Reflecting on an amazing year: 2012 in review.

Wow, It's hard to believe that 2012 AD is coming to a close. What a year it has been for me. Personally and professionally it's been a roller coaster. But it's been a hell of a ride!

Looking back over my last  12 months professionally, well, the biggest thing I guess would be kicking off Ask the Expert.

That all started with this post: Wrapping-up-2011, into-2012-on the EMC Support Community
Since that post, we've hosted, 30 Ask the Expert events. And it was a mix of forum discussions, webinars, live events, and tweet chats. We even wrapped an event during EMC World in a luxurious suite in the Venetian in Vegas. It's been a lot of fun. We had numerous experts, too numerous to mention here, but I am thankful to each and everyone of them. They and the Support Community members, made Ask the Expert the amazing program it has been and will continue to be.

Keep an eye on it in 2013. We are expanding the program to incorporate Ask the Expert events for new products and services. We will also continue to have events around existing products. But we will be going further by hosting more events on a wider range of products and hot topics. We will be engaging more experts, from EMC, Partners and Customers who know our products so well. It will continue to be your hot centre for EMC Support hot topics on existing and newly launched products and services. And we are always open to new experts and new topics. Its a community driven program so don't be shy in suggesting topics and experts.

EMC World 2012 was a big highlight of the year. Our Buzz Talk was a great highlight as was the Support Community party. Getting to recognise some of the participating experts and to thank some of the legendary stalwart ECN Support Community members was very fulfilling. To meet community members in person is always great and rewarding. It was a hugely successful conference for my organisation, eServices, as we also launched the new EMC Online Support Site. It really brought home to me the level of collaboration we've had with customers, partners and EMC employees in a vibrant community. Did you know our ECN Support Community accounts for over 50% of the entire traffic of the EMC Community Network. with 250,000 + members of ECN it's obviously a large Support Community. It's extremely collaborative friendly and full of great knowledgeable helpful professionals.

And the year ends for me now as it began, with a big project getting underway.
With EMC Ask the Expert established and growing we are also focusing on EMC Elect.  As I posted recently EMC Elect is Community recognition with exclusive opportunity. Its a fantastic program recognising EMC advocates within the ECN community and out in the social sphere. Unintentionally it also has a great benefit of bringing externally socially engaged advocates together with internal EMC Support Community advocates. Something that might not have occured were it not for this project. the nomination phase has ended and Matt Brender, myself and the amazing EMC Elect Founders are now engaged in the selection process. It's nerve wracking and exciting. Some truly amazing people have been nominated. It will be difficult deciding. But I look forward to January 15th 2013, when the 2012 EMC  Elect group will be announced. And then the fun starts.

2013 is lining up to be a very amazing and challenging year. But I am looking forward to it. It's an opportunity I am ready and raring to take. Thanks to all those who follow my blog / ramblings. It's been a challenge to write for all the right reasons, being really busy doing something I truly love.

So have a safe holiday , however you celebrate, and to you and yours  Go raibh maith agaibh agus Nollaig Shona Diobh! (Gaelic for "Thank you all and have a happy Christmas!" )

EMC Elect update

"Response to the EMC Elect has been phenomenal. As of today, the message has been in front of 1,071,133 Twitter followers with thousands of views across blog posts." As Matt Brender shared yesterday

But as he points out our unique number of nominations remains low. As nominations close on December 15th, 2012 it is important that you ensure that your favourite person for this distinguished honour gets nominated.

Just as a reminder:
EMC Elect is a community-driven recognition and thank you for individuals engagement with EMC as a brand over the last calendar year. There are many deserving a nomination. Perhaps even you deserve a nomination. You can nominate yourself. But participation is the price of admission.

Make sure you nominate that deserving someone, even if that someone is you.

As Matt says: "EMC Elect is inclusive, community-driven and a huge opportunity. Don’t let it go by. Nominate your influencers right now. "


I could not agree more, please don't miss this opportunity to have your say in this community driven recognition.

EMC Elect: Community Recognition with exclusive oppurtunity

The EMC brand is based on a promise to take information as far as possible. 

But EMC alone cannot do this.

Our loyal Customers, Partners and yes, EMC employees do the lion’s share of that work.

