First, I am humbled and honored to have been a vExpert in 2009. As the year went on, and I got to know more of my fellow vExperts, I was in awe of the people that I was sharing this title with. In fact, it inspired me to work even harder and to put more effort into be an active member of the virtualization community.

That being said, I am amazed to once again receive the vExpert award for 2010. I look forward to learning from my fellow vExperts, as they are a truly talented group of people. I have yet to meet a vExpert that was not both highly talented and eager to assist. In fact, that is why they are vExperts.

Some of you may be asking, what is a vExpert? VMware describes it like this:

The VMware vExpert Award is given to individuals who have significantly contributed to the community of VMware users over the past year.

The criteria for vExpert selection are value to the community, technical merit, effectiveness, professionalism, reach and effort. The group is full of authors, bloggers, technology leaders and a wide range of highly skilled individuals. Again, I am humbled to have been grouped with these people.

Being a vExpert led me to become more involved in sharing my opinions and contributing to discussions via twitter. I also launched this blog site and began writing for Tech Target. In these pursuits I received a lot of input and advice from fellow vExperts like Steve Kaplan, David Davis and Scott Lowe. Those names stand out, but so many others have contributed to helping me grow. John Troyer, the driving force within VMware that launched the vExperts and a number of other programs, worked very hard to add value to this program last year. John is promising even more from the coming year and I cannot wait to see what that will look like.

To all of my fellow 2009 vExperts, thank you so much for your encouragement and assistance, it was an honor to share that title with you. To my fellow 2010 vExperts, congratulations! I am honored to be in your company and I look forward to getting to know you better as the year goes on.