Entries Tagged 'EMC World' ↓

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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Another day down in Las Vegas!  Instead of writing a blow-by-blow of the day, I wanted to focus on an interesting event I was a part of.  I spend a lot of time writing about changes in company culture, but on Day Two I was able to participate in an example of the positive “old school” culture that let EMC get to where we are.

Last year, there was very little turnout for the “advanced” handson for StorageScope.  So this year, it was only offered once, and only 25 laptops were provided.  I decided to drop in on the session (being run by my manager Seth Silverman and my peer Anu Shivnath) to see how it went, and was greeted with chaos.  At least three times as many people arrived as were planned for, and more were lining up hoping to get in.  The room was packed beyond capacity and we had to turn people away.  Seth, however, offered everyone who was turned away a second runthrough in 75-90 minutes.

We pushed through the session (which I was very impressed with) and were wrapping up in 75 minutes as expected.  As people filtered out, a few filtered in — but only three people had returned for the promised second runthrough.

And they got it.

Three StorageScope customers had the undivided attention of 4 Control Center managers (QE and development), the director of our development organization, and an additional QE representative.  Six employees to three customers, for about an hour of intensive education and discussion.

We talk a lot inside the company about putting the customer first.  It’s not always easy in a development team to see how that happens.  But that, to me, defined EMC’s customer focus.  

I hope they enjoyed the session (and that they tell their friends 🙂 ).

It’s pre-breakfast on Tuesday and time to try and sum up yesterday’s chaos in a nice simple blog post. Not so easy.

I started the day attending a presentation given by a co-worker about managing VMware with EMC ControlCenter 6.0. The presentation was given by an employee and a customer together, which was pretty cool — theory and practice all in one. Unfortunately, it sounds like the customer stated a few things as facts which weren’t 100% correct, at least according to the people I was sitting with. They planned to follow up before the presentation is given again.

Next, I attended the keynote addresses by Joe Tucci and Howard Elias. They talked general EMC strategy and then more specifically RMSG strategy. As I twittered, I thought it was interesting that they talked services and software prior to talking hardware, even though hardware was where all the announcements were.

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Mr. Denny has some great pics of the concert I had to bail on yesterday evening.

Bill Petro talks about twitter, among other things.

I’ll link to others as I find posts.  Some of the others haven’t updated yet.

Remember to follow me or the #emcworld hashtag on twitter.

Time for me to seek out some coffee, I guess.  Body is still on Eastern time.

Greetings from insanely warm Las Vegas, Nevada.  Until I landed, it didn’t really sink in that our conference was in Las Vegas this year.  But as soon as you step into that airport, and see the folks hitting the slots for one last shot at the big win before their trip ends, you know you’re in Vegas.

I was on the ground by 10 AM local time, which means I’ve been up since 4:30 AM Eastern time.  I skipped lunch to help with “last minute lab fixes” which turned into a full day of fighting with a finicky demo lab network setup.  We called it a night at 8:30 local time, and darted off to the Goo Goo Dolls concert for some quality appetizers and some tasty west coast Fat Tire.  I’m not sure it makes up for skipping lunch, but it came close.

Unfortunately, too many hours on my feet left me with too little energy to really dive into Vegas nightlife tonight.  A 21-hour day will do that to you.  So back to the hotel room I go, to my overpriced internet access and comfortable bed.  Tomorrow, the conference really begins.  No more fine tuning, it’s time to dive in and give the people what they came for.

had a different Casual Friday post all ready to go, but decided at the last minute that I should keep with the EMC World theme and do something Vegas-themed instead.

So, for today’s Casual Friday, I’m going to put you in the mood for a trip to Las Vegas with my five favorite Vegas movies. I know there are “better” Vegas movies out there than these, but these are my favorite five (in no particular order). Feel free to throw your two cents worth in the comments!
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Today marks our final dry-run of the “Getting the Value out of your ControlCenter 6.x Implementation” hands-on session. Problems are ironed out (hopefully!), handouts are completed, and we’re as practiced as we’re going to be. Sunday, I’m sure there will be some last-minute chaos, and then over the next four days we’ll deliver five sessions, each 2.5 hours in length, each with up to 100 attendees sharing 50 laptops. I’ve never been involved in anything quite like it.

Everyone I talk to outside the company about my “free trip to Vegas” regards it as a perk. And clearly it is. But like every other perk, it has plenty of baggage associated with it.

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The ramping up for EMC World is shifting gears now — the final week is upon us, and there’s no room for further delay.  There’s a sense of urgency among the attendees, as they finalize their presentations, attend dry-runs, iron out last-minute details, and double-check their travel plans.

This is my first year attending EMC World, and I plan to blog it in as close to real time as I can.  That probably means daily blog posts summing things up, and frequent twitter updates.  I have to do the EMC ControlCenter hands-on 5 times in 4 days, each time 2.5 hours plus setup/teardown.  Not sure how much time I’ll have for attending other sessions or wandering the floor.  We’ll see.  I really want to check out the Innovation Showcase.

Some folks are talking about off hours plans, which I’ve made zero of.  No tickets for shows or anything like that.  We’ll have to play it by ear.  I do have one unofficial after-hours plan – get someone else to expense my dinner every night.  I hate filling out expense forms :).

Some other unofficial after-hours goals for EMC World?

• Find a fellow blogger and realize I have nothing in common with them beyond blogging, resulting in awkward silence and much fidgeting
• Buy Steve Todd a drink.  Milk or beer, his choice (sorry, old in-joke).
• Witness my manager doing something I can blackmail him with, without being incriminated myself.
• Visibly cringe whenever anyone says “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” after doing something like ordering a beer with dinner or dropping a quarter into a slot machine.

More updates later in the week as the prep gets finalized!