These people are EMC advocates. They do it not out of a preconceived fondness for EMC, but because they prove to themselves that EMC Products and Services enable the full realisation of the inherent power of information / Big Data / journey to the Cloud.

Every day they do this, immersing themselves in EMC technology, letting EMC know when and what we need to do to improve our service when it needs it.

They blog about EMC, They talk about EMC on pod casts and they participate in the EMC Community Network collaborating with other customers and partners sharing their experiences, the subject matter expertise on EMC as well as helping customers solve issues who really need their help. These are tireless, passionate, brilliant people.

The EMC Elect designation has been brought about to recognise these tireless advocates. It is a distinguished designation to thank the advocates for their past endeavors’ in the way they have helped EMC and, more importantly, EMC's Customers be successful in deploying our technology.
The beauty of this program too is that it is not designated by EMC, but by the EMC Community, made up of Customers, Partners and EMC Employees. The designation is achieved by peer nomination. And it is essentially a well deserved thank you to these wonderful people, from the EMC Community.

The Benefits -

The EMC Elect designation is a very special one. It entitles the designated Elect members to a suite of privileged exclusive access, granting:

• First Access
• Exclusive Privilege
• Status

This translates to benefits like:

• A direct conduit into EMC Business Units to hear about Betas, Roadmaps & other events
• Private events with distinguished members of the EMC brand
• Thought leadership conversations with Distinguished Engineers and Executive
• Personalised opportunities to build and cross-promote documentation, videos, projects
• Elevated status within the EMC Brand
• VIP treatment at Tier 1 events
• Personal liaison into EMC
• Private VIP community on the ECN with
• Elevated access to content
• Special curated communication
• Blogging collateral
• Exclusive iconography and brand recognition
• Welcome activation kit (nice bag)

For 2013, there will be 150 advocates awarded the Designation of EMC Elect. Nominations are being accepted now and in Mid January of 2013 we will announce the EMC Elect designees.

Anyone following my blog will know this has been a passionate dream of mine & @mjbrender. I am delighted to see this dream come to life, with a tremendous team behind it. You can find out more about the program on our EMC Elect site page on ECN.

And as we are now seeking nominations for EMC Elect candidates feel free to fill out the nomination form if you know someone who deserves a nomination. Maybe that person is you :) And yes you can nominate yourself. This is a great Program, one that celebrates these stalwart people. I can barely contain my excitement.  Do drop by and get involved.

Now you know what's been keeping me occupied :)

Customer Advocacy :This is the right time, and this is the right thing.

" This is the right time, and this is the right thing." - Thomas Moore

Well, it's been a while and yes it's the usual excuse, I have been busy. But I really have.
Remember this post of mine? Well it is finally becoming a reality and I am delighted! We will finally be able to recognise and thank our loyal community members who advocate on behalf of their community.
 Matt Brender and I are the unlikely duo who will spearhead this Project. Matt describes our Project very well on his own blog post about what is codenamed Project DNA

Recognising and celebrating our Advocates at EMC will be amazing!

The enthusiasm and Passion both Matt and I have for this Project are summed up in this quote from his post " We’re ready to go big, and there’s no way we’re going home unsuccessful."
I love it ! Recognition for our advocates is finally getting the big roll out it deserves.

 It's just fantastic!

EMC Ask the Expert

And tied to that is the other behemoth of a Project that I'm heading at present, EMC's Ask The Expert. It's going great guns and it's thanks to those advocates we plan to thank through Project DNA, who are making this project a great success. We've even launched our own twitter account for it @EMCAskTheExpert and tomorrow we kick off our first experimental "Tweet Chat". you can follow it it if you wish using #EMCATE.
it will be about "Performance calculations in Clariion / VNX" which is also a current ongoing discussion on our Ask The Expert Support Forum.

 

And that of course is not all, we will continue to expand Ask The Expert to product updates and launches, facilitating access to Customer advocates and subject matter experts who can make sense of a new feature or launch and what it means to EMC community members and product users.  And we will continue to bring in experts to address hot topics relevant to our Support Community members.

