This year it seemed even tougher than ever to get a session approved, I know of many good sessions/speakers that were shot down. VMware has taken over more and more session slots and when you take into account the sessions that they owe sponsors as part of their sponsorships, that leaves not much for everyone else. There are a lot of good bloggers and vExperts that have submitted great session proposals that are now finding it almost impossible to get approved. Part of the problem stems from the fact that VMware has really grown as a company and their product portfolio is getting larger and larger. As a result they have a lot more session areas that they probably need to cover which squeezes out everyone else. Gone are the days of just ESX & vCenter Server being the featured session topics, now we have dozens of other products that they need to cover at VMworld.
It seems like VMworld has gotten too big for it’s britches and steadily completed the transformation into VMwareworld. It’s unfortunate that they do not try and expand it out by adding additional rooms and capacity as they are just shutting out their loyal partners and all the great bloggers, customers and vExperts out there. If you’ve been to VMworld for many years you’ve probably noticed the change yourself. Many people will start to get discouraged and no longer submit session proposals which is unfortunate. VMware really needs to step up and support a non-VMware led conference that allows all the great content & speakers outside of VMware to have a voice like a VMware Technical Exchange.
Was going through the Schedule Builder today and was curious as to the number of sessions for different categories:
Total sessions: 455 (This includes all the different session types)
Sessions by Type:
- Breakout Session – 293
- CEO Roundtable – 1
- Certification Exam – 1
- Group Discussion – 56
- Hands-on Lab – 36
- Meet the Experts – 16
- Panel Session – 35
- Spotlight Session – 17
Sessions by Days:
- Monday – 141
- Tuesday – 146
- Wednesday – 181
- Thursday – 55
Sessions by Technical Level:
- Business Solution – 108
- Technical – 165
- Advanced Technical – 58
I also searched on company keywords for speakers and here were the results:
- VMware – 306 (includes sessions that may be shared with other companies)
- Cisco – 6
- EMC – 6
- Dell – 5
- NetApp – 4
- HP – 4
- IBM – 3
- Hitachi – 1
As you can see VMware dominates and all the other large companies are getting squeezed out, but hey it’s their show and I guess they can do what they want.
