In an attempt to get better sessions picked out at VMworld, the part of the selection process is now done via public voting.

http://vmworld.com/community/conferences/2010/cfpvote/

This has been an interesting process watching Twitter and a variety of blogs discuss various sessions and which ones are good and which ones folks want to go see. As one would expect the immediate result is that there is a lot of sales pitching going on.

"Vote for my session". "Vote for me". "My company's session needs some love to get to VMworld".

Overall this has been fairly harmless in my mind. The immediate gut feel is the sessions are going to be popularity contests. Those folks that are the most popular are going to get sessions. That must be bad. That can't be right.. good sessions aren't only folks that are popular. True to an extent. Once one starts thinking about popularity and why individuals are popular, my reasoning says this is actually a good thing. The question to be asked is "Why are those folks popular?" Any of a multitude of reasons means that session is likely going to be a good one.

  • The individual is a good speaker and is a lot of fun
  • The individual has good things to say
  • The individual knows many people

At the end of the day isn't the goal to have a good session whatever the reason this presenter is popular?