For more information on how Ask The Expert works you can listen to .. well .. me :) talk about it when I was recently interviewed about it by the InFocus team 

I am increasingly busy, but I have to say I am enjoying every minute of it. It's incredible how much the Support Community in EMC has grown. It offers so much to the existing and newer community membership and it's provided by dedicated community members sharing their experience, knowledge and expertise. I love being the Community Manager for it, as I get to know these community members, listen to them and advocate for them. The passion of our advocates is amazing. And I am delighted and honoured to play my part in having EMC recognise them through Project DNA. Much more about that very soon, that's a promise. :)

Social Communities are good business

Social Communities are growing at a fantastic rate around the World and are becoming part of most businesses DNA. For EMC this is clearly a strategic direction and one I have witnessed blossom before my very eyes. 

One day I might post about something other than Communities. But as I live and breathe Community at present and it's my current predominant passion, (adding a caveat that my family is my overriding passion in all) I can write about little else at present.
 That said it won't always be that way :).

Anyway, Communities! Well, they are good business models. I can hardly claim that that as a revelation. I won't :) . Here in 2012 we can see John Moore's prediction from his blog post in 2010 were prescient. Social Support Communities: a path to real success with your social business strategy

EMC's Social Support Communities are a big piece of its eServices business, and of late it's gotten a lot of focus. When you have a VP and Senior VP in your business unit pushing Social and Community you know its sound business. And when you hear that the highest executives in EMC see this as a vital play you know you're striking gold.

But don't take my word for it. Listen to our VP, Julie Larsen talk about the entire eServices strategy on a recent guest spot on Silicon Angle's TV, The Cube. Julie's  focus on providing best in class self services for EMC Customers is driven by meeting customer demand for these services.It's a great interview from the perspective of the challenges and the strategies EMC is taking in in online social collaboration.

This is echoed again in an interview with our Senior VP Tony Kolish and VP Julie Larsen once more, at EMC World on EMC TV.  They talk about the transformation of Customer Services for EMC, and again Social Community Support is called out.

From my perspective its crucial to have executive buy in and we obviously have it at EMC.

With that piece secured, and our Community growing and collaborating at an exponential rate, its important to not rest on your laurels and prevent stagnation. It's important we value our Community members and the recent RAMP project rolled out to the EMC Community Network has been a huge step in the right direction.
That does not stop there either. One aspect that is a big piece (and something I am ferociously passionate about) is Reward and Recognition for the Community members.
It's important to recognise those who are dedicated to helping their fellow community peers. Not only to thank them for their previous efforts, but also to facilitate them in helping us to make the Communities more amenable to the rest of the membership. And also to reward their past efforts by inclusion in EMC developments like Beta's and early road-maps etc. I am working closely with EMC's Matt Brender on this from the Support Community perspective, as Matt is leading this for the entire EMC Community Network. We are both pumped and excited to be highlighting our Contributing Community members.We want to reward our community members, but we want to reward them with something that is relevant to them and will help enrich their Community experience.

In the mean time things for EMC eServices are moving ahead with great endeavors.  There has been the launch of the new EMC Online Support Experience, the new  EMC Chinese Support Community,  and the continuing success of the Ask The Expert initiative. Well, we also just launched the @EMCAskTheExpert twitter account last Monday.  We are really looking forward to leveraging this to promote events on the Ask the Expert Forum.
But beyond that we want to hold Ask the Expert Tweet chats and the like too. We also want this to be another channel to hear our customers, partners & prospects. We will be soliciting topics and Experts but most of all we will be listening to what people want. I am honoured to be a part of this and it is amazing to see  just how much the EMC eServices Support Community and division have grown.

Indeed it's Community all the way. It's going great guns and it is made possible by the dedication of real EMC Customers, Partners and employees. Fun times!

EMC World 2012 in Review: ECN Support Community Perspective

Its been almost two weeks since I have returned from EMC World and I am still trying to catch up with myself.

EMC World this year was amazing. I was very busy, I met lots of new people,Customers, Partners & EMC'ers alike. EMC announced 42 new products and IT transformation was a big theme this year. 13,000 plus people attended and it was a huge event. And as I said before, what mattered to me was the people. And it was true.
Sean Thulin does a great job describing EMC World this year in this blog post  and I recommend this post for a taste of what it was. His pictures are darn good. And I have borrowed some for this post.

