If you woke up today and saw that VMworld had opened up the call for papers for the first time, you aren’t alone. Hopefully, you already knew about it, as the initial request started on March 19th, which, is a bit later than years past. Believe it or not, VMworld CFPs normally kicked off around mid-Feb. Yeah, I know. Crazy year so far. And yes, even crazier, the deadline to submit something is April 16th so there really is no time to dilly dally around. If you are interested in submitting, you better jump on it. Tick, tock…
But the timing of the CFP isn’t the only thing that changed this year. The process has changed as well.
As part of that process, VMware announced:
“VMworld has simplified the call for proposals process this year. Customers, partners, and community members will only have to submit a brief interest form describing the case study, products, or solutions they would like to present.”
The VMworld content team created the new interest form to “lighten the submission load” for VMware customers and partners.
What the heck does that mean? Good question. In the old days (yeah, circa 2018), in order to submit, you needed to create an abstract, an outline, and offer up key takeaways on your topic of choice. There was a whole lot to it and it was very time consuming. So this change is a good thing, right? Well, maybe.
Now, if you’d like to submit, you must login to VMworld.com with your My VMworld login account (the one you use to register each year). Once logged in, the form will ask you to provide the following basic information:
- First name
- Last name
- Title
- Company
- Industry
- Country
- What problem(s) did you or your customer face?
- On which solution(s) did you decide?
- How did you implement these solution(s)?
- What factors contributed to your or your customer’s success or failure?
Now, I know what you’re thinking. This sounds like a customer case study, right? I agree. But hopefully, beyond the “easy form,” potential speakers are allowed to go deeper, wider, and beyond just a case study sounding approach.
There’s also an option to submit for something called a {CODE} session – which states: “This provides attendees with the latest microservices, cloud-native applications, and agile development methodology. {CODE} sessions are 30 or 60 minutes in length.”
Most of the people I know who attend VMworld and register for breakout sessions are looking for deep dives and highly technical presentations. Yes, not everyone is a pro, there are newbies attending VMworld too. But even then, they are looking for the meat and potato type sessions to learn something new and interesting. Maybe VMware and vendor sponsors have a lock on the deeper dive, more technical presentations this year? Again, speculation on my part.
Either way, if you’re ready to go and give it a shot, login and then click here to get to the speaker interest form. Or you can also login and click here to submit for the VMTN Community Speaker Interest Form for {CODE} Sessions.
Once submitted, the VMworld content team will review all interest forms and, if there is an opportunity for inclusion in the program, they will contact you for additional information. All submitters will receive an email notification of their submission status on June 11th.
Good luck! Remember, VMworld 2019 kicks off August 25-29, 2019 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.
