Public voting for VMworld 2017 sessions is now open through April 13th. The public voting is just one part of a whole scoring process that includes also content committee voting and sponsor voting. VMware reserves a small chunk of session slots (5%) that they call Customer Choice that can make it in via the public voting, the remainder of the session slots typically are filled up by VMware sessions, sponsor sessions and sessions that score favorably through the content committee voting.

I’d greatly appreciate your consideration in voting for my 2 submissions, one is a session on the new VVols array based replication feature in vSphere 6.5, my co-speaker is one of our VVol engineers who has been doing the development work on VVol replication for us so it will be a very technical session. The other is a why VVols type session with Pete Flecha from VMware that covers the top 10 reasons why you would want to implement VVols right now. Simply search on my last name (Siebert) or session IDs (2376 & 2422) to find them.

You can vote on as many sessions as you want, since the list is so large (1,499) you are better of searching or filtering it on topics that interest you. You can only cast one vote for a session though. To vote on sessions do the following just go to the VMworld Session Voting page and click the Vote Now button at the bottom of the page. If you don’t have an existing VMworld account you can create one for free, you’ll need to enter some basic required information (username, email, address info) and then an account will be created for you.

Once you are at the Content Catalog you will see the fill list of sessions, enter a search term (i.e. speaker name, VVols, VSAN, etc.) or select filters from the left side (track/sub-track/type). Note that VMware has changed the voting method this year, in prior years you simply clicked a star icon to vote for a session, this year you can actually grade the session on a scale from 1 star (poor) to 5 stars (excellent). So instead of just simply selecting all the sessions that you like, now they want you to grade each session (see below figure). The big difference here is by clicking the stars this year you’re not simply voting like a thumbs up for the session, your votes can now either positively or negatively influence the overall scoring for the session.

You can vote for as many sessions as you want, so head on over and rock the vote!