2024 Rising Champions
Have you seen the posts with the IBM Rising Champion badges all across LinkedIn lately? Let me take a moment to clarify - and celebrate - what those posts mean in the context of the IBM Champions class of 2025 announcements.
We are very excited about all nominations and renewals we received for 2025. Our selection committees and program team have been hard at work receiving and reviewing and quantifying all the completed advocacy activities! And that’s why you’re seeing all the buzz online lately about badges! But we haven’t announced the IBM Champions…. yet! ;)
As we count through the activities, the committees, the IBM Z advocacy team, and our program team issue advocacy credentials, including the IBM Contributor, IBM Advocate, IBM Influencer, IBM Z and LinuxONE Community Contributor, IBM Z and LinuxONE Community Advocate, and IBM Z and LinuxONE Community Influencer badges. These credentials recognize advocacy completed throughout 2024.
And you are seeing a large number of posts and badges because while we review submissions year round for the advocacy badges, the majority tend to come through during IBM Champion nomination season.
Badges issued
Earning those credentials makes a person an IBM Rising Champion and puts them on the pathway to Champion status. The badges themselves are an accomplishments and we are so grateful for the advocacy contributions they represent and the effort to submit those to us. Congratulations to every badge earner and welcome to being an IBM Rising Champion.
These credentials are issued both to current 2024 IBM Champions (like Ryan, above) and to those who are submitting as new nominees (like Aiman). You’ll see more badges issued over the next couple of weeks as we lead up to our big 2025 announcement.
What's next?
Our selection committees continue to review and rank nominees based on products advocated for, the quality and impact of the advocacy, and types of contributions as they make decisions on each of the more than 2200 submissions we received.
Stay tuned: We will be announcing the 2025 class of IBM Champions on 6 February 2025.