This year, like last year, VMware is giving attendees to their VMworld conference the ability to help decide which of the proposed sessions they’d like to see presented at the conference.

If you have interest in which sessions get selected (and if  you’re planning on attending the conference, you should), I encourage you to go to the voting site and get your opinion heard.  Voting remains open through 18 May.  You’ll need to have a vmworld.com account.  If you don’t have one, registration is easy.

You’re allowed to vote for as many sessions as you’d like, although you can vote for each session only once. You can not vote against a session, you can simply choose not to vote for it.  If you change your mind about a vote, you can log back in (before voting closes) and de-select your vote.

You can get more information on the session voting process in the VMworld Session Voting FAQ.  You can cast your votes by going to the VMworld Call for Papers.  You can simply scroll through all your choices, or the site has a search function that lets you look of specific sessions by track, keyword, presenter, or session ID number.

All that said…

This year, I’m a presenter for three of the proposed sessions: one on my own, one as a co-presenter, and one as one of four panelists.  If you’re interested in what they are (or in voting for them), I’ve included some details below.

Session ID: 3263
Title: Building Enterprise IT Clouds for Fun and Profit
Track: Enterprise Hybrid Cloud
Topic: Building a Cloud Infrastructure as a Service
Technical Level: Business Solution
Abstract: Transition to a virtualized data center using cloud technologies allows for the transformation of IT from a cost center to a value-add partner to your company’s lines of business. Come to this session and see an overview of the vSphere and infrastructure technologies, and the process changes that make this transformation to IT-as-a-Service possible, using a real-world customer implementation as an example.

Session ID: 2771
Title: Using Analogies to Explain the Value of VMware Tools to the Non-Virtualization-Fluent
Track: Management and Operations
Topic: Cloud Operations, Strategies and Best Practices
Technical Level: Business Solution
Co-Presenter: Jase McCarty
Abstract: It can be fairly straight-forward to convince your organization of the value of the base virtualization tools like vSphere and View. Once you’ve virtualized, the value of other VMware tools like ThinApp, AppSpeed, Distributed Resource Scheduler, and Configuration Manager is immediately obvious to the VMware administrator, but not necessarily to others within the organization.
Come to this session and see how simple analogies can be a useful tool for helping you convince the non-technical folks in your organization that the whole of the VMware software suite can provide greater value than the mere sum of the parts. Multiple analogies and organizational scenarios will be explored.

Session ID: 3088
Title: Block vs. File – The Eternal Debate
Track: Technology and Architecture
Topic: Storage
Technical Level: Technical
Co-Panelists: Ben Dunning, Sheetal Kochavara, Chris Mancini
Abstract: One of the great things about VMware is that it offers so many connection options for storage for your virtual servers. Sometimes this freedom of choice can seem overwhelming when deciding which one to use. Each storage protocol has its own advantages –- which is the right one to use for a given VMware vSphere implementation?
Come to this session and hear a panel of storage and virtualization experts debate the merits of the different protocols applied to real-world customer use cases. Learn how to determine the “right tool for the job” for specific virtualized workloads.

The Important Part

Whether you vote for my sessions or not, it you have an interest in virtualization and/or VMware, I encourage you to go vote for the sessions that you think are most deserving.  Skimming through the list, I see a lot really good proposals that I’ll be voting for.  VMworld is a big-deal of a conference, and the topics discussed there will help to shape the conversations around virtualization during the coming year.