Cisco Live London my love for tech networking rekindled

So Matt Brender in his awesomeness has shared some nerd humour and some of what we are up to at Cisco Live this year on his Blog . For my part I have been working on thinking like an EMC Elect member and looking as to what I would want out of a show like this from an exclusive Elect perspective.

So looking at that Matt and I both realised that one of the benefits should be suggested events/ sessions at the conference, tailored to the Elect members interests. So thinking in those terms I thought about my own technical interests. I once was a technical support person in routers and switches and well it's Cisco Live and I am very interested in IPv6, so I am getting to those sessions that are about that. And suddenly the old techie inside me is rekindled.

Now for a real EMC Elect member how awesome would it be to hit a conference, get exclusive content, meet up with fellow Elect members and have a suggested tailored agenda to go from right off the bat. That is damn nice methinks.

I will have other thoughts and perspectives to share later on. I just wanted to get these thoughts out. I seriously need to pimp out my blog too, as Matt is showing me up :)

I have to run to a session, more later.

EMC Elect is well and truly arrived!

Well today it's official. We welcome 75 new members to The EMC Elect! See the list here

This is a great day for EMC in its recognition of it's advocates. Plenty of EMC Elect members will tell of their experiences and delights about becoming an EMC Elect and how great the program really is.

Today, I am telling a personal story from my perspective about EMC Elect and what it means to me.

Well it means an awful lot to me and here's why.

I really never considered myself to be the guy to advocate social in EMC or be a community manager for that matter. It just sort of happened to me.
As it did I established a great rapport with Customers Partners and EMC'ers I never expected to. These people are professional colleagues, mentors, and dear friends. Engaging in the Support Community was enlightening. The encouragement from that community has led to me being the Community Manager I am today. Up until I started working with Matt Brender on Elect, to me the Support Community on the ECN Support Forums was the most important social channel for me. To be honest, that Community and the many awesome people that engage there were my priority. I became a passionate Community Manager, willing to advocate on behalf of and protect my Community. No other channel really mattered to me. I stepped up and blogged and got socially engaged to champion this community and tell all that if you're engaged with EMC Products this is the only place to be. Engaging on twitter however led me to widen my scope. And it is the culmination of announcing the EMC Elect members, that really brings home how far I have come.

Twitter was the first social channel I used where I made connections that were not related to work and I subsequently met said connections in person. These people were as awesome as my ECN Support Community Members. I learnt that the ECN community is one channel. and that there was community driven EMC support and tech discussions happening off the reservation. Brilliant stuff I knew other ECN community members would want to know.

Now recently during the judging for EMC Elect one of our founders, an ECN Support Forum legend told myself and Matt Brender that he had spent ten hours evaluating nominees in one day. Matt and I were apologetic to that founder for the sync on his time. He replied, that this is not what he meant. He said thank you for this opportunity. Our Founder found nominees with external blog content that he found to be invaluable. He had not realised the breadth and value of content relating to EMC technical stuff could exist outside of the Support Community. It blew myself and Matt away. We never intended this to happen, but it is one of the single benefits that calls out how amazing EMC Elect is. Matt and I were fiercely trying to represent our existing points of views and our silo'ed mindset on our perspectives. That's not to say we did not see the value of the others communities, but we felt individually that our "place" was where it's at! Upon hearing this from our founder that changed irrevocably.  We realised EMC Elect not only rewarded well deserving advocates, it brought different people on different Social streams together and the community grew, exponentially. And will continue to do so. other Founders, who only engage externally to EMC discovered amazing content on the ECN Support Communities they never knew about too.

The benefits of EMC Elect to EMC, its customers, partners & employees is very powerful. It creates a newer more vibrant collaborative community mindset for people engaging with EMC. I am awestruck by it and so proud to be a part of making it happen. I am am somewhat overwhelmed by the amazing people and the tenacity with which EMC elect has been received. It's a little bit scary as i feel responsible for this Community. But Ia mso happy to be a part of it and will be a very passionate Community Manager and advocate of EMC Elect alongside Matt Brender.

In Golden Globe style I have to thank people. Mainly you the Community members, but also our illustrious founders for trusting Matt and myself. Thanks to the amazing support of two amazing ladies, Stephanie McBride and Mary Kilgalen for their sterling tireless work behind the scenes for EMC Elect. Thanks also to Brace Rennels and Chris Gardner for the immense support and direction and "go for it" encouragement behind this project. Thanks also finally to my amazing wife and kids for loaning me out to EMC to have fun like this.

Enjoy EMC Elect :) I will!