One of the challenges any leader has is how to motivate and encourage people to contribute their time and energy to a cause. This can be done a variety of ways and a company that wants to foster a community needs someone that can use all of them. Often a community forum is setup early on to help create a hangout location for their customers to share successes. These forums will start out strong and then peter out after a short period of time. The initial contributors don't feel thanked for their work, get discouraged and leave. People stop coming to the forums since their questions don't get answered and its a vicious cycle. VMware's community has managed to avoid this downward trend and is the strongest I've ever seen.

John Troyer is one of the great leaders at VMware who has helped foster the vExpert community and kept it alive and well. He encourages, thanks and helps supply these Experts with the recognition that a strong community needs. A ground breaker who connects with the community through podcasts, Twitter, forums and emails showing that our work is not ignored. He is out there responding to questions, posting challenges to start a new meme on Twitter and podcasting about the topics on people's minds constantly. He helps show that our efforts are one of the things that makes VMware stronger day by day. He brings to light that VMware appreciates our work and ultimately appreciates us.

Thanks John for the tons of work you do day to day helping connect with the VMware evangelists and die-hards. Thanks for all the work you've done to make the vExpert program reward those that spend their free time making VMware better for everyone.

Thanks.