Getting into it, we broke new ground in that we had experts who participated in the EMC Ask The Expert present at EMC World. This gave us a unique window for members of our Support Community who were not in attendance. They got a Support perspective from the experts regarding sessions and Labs they attended. And they shared this on our Community space for Ask the Expert!

It was also great to hang out with them in person :)

ECN Support Community Experts @ EMC World

We even got two of our experts to wrap an ask the expert event on video at EMC World.
You can catch that video at the end of this discussion thread.

The Support Communities are primarily about the the people who participate in them. In reality its their Community, the members are the primary stakeholders.  Engaging, helping other people, passionately advocating for their community and the members is what these people are all about.  It was great to be able to celebrate that this year in the V Bar, in Las Vegas,with attending Community members. The Party was in their honor for their contributions engagement and dedicated support over the years.

EMC eServices Team members with Senior VP Tony Kolish and VP Julie
Larsen. 

Our booth was busy during EMC World too, and our Ask the Experts contributors dropped by to talk to people about RAMP, Support Communities and of course Ask the Expert! It was great collaborating with the ECN Team and promoting RAMP as well as the forums.

As you'll notice in the photos (thanks to @henriwithani) we had a trick shot performer in our booth who was highly entertaining :)

 


And I particularly liked that experts were engaging with customers on Support issues. In fact this candid shot I captured of @mjbrender & @henriwithani collaborating on an issue a customer asked them about just sums up why I love the Support Community. Problem solving and collaborating is awesome and fun!






But by far the best example of what the people of the ECN Support Community do for their members, and their Community was shared in our BUZZ Talk at EMC World when people got to "Meet the Legends" of our Community.

Video streaming by Ustream
Indeed, EMC World 2012 was an amazing, productive tiring and memorable experience. We did and learned an awful lot. And this will help us to provide a better experience for our Community going forward to EMC World 2013, which will again be in Las Vegas :)

Oh and last but by no means least props to @stephmcbride &  @emerhoff for all the hard work they did on getting the V Bar event together as well as all the other supportive work they did for the booth and eServices. Thank you both so much.

It's the people Silly!

At the EMC World Conference in Las Vegas from the 21st to the 24th May, 2012, at the Venetian Hotel, we will have over 13,000 attendees. It's exciting and somewhat scary!

Now many of my colleagues in EMC will tell you about our services, our technology , Big Data, Cloud Architecture and other next generation technologies, as well as a whole suite of new products from EMC. All of these are important to know about and share.

 But for me, this EMC World is all about the people. Now I am not saying my colleagues don't get this, they so do! But I want to directly point out that all 13,000 plus attendees are the ones that make this conference / show what it is, and obviously the business of EMC.

 I look forward to meeting the real people. I love meeting customers, finding out about them, what they do and what they need. The EMC Support Forum Community has enriched my experience of EMC Customer relations. I come from a background of technical support over the phone in various companies. There is no need for me to go over the evolution of Support from then to now. The Internet & Social are a self evident tale now told.

What blows me away every day is the global scale of the conversation and the myriad of paths crossed, time zones, borders etc. And it 's all around helping people solve a problem or figure out how to do something. I really do love my work, even though at times it's tough, with long hours. But working with the people in the EMC Support Forums, be they a colleague or customer,  has been amazing. Beyond their technical know how, they are all amazing regular individual people.

So while it will be all about the coolest new technology, I really look forward to meeting the people.
Seriously! Here is a link to the video I did for our Ask the Expert participants. As you'll see we are planning some cool interaction, both in person and online.
EMC Ask the Expert, May update 2012

So wherever you are be sure to check out and engage in EMC World. If online try the vPass

I also urge you to tune / attend our "Join the Support Community Legends!" BUZZ talk. It promises to be a lot of fun and there will be prizes :) (for online attendees as well as those in person)

And keep an eye on our Expert Community page. There will be updates from our attending "Expert hosts" for the Ask the Expert program. And if you keep in touch with them and ask questions about things you want to hear about at the show, you could win a prize. Stay tuned for updates on that.

In any event there will be more posts from me very soon from Las Vegas. It will be busy and fun and I look forward to seeing you there, in person or online :) Las Vegas here we come!

eServices Online Support @ EMC World!

