Last year I was tapped to spearhead a new project here at Veeam: launch a global influencer program. This honestly was something I was a bit timid about as I have no experience operating a program like this. I’ve happily been nominated as a VMware vExpert and a Cisco Champion for a number of years. Additionally on my team, Doug Hazelman, Luca Dell’Oca and Clint Wyckoff have been nominated as current and prior vExperts and Mike Resseler as a Microsoft MVP. We feel we have a good background on how these types of programs should operate and now we are happy to publically announce the Veeam Vanguard Program.
The Veeam Vanguard Program is a hand-selected list of people of all backgrounds who Veeam feels embraces our brand best in their communities. Some Vanguards are bloggers, some are active on our Veeam Forums, some are active on Spiceworks sharing a lot of Veeam-specific information and the list goes on for all of the ways Vanguards have engaged.
The Veeam Vanguard Program has exclusive perks as well! For one, this group will be provided an opportunity to attend VeeamON with a special day full of content just for them. Sure there is incredible swag as well with access to Veeam in a new way.
One of our core values here at Veeam is to innovate and iterate, and I knew that this program would take some working through to get right. I first shared this program with Mike Preston (blogger at mwpreston.net) at the Toronto VMware User Group UserCon event earlier this year. I was candid to Mike, knowing that I don’t know how this will go yet he was all in. Mike had this to share about the Veeam Vanguard Program:
When Rick first mentioned the Vanguard program to me I immediately said yes and thought it was a great idea – to be honest I’d thought about it before this and wondered why Veeam hadn’t implemented a program already. Veeam has a loyal following and a big community surrounding them and I think this program will only further the community focus that they have as a company! I’m excited and humbled to be a part of it!
We’ve selected the nominees for the initial round, but will be adding more soon. The best way to keep track of the Veeam Vanguard Program is to follow @VeeamVanguard on Twitter. The program is administered by Veeam Product Strategy, some of whom you may know:
Left to right, Veeam Product Strategy is:
Doug Hazelman VP Product Strategy
Clint Wyckoff, Luca Dell’Oca, Mike Resseler, Rick Vanover Product Strategy Evangelists
Kirsten Stoner, Dmitry Kniazev Product Strategy Coordinators
If you have any questions on the program feel free to reach out on Twitter or otherwise to VMDoug or one of the evangelists. This is our biggest investment in the community to date and we’re excited for the program. Congratulations to all of the Vanguards for 2015 and stay tuned for the nomination process for the next round.
