Once again this year I commissioned a graphic designer to create a counterpart to the physical coin that the Top 50 vBlogs will receive courtesy of VMTurbo. The graphic can be used by any blogger that made the Top 50 and wants to display that accomplishment on their website. Last year I wasn’t that happy with the design, I leverage Fiverr which is a huge community of freelance designers and the one I picked last year wasn’t very creative. I was trying to replicate the look of the physical coin in a design that has a metallic look to it and the designer last year didn’t seem to be able to pull that off. This year I spent more time hunting down a better designer and the one I picked got the design spot on the first try.

So below are the finished virtual coins:

You can download the hi-res images here and re-size them to whatever works for your blog:

Top 10 Gold Coin

Top 25 Silver Coin

Top 50 Copper Coin

So the voting has ended, the results have been tabulated and here they are. There were 83 new blogs on the ballot this year, 12 new blogs made the Top 50 and and 7 new blogs made it into the Top 25. One blog fell out of the top 10 this year and the competition for the #1 spot was fierce. This year there was over 1600 votes compared to around 2200 last year. You can read more stats about this years voting here. Voters were asked to pick their top 12 favorite blogs and them rank them from 1 to 12. The votes are weighted so a #1 vote is worth 12 points, a #2 vote is worth 11 points all the way down to a #12 vote being worth 1 point. The total points for each blog were added up to determine the results.

If you missed the live results show be sure and watch the replay of the special Google Hangout results show that we recorded with John Troyer and Eric Wright from Turbonomic as we count up the Top 25 results 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 bloggers that made the Top 25. 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 any blogger that made the Top 50 will get a special 2″ commemorative coin courtesy of Turbonomic, I’ll have a form where you can enter your shipping details up in a few days, those of you that will be at the Indy VMUG or VMworld let me know and I will deliver it to you there. Bloggers who make the Top 10 will get a gold coin, 11-25 a silver coin and 26-50 a copper coin. I’ll also be coming up with a new graphic that you can display on your website if you made the Top 50.

Next year I’m looking to change this process dramatically and make the public voting be a part of an overall bigger method of determining the top bloggers, more on that later. I will also be starting a new vBlogger Spotlight series soon that is geared towards highlighting some of the lesser known bloggers outside of the top 25, if you are interested in being one of those bloggers let me know.

Special thanks to Turbonomic for sponsoring this year and making the giveaways possible. 

Here are the overall voting results…

And here are the Category voting results…

I was looking through the 2015 VMworld session recordings looking for a particular session on VVols and backups and discovered that I no longer had to log into my account as a VMworld attendee to view the sessions. VMware always limits the VMworld session recordings to paid attendees except for some select sessions that they release on YouTube shortly after the event. Typically at some point VMware will lift the restrictions so anyone can view the sessions right before the next year’s VMworld. Not sure when they did that this year but it looks like anyone can access last years sessions right now. So head on over to the VMworld 2015 session page and enjoy the hours and hours of great content that exists there.

If you were asked what the largest VMUG UserCon event in the US was and the 2nd largest in the world would you have guessed Indianapolis, IN? Probably not. I was always curious as to why that was, you would expect much bigger cities like Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas and Boston to be the biggest but the fact is Indianapolis has consistently had the highest attendance of any VMUG event in the US and the 2nd highest in the world. Indy regularly draws around 900 attendees, the next biggest cities in the US are Chicago (800), Atlanta (700), Kansas City (700) and Charlotte (700). The largest VMUG in the world is in the Netherlands with around 950 attendees.

So why is Indy so well attended? After attending several past VMUGs in Indy and talking to attendees I found out that where Indy is located pulls from several states (IL, IN, KY, OH, MI) and well populated areas including Chicago, Cincinnati and Louisville. This centralized location draws people from all over and is what drives the attendance so high at Indy. I’ve always enjoyed going to the Indy VMUG and will be back again this year. Indy is a very laid back city and the people there are very friendly, it still maintains that Midwest small town feel despite having a population of close to a million people. The airport is easy to navigate and not overly crowded, I was surprised at how early all the restaurants and shops shut down in the airport, usually around 8pm.

So if you are attending the Indy VMUG on 7/20 stop by the HPE booth and say hi, we have a cool drone that we’ll be giving away, I’ll also be doing a session on VVols at 11:00am. I expect other bloggers and community people will be there as well from the agenda I can see that Chris Wahl, Sean Massey, Gina Rosenthal, Eric Shanks, Paul Woodward will be there and I suspect you will see a few more.

Just noticed that VMware announced the band without any fanfare this year and it’s Fall Out Boy along with some indie electro band called Capital Cities.

Once again I’m disappointed in the band selection but I’ve gotten used to not expecting anything great as not getting more popular bands has seemed to be the trend the past few years. I did a post last year on this which listed all the bands across the years that have played at VMworld along with the cost to hire them along with a comparison to bands at other vendor conferences (EMC, Oracle, Cisco, etc.). Here’s the band breakdown at VMworld over the years along with the cost to hire each band:

• 2007 – Smash Mouth – $40K – $60K
• 2008 – DJ & Tainted Love (cover band) – probably not a heck of a lot
• 2009 – Foreigner – $40K – $50K
• 2010 – INXS – ? (prob under $100K)
• 2011 – Killers – $500K
• 2012 – Jon Bon Jovi & the Kings of Suburbia – $850K
• 2013 – Train and Imagine Dragons – Train – $200K-$300K, Imagine Dragons – $400K – $600K
• 2014 – The Black Keys – $975K
• 2015 – Neon Trees and Alabama Shakes – Neon Trees – $40K – $45K, Alabama Shakes – $90K – $125K
• 2016 – Fall Out Boy – $100K – $150K, Capital Cities – $40K – $60K

The cost of the bands this year is on par with last year and in case you were wondering here are some comparisons of who else they could of selected with a roughly $200K band budget.

• 38 Special – $35K – $45K
• Blues Traveler – $40K – $40K
• Cheap Trick – $45K – $70K
• Creed – $100K
• Five Finger Death Punch – $50K – $75K
• Jefferson Starship $15K – $25K
• Paramore – $125K – $175K
• Pharrell Williams – $125K – $175K
• Steve Miller Band– $100K – $200K
• Slash – $45K – $65K

Well at least I know the band early this year as I will probably leave Wed. evening and skip the party. If you’re around and not thrilled about the band choice there is always the UNParty you could go to instead, or since you’re in Vegas there is plenty of other things to do.