It's an exciting time for eServices and the EMC Community Network. Some really cool things will be happening for the overall ECN users. But more on that will come in later blog posts. Plans for eServices representation at EMC World this year are in advanced stages of planning. I am thoroughly delighted that we will have some very special guests this year. As well as our Customer Council members attending, we will have @sthulin, @henriwithani, @ionthegeek & @NerdBlurt as special guests.

They will be attending EMC World sessions and events and will also be at the EMC Online Support Booth.
While there they will be sharing their insights on what the sessions bring as well as answering questions live & online and in the EMC Community Network Support Forums as appropriate. This is great for people who cannot attend EMC World and even for those who can but cannot make every session.

This is major as the content they will create and discussions they will have with peers in the industry will be a unique and privileged insight. We will be getting the Technical Support persons perspective on how cloud can transform your IT, and how Big Data can transform your business.

I am delighted that these experts  are part of this and encourage anyone following my blog to watch our Ask The Expert Support Community Page on ECN to keep up to date with planned events and content from EMC World.



I will have more to post in due course.

Ciao

The Evolution of Social relationships:

Does Social Media smash the rule  about mixing business and pleasure?

 As ever I am a busy person. But I am due a post and this topic has been on my mind. I suddenly realized the importance of Social tools while following "Making Social Part of Your DNA" on Feburary 16th.

  

Social Media week has made me  me think of my own social development over the last 12 months, and how it has integrated into not only my work, but my life. For me social tools and Social Media has insidiously slipped into my life. I have made true and real friendships with it though and that surprised me when I thought about it. It was the indomitable @nerdblurt that started me really understanding that in the twitter sphere. Almost unconsciously I've made dinner plans with friends and colleagues using twitter and Facebook, FourSquare, Linked In, TripIt. It's a second nature thing but suddenly today I had a better appreciation of my Social Media integration.  

Mind you, Facebook is my least favorite Social Media tool and not somewhere I engage very often. (I'm still smarting from the Farmville invite craze :) 

In any event I have seen Social Media as very much part of my social life DNA. And the consequences of real Social Media relationships is more apparent to me in 2012.

 Looking into my work at EMC it is ever so apparent. Working with @mjbrender, @sthulin,& @henriwithani as you will note in my previous blog post we launched #EMCAskTheExpert . But that collaboration has enabled us to further our working relationship and bring forth some cool ideas for EMC World 2012 :) 

 Yes it's that time of the year again!  EMC World is looming and Ask the Expert will be coming to it in 2012. The gents mentioned above and I are putting together an exciting plan to engage at the conference and online.It's going to be cool!

More on this in subsequent posts. But what I want to emphasize here is the relationships I am building through Social Media. These guys are colleagues, one is also a customer and we have or are beginning a friendship. Behind Social Media is of course real people. It's just amazing at how it has come about. Or rather how  the tools enable collaboration and grass roots effort like never before.

I was also  reading an EMC colleague's blog ( @SuzySpaatz ) today. Her latest post about the year of Social business is good food for thought from the business perspective of Social. We do have to move from Social Experimentation to  Social business. And I think at EMC we are starting to get our arms around that. But for me the business / personal division is blurry, in surprising and exciting ways. While it makes sense I thought it was worth pointing out, even if it is just to myself :)

EMC Online Support Community Ask the Expert Launches today

I am delighted that the EMC Ask the Expert events are now off the ground. I meant to get a blog post together to post about it, but it's been a crazy week and weekend making sure everything was in place to make it a go for launch. Thankfully my illustrious colleague @sthulin has posted a blog describing the program in great detail. He has been very flattering to me (I think undeservedly, the guys answering the questions are doing the bulk of the work). What he omitted tell you in his blog is that it was he who masterminded this video including the editing.

This was a great job. So it is now up and running. Our first event for this initiative can be found here:

Ask the Expert: VNXe front-end Network Configurations with VMware

 Do drop by out of interest or indeed to ask a question regarding this topic. It is the first of many topics we intend to cover across all of EMC's product range. I hope you'll see that the EMC Support Community is a vibrant one with many excellent people who are happy to interact and engage with you on your technical EMC questions.

Do enjoy and please let us know what you think of the program. Your feedback is important.