Last year our DevOps Dozen feature was one of our most popular activities at DevOps.com. Truth be told, we had never done anything like that before, and so we sort of fought our way through it in trying to come up the top 12 companies in the DevOps space. In hindsight it was really good, but we could do better. So this year our DevOps Dozen 2016 will be very different—and, we think, much better.
Instead of just selecting the top 12 companies in DevOps, as we did last year, the DevOps Dozen 2016 will be a dozen different awards recognizing the best of the best in 12 different areas of DevOps. The categories this year are:
Best DevOps Open Source Project
Best DevOps Commercial Solution (not open source, but can have open source as a component)
Best DevOps Company Executive (C-level at a DevOps solutions provider)
Most Effective DevOps Solution Provider
Most Innovative DevOps Solution of the Year
Top DevOps Evangelist (this can be a company-specific evangelist or DevOps as a whole)
Successful DevOps Transformation (we are looking for organizations that have undergone or at least begun their own DevOps transformation/journey)
DevOps Transformation Executive of the Year (this recognizes an executive (CIO, CTO, VP, etc. who led a successful DevOps transformation/journey)
Best New DevOps Solutions Company (must be less than 24 months old)
Best DevOps Book/ebook (must be published for the first time less than 24 months ago)
Best DevOps Presentation of the Year (must include link to presentation, either video, audio or slideshare)
Best DevOps.com Article of the Year
The process for the awards will be a three-step procedure. First, nominations will open on Sept. 1, at which time the DevOps Dozen 2016 website will be open for nominations in each category. We will count and analyze all of the nominations and pick the finalists in each category. Each category will have up to 12 finalists selected. In the event that more than 12 finalists are nominated, we will take those 12 who received the most nominations. After the 12 finalists in each category are selected, we will announce the finalists in each category Oct. 1. At that point, voting will begin for the winners and will be open through Nov. 1. The winners will be announced the week of Nov. 6, which is the week of the DevOps Enterprise Summit in San Francisco.
A couple of things to note: For nominations, we are asking you to provide your name and email address to validate you are a real person. Also, we are limiting nominations by IP address. You will not be able to nominate—or, for that matter, vote—over and over again. We realize that everyone wants to win, but winning by abusing the spirit of what this is about is really not winning at all, so please don’t make us disqualify anyone for not playing fair. You are more than encouraged to get your friends, family and fans to vote and to nominate. One person, one vote is the mantra.
Finalists will be notified prior to Oct. 1 and given an opportunity to submit a short summary why they are deserving of the award. We will then open up the finalist voting. At the end of October we will notify winners and ask them to provide details about themselves, which will go into an e-book of the winners we will produce. We hope to be able to distribute this live at DOES San Francisco and via download.
There are sponsorships available for the contest and the e-book, but they have nothing to do with the vote. You can email sponsor@devops.com for details on that.
We think this is going to a really fun way to give some much deserved recognition to the people, companies and solutions that are leading the DevOps movement. We welcome your participation!