I’m willing to bet many thought I had forgotten to post about vOdgeball, the annual dodgeball tournament that for many marks the start of VMworld. Who would have ever imagined Fred Nix’s desire to assemble ‘Mathletes’ for the purposes of displaying athletic prowess would ever have caught on? There’s a reason I’m in IT and let’s just say it’s not because of my ‘cat like’ reflexes.
From such a unique vision vOdgeball was born. The inaugural event, at VMworld 2010, featured a battle royale between Chad’s Army (some of which you may know as a small company often referred to as EMC) and the rag-tag group, the vSquirrels (part Cisco, part NetApp, all business). Who knew that in two short years the event would grow to become a the largest charity fundraising event of VMworld.
The 2012 tournament raised over $13,000 for the Wounded Warrior Project and crowned a new champion, Arista Networks!
Kudos to all of the teams who participated:
- Arista Networks
- Brocade
- Cisco
- The Cloud Bunnies
- EMC
- Juniper
- NetApp
- VCE
- VMware
- And 2 teams comprised of VMware vExperts
- VMware
- VCE
This year the event included over 60 Spectators and over 1,100 #v0dgeball Tweets. I want to thank Erica MacDonald of EMC for coordinating the event.
vOdgeball also became the event where a classic, college-style prank was unveiled. The ‘Reserved for Chad Sakac’ signs were everywhere! The posting of them lasted the entire conference and spread outside of the radius of the event! it was unreal. Trust me those who unleashed this prank are dear friends of Chad and I, and is well known & respected within the VMware community.
Again, thanks to all who supported, more photos are online (thanks to @poller), and I can’t wait to see next year’s event!
Oh, and if you’re wondering why it took me four weeks to author this post, well, I ended up with a boxer’s fracture during VMworld. Was it vOdgeball? Who knows. 😉
