New webcasts: hosting, not talking

I got an interesting email last week from Rita Gildea-Bryant, part of the Thought Leadership Marketing group at EMC, about a series of webcasts they are going to be hosting soon.  Traditionally, our webcasts consist of EMC telling potential (or current) customers what they should be doing with our products.  This series is a bit different.  We’re hosting these webcasts, but we’re not doing the talking.

For example, next week’s webcast will be given by Mark O’Gara (VP at Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield) and Daryl Molitor (senior architect at JCPenney).  Both have impressive backgrounds in storage and IT. They’re going to talk about their challenges and experiences in designing and implementing data centers.  This is meaty stuff – storage, migration, energy efficiency, interoperability, and more.  There are sessions in July and August as well, which will look forward into the future, how these challenges will change over time and what technologies and processes will be necessary to solve them.

You can read more (and sign up) here if you’re interested.  The first session is called Technology Convergence: Transforming Data Center Infrastructure.  Future sessions will cover new technologies and their business impact.  These sessions are being sponsored by EMC’s ON magazine.

I thought this was interesting enough to pass along for two reasons.  Obviously this is cool real-world application of the big-idea stuff going on at EMC.  But my interest lies in our handing control of our webcast over to current customers to talk to other customers about their problems and solutions. We are hosting the conversation, but not necessarily driving it.  It’s an important distinction and I like to do what I can to help recognize this kind of forward momentum when I see it.

I hope these webcasts turn out well. I’d love to see us doing more in this space going forward.