Entries Tagged 'EMC World' ↓

I’m writing this from the Bloggers’ Lounge in an increasingly empty convention center.  I’ve battered my feet to their limits, I got soaked in the rain, I’ve waited in long lines for mediocre coffee, and I’m mentally exhausted.  And this is what we come here for.

It all comes together here in person for four crazy days.  We “meet” people we’ve interacted with online for months.  We learn about new products, or new directions for old products.  We teach people, we learn from people, we laugh, we cry.

I can’t decide what the single best moment was.  That first batch of feedback from our first hands-on session has to rank up there.  We took a major risk and invested incredible effort into rearranging our approach, and it was a hit.   But sitting in on Natalie’s Working Mothers Experience session was fulfilling in an entirely different way.  And of course, getting to sit and talk with Steve Todd and his wife for the first time in a long time was worth flying down here for.

The best moment may have been seeing one of my co-workers getting off The Mummy indoor roller coaster at Universal.  I won’t be forgetting that look of terror any time soon.

Now it’s time to pack up and depart Orlando, just as the sun is starting to come out.  Thank you all; I can’t list everyone who helped make this a huge success for me.  My co-workers, my managers, my online colleagues, our partners and customers, and of course the event staff.  See you in Boston next year?

On day three the conference has begun to take its toll.  Legs, feet, back, brain — all tired.  But this morning was energizing — a breakfast discussion with Natalie Corridan-Gregg and a panel of working mothers.  I’ll let others discuss the meatier parts of the breakfast, but I wanted to share some of what I took away from it.

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This morning I sat in on an overview of future plans for Storage Resource Management, hosted by Scott Shaffer and Ryan Fournier, who lead the engineering and product management teams for ControlCenter (and other products) here at EMC.  They did a great job of talking about what we have today, what’s new in ControlCenter 6.1, and where we’re heading in the mysterious “SRM 7″.

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Day one of EMC World 2009 has come to a close and I have trouble thinking of ways it could have gone better.  We had a few bumps and twists on “Day Zero” but the first full day has validated all the hard work our team has put in over the past months.

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EMC World is kicking off with a bang this year, with IDC’s release of 2009’s Digital Universe study (sponsored by EMC).

Every year this release drives some interesting conversation.  In 2007 we learned we were producing more digital content than storage to archive it all (fortunately, not everything needs to be archived).  In 2008 we talked about who owned all that data (70% user produced, but corporations responsible for 85% of that).  This year is no exception — the news is that our production of information hasn’t slowed, regardless of the economy.

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Preparations continue for EMC World 2009, including putting the final touches on the use cases for the ControlCenter hands-on sessions.  This year we’re repeating the session 4 times, with 100 likely attendees at each session.  We’re taking into account the things we learned from last year, and taking an approach which we hope will make our users happier. See if you can predict the problem we’re facing right now, though.

We have a two-hour session, divided into three parts.  Each part presents the user with a different ControlCenter application and a non-trivial problem (or set of related problems) to solve using that application.  Attendees will be presented with the problem and some hints, and a handful of EMC representatives will be pacing the floor helping out.  If anyone wants to see the “right” answer, they can just follow the directions in a handout.  After letting people explore each scenario, an EMC presenter will showcase a few highlights from the directions before moving on to the next scenario.

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For most of Q1′09 I wasn’t sure if I’d be heading to EMC World in Orlando.  But the stars aligned correctly and I am going to be one of the ControlCenter representatives.  My primary duty will be similar to last year, working the daily ControlCenter Hands-On sessions.  I’ll also be spending some time with the ECN folks as well as the bloggers’ lounge. I should be spending some time with the ControlCenter Online Community members on Monday at 6:30 PM.  There’s more info on the community site.

I attended my first real prep meeting for the hands-on session Friday and I like the new direction they are taking with the session.  Last year we had detailed scenarios and walked users through them.  There was a lot of hand-holding.  This year it looks like we’re trying to be more exploratory, give the users some guidelines and talk it through with them in the lead.  It will be more challenging but it should feel more organic.  It will keep all of us on our feet working the crowd though.  Last year every session was full, so if history repeats itself I expect to be answering a lot of questions about the three deep-dive use cases we’re using this year.  So that means some time spent learning areas of ControlCenter I’m not very fluent in.  Nothing wrong with that!

Last year I remember the “EMC Twitter” crowd (made up of employees, analysts, and partners) comfortably fit at one lunch table.  I think the times are a wee bit different now.  It’ll be fascinating.

I’ll continue to write periodic posts as we prepare for EMC World, and of course the event will take over my blog in May.  Sneaking off to find time and space for quick blog posts last year is an enduring memory, but hopefully this year I’ll be better prepared!

You’ve all seen my coverage of EMC World both here and on twitter, so I won’t bother linking it again. What I wanted to write about here was how the trip was fundamentally different from any other company travel I’ve done, and what the changing face of EMC had to do with that.  My apologies to my EMC readers, who have already seen this content from me.

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I’d write a real summary of Day Four, but it was honestly more of the same, plus travel. Not a very exciting blog post, and doesn’t really fit my Casual Friday theme. So instead, I’ve put together my own list of things I learned at EMC World.

Everything I need to know, I learned in Las Vegas

• You should describe your technology in terms of words which make people laugh at how they sound (see: fungible). Continue reading →

The third official day of the conference started with an impressive keynote from Dr. Stephen Herrod, CTO of VMware.   Turnout was low — third day of a Vegas conference might not be the best time to speak to people at 8:30 AM.  But I was impressed with the consistency of the message.  From ESXi to VDI to VM Lab Manager, VMware is continuing to do exciting stuff.  I hope we continue to invest in using their technology at the office — we already make use of VMs for doing some development testing, but we’ve barely scratched the surface of what I saw on Tuesday.

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