming process for me, some of it is automated but I still have to add up votes and drop them into a spreadsheet to determine the winners. This year was particularly taxing as I had to manually weed out some 500+ votes from a suspicious source.

If you missed it live be sure and watch the replay of the special Google Hangout awards episode that we recorded with David Davis, Rick Vanover and  John Troyer as we count up the top 25 winners with lots of color commentary. The vLaunchpad and Planet vSphere-land will be updated soon to reflect the new voting results. Thank you everyone who voted and congratulations to the winners. With so many bloggers out there its a tough scene but I seriously encourage you all to keep at it, the longer you stick with it, the more people notice and will reward you with their vote. You guys are all winners, I know how hard it can be to find the time to blog but do know that your efforts are appreciated and your unselfish dedication makes a difference to a great many of people.

This year we have prize giveaways courtesy of Veeam, I picked 5 blogs randomly from the new top 50, the winners are listed below. I was going to choose 5 random voters as well for giveaways but thought I’d do something different instead. Each of the 5 blogs listed below who won a giveaway has the opportunity to run a contest or promotion on their website to pick a winner from their pool of readers, they can do this anyway they want. Whoever they pick will win the same exact prize that the blogger has won, so stay tune to their websites for more details on how you can win.

• Sony MDR-X10 headphones – The IT Hollow (Eric Shanks)
• Jockery Giant Rechargable Battery – Yellow Bricks (Duncan Epping)
• Google Chromecast – vNinja (Christian Mohn)
• Pebble Smart Watch – Wahl Network (Chris Wahl)
• Asus Nexus 7 Tablet – mwpreston dot net (Mike Preston)

Special thanks to Veeam for sponsoring this year and making the giveaways possible. Veeam is about to get its 100,000th customer and is launching an interactive contest for a chance to win a trip around the world and other prizes. To participate, you need to register and predict the location of Veeam’s 100,000th customer on the interactive map.

Here are the overall voting results…

And here are the top blog category winners…