With the momentum of EMC World still hitting our eyes with bags of sleep deprivations and our minds with unbelievable quantities of content, I want to step back and reflect on the biggest moment in my years of community engagement.

The EMC Elect are front and center here at EMC.

The team behind ViPR meet privately with the EMC Elect members to discuss SDS.

In December of 2012, we quietly launched with our first 10 founders. In January of 2013, we announced the inaugural 75 members.

This past week, we executed on giving them the greatest space, access and opportunities.  You can still see the excitement:

Tweets about “EMC Elect”

We’re now here: we have a program that’s inspired bloggers to join the EMC Community Network, ECN members to start Twitter accounts and blogs and, most importantly, grew a community across platforms. 

What’s next you ask? Two items come to mind:

1. Continuing forward with great opportunities for members
2. Ensuring even more competitive membership next year

[2] Opportunities.

Our success in engaging with the truly influential members of the EMC community has given us the budget to invest in bringing us together.

We are in early stage planning in our footprint at VMworld 2013, want to get people enjoying big data at FreeStructure and can’t wait to get them access to an early VM of ViPR.

[2] Competition.

No one knew what to expect from EMC Elect at the announcement in 2013. Everyone was excited for those recognized, but wary of whether EMC could execute on making it worthwhile. That fear is long gone from people as we’ve brought a great experience to members over the last few months.

As a result, I’m certain we’ll have more nominations then ever — easily breaking the few hundred we had last year. Earning EMC Elect status is relative to the applicants (like a college application), so be ready for the most competitive reviewal process yet.

Don’t wait – get your nominations in.

A stirring tweet came out the other day, challenging the very fabric of what some believe is a “best practices:”

IT marketing, quit giving gift cards for ‘one lucky attendee’ Offer study guides, technical resources, discount equipment for home labs etc.

— Chris Emery (@chrisjte) April 23, 2013

It hits home as my colleagues and I are deep into planning for EMC World 2013.

I recall heading out to EMC World last year with a backpack filled with gift cards of all sorts. He handed hundreds out, yes, but Chris’ tweet reminds me of why 90% of attendees will be at the show in the first place: for the technology and the people.

This theme comes out in what the EMC Elect community stands for as well. You see it in the declaration months back: less stuff, more opportunity. 

Here’s a slide, compliments of @CommsNinja’s photography, I use as describing the power of investing in the right parts of an event: people.

You’ll see that realization shine through as I blog more about what we’ve invested our time in creating as an experience this year.

We’ve created spaces in which people can co-create fascinating work, meetups that connect curious minds and stuff – yes some stuff, like the EMC Elect card – that continues to show the power of our community.

I can’t wait to see you all there.

What’s in a name?

~ William Shakespeare

Yes folks, we did it – the coveted Blogger’s Lounge of years past is dead. It has ceased to be. You’ll never see THIS again:

You may be wondering, ”But, EMC, HOW COULD YOU?!”

The location is highly rated – besides the occasional Wifi fail, incredibly welcomed by the community and a real status symbol for those that contribute their blood, sweat and evenings to writing down their experiences with EMC products.

Before the riots begin, let me break the suspense: a place for socially-engaged industry bloggers is still very much part of the plan.

WHAT YOU CAN COUNT ON

The longer story is below, but for those who want me to cut to the chase, here’s what you can expect from this new area:

Blogger Space

• Community members with a recognized technology blog can register here 
• Includes the famous barista station
• Includes some snacks throughout the show
• Wifi and wired internet connectivity
• 1-2 relay screens to watch keynotes
• It has room for 60 people
  • 30 or so in Starbucks-esque relaxed seating
  • 30 or so in Workstation-type desks

EMC Elect Space

• Must be a member of the EMC Elect to get in
• Includes a full wall of whiteboards
• 1 relay screen to watch keynotes
• Wifi and wired internet connectivity
• It has room for 30 people
  • Two meetup spaces
  • Enough room to record whiteboard sessions

EVOLUTION OF AN IDEA

In 2011, we had Social City – a dream-like, flow-y stage of this “social” idea that show it’s prowess, with a Blogger’s Lounge as the epicenter.

