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Thoughts on the V|Spring V|100
IÂ just got an email from Dennis Wood at V|Spring notifying me that I have been nominated as a candidate for this years v|Spring V|100. Thanks to those who nominated me and congratulations to my fellow nominees. The list reads like a who’s who of Utah business. It looks like there are about 500 to 550 nominees.
The way this works now is that the nominees go through the list and pick 10 peers in order of who you would choose (first to last) to go on to the final round. It took me 20 minutes just to scroll though the list. This list contains what are probably the 500 busiest people in the state of Utah. So I’m wondering how many of the nominees will actually take the time to vote. I’ll do it and hope the other nominees will as well.
A quick glance at the list reveals some interesting things:
- It looks like there about 14 people from Omniture on the list
- About 30 people are missing titles
- One of my mentors, Chuck Coonradt made the list
- Anthony Soohoo, who made it last year is on the list again this year. My understanding is that Anthony has no real ties to Utah (other than friendships) but he keeps making it on the list. Maybe I’m missing something here.
- I counted at least 66 people with “*” by their names which means v|Spring doesn’t have contact info for that nominee.
- Recently fired Dell CEO, Kevin Rollins made the list.
- Entire executive teams across numerous companies made it on the list (Nextpage, Podango, Omniture, Hirevue @Task, Move Networks, Control4, MWI and on and on)
- I’m willing to bet that way less than 5% of the people on this list are woman.
- David McInnis who recently sold PRWeb out of Washington state then started Chispa Labs in Springville made the list
Overall its a good list. It should be interesting to see who comes out on top. Let the voting begin!
For my part, I nominated everyone I could think of who I thought could possibly fit the criteria in any way, shape, or form, whether or not I thought they should really be in the top 100. My intent was to make people aware of it by having them be nominated to the list, which might light a fire under some of them to do something to actually make the 100, rather than just the list of nominees.
By the way, I can’t help feeling that those whose last names start with letters after “g” are at a distinct disadvantage based on the format of the voting form. By the time I got to the g’s I had already checked off 10 people, so then I had to go through and see if there were other people I wanted to vote for more than those I had already selected, deselect the name of someone above, select the name of the person below, etc., but of course looking through 500 names is tiresome and I already felt like I had selected people who deserved it, so I eventually gave up and just submitted the thing without examining the entire list.
Left by Joshua Steimle on 02/20/2007Congrats!
Left by Connor on 02/20/2007Congrats guys. My understanding is that it’s an “in no particlar order” kind of list.
Left by Russell Page on 02/20/2007@Russ:
It’s alphabetical
Left by Chris Knudsen on 02/20/2007Chris - Thank you for blogging about the v|100. I thought I would respond to some of you bullets for clarification.
We formed an audit committee with Ernst & Young and some UofU professors. They’re currently working on measures to throttle the number of co-employees who work in the same company contemporaneously that make the actual 100. As mentioned on the survey tool, votes from co-employees only count as 1/2 a vote.
Missing titles and emails is a problem. We rely heavily on the nominators to send us thorough and accurate nominee info. Also, we have asked all nominees this year to forward nominee info where such data is missing or incomplete.
Anthony Soohoo actually has strong ties to the state. Among other things, he’s looking to build a technical operation facility for his current deal.
Great observation on the shortage of woman. It frustrates me greatly that we don’t see more women on the list. We have just begun working with a newly-formed women’s tech organization in the state. (I can’t divulge info yet on the organization as they’re still forming) Again, this is a community-nomination process. We want to heavily petition folks to nominate more women in the future!
Dennis
Left by Dennis Wood on 02/20/2007Looking at the format, it is a disaster. I just had to search the page for 10 people I guessed would be on the list and vote for them. It would have been a lot better if they would have just done 10 dropdown boxes with 550 values each, and then maybe a list below that. Also, did you notice it would let you choose more than one person for each vote number? That sucked.
Josh, you should sell them a new voting program.
Left by Nick on 02/20/2007@Dennis:
Thanks for the clarifications.
note to all: if you are on the list and come across a nominee with “*” by his name and you have their contact info - please forward that to dennis “at” vspring dotcom.
Left by Chris Knudsen on 02/20/2007I am surprised that Joshua S. got to the G’s before running out of the 10 alloted votes. I only got to the D’s. It will be funny to see how the votes work. I am sure that a lot of the people on this list have the time to go through and evaluate all 500 or so individuals (joke).
Anyway the difference between Utah and San Fran is not talent (I think this list shows that) it is the abundance of networking mentality. IMHO! What say you master Chris?
RM
Left by RMoney on 02/21/2007