While social influence proliferated and engagement became ubiquitous, the idea of a Blogger’s Lounge – a haven for the few participating regularly – did not yet change with the times.

It does this year.

The EMC events team, with some input from the social team, evolved the concept to match the front-and-center legitimacy social media has earned in the past few years. We’ve broken it down into a larger area known as EMC Square where the Blogger’s Space now lives.

So what’s in the name change?

While it’s a subtle shift from Lounge to Space, the meaning runs deeper than that. We hope the Blogger’s Space will be a place of collaboration, invention, creation and brainstorm. Our biggest influencers as voted on by the community, the EMC Elect, will have a subspace filled with whiteboards for invention.

Though as Shakespeare taught us, the results will be just a sweet: filled with reunions and first introductions, the Blogger’s Space is bound to fill up with people creating more than each individual ever knew they were capable of inventing.

* Pun intended

EMC World 2013 is right around the corner. While I have a great deal to report on the evolution of the blogger’s lounge and more, right now I want you to tell me about events!

Let us know where to find you and I’ll make sure to broadcast that along with the vPass — our space on the EMC Community Network that is your one-stop-shop for social at EMC World.

Can’t wait to see many old friends and meet many of you for the first time.

Social Media is terrifying. It’s raw, reactive, uncensored and unstoppable. We’re all at the will of the masses.

How do I manage to watch it all? How do I control my brand reputation? How do I clean up the messes? These are concerns for all of us today as we dig into the repercussions and responses to social prowess.

But that’s all rather abstract, and I have a real-world story to share today.

Joe Onisick, known for his humor as much as his cloud talk, had what anyone would call a frustrating time with a VNXe installation.

This moment is a great opportunity to show that EMC listens, even when it hurts to hear it.

Joe isn’t one to sugarcoat, which I love.

I noticed Joe’s comments coincidentally and engaged right away due to our overlapping social spheres. After some public and private conversation, I found out his colleague had made some edits to his VNXe lab box. On top of this frustration, the delay in storage provisioning through Unisphere pushed him to share his experience quite publicly in no uncertain terms.

What’s a company to do? Freak out? Fire someone?

Both of these are sure to have been or due to happen. What I’m proud to say is that my colleague’s responses have been incredible. Social champions from Marketing and Global Services connected the dots and brought this conversation to Engineering’s attention.

A snippet of response from Engineering tells it all:

On VNXe, for code older than << redacted >>

** For a 1TB FS, NL SAS drives 4+2, the best scenario time = 9 min 29 sec

** For a 1TB FS, SAS drives 3+3 or 6+1, best scenario time = 5 min 17 sec

** 2TB on MR3 system and creation time = 16 min

5min 1sec to create FS itself [Compared to 2min 19 seconds on <<redacted>>) & more than double the time on VNX

Nick is going to create an ticket so we can investigate and see if 2 times observed when there was no activity, can be triaged and shaved without architectural change

 

The Engineers mentioned here took hours to reinitialize systems and measure the results with repeatable tests. This opportunity for microfocus lead to the discovery of an anomaly that can now be addressed. It received attention because Joe had the ability to share his experience through Twitter engagement.

This event is without a doubt to me a positive one.

Public frustration gives us the opportunity to admit our strengths, weaknesses and find a way to personally connect with our community’s needs. If we continue to encourage this engagement and have the fortitude to listen rather than react, we’ll end up with incredible real-time feedback directly from our customers. It is through this direct conduit to those who engineer our systems that the social media beast drives product innovation.

As a former Engineer on the team that responded here, I know I can say they truly love their system and hope you do as well. It is this relationship of social enabling community leaders to speak frankly that inspired the EMC Elect program and it’s crucial to the company’s continued success.

If you’re not already, you can follow Joe’s serious side at www.definethecloud.net and his real-time quips on Twitter.