It’s official. I’ll be attending Dell EMC World 2017. I’ve been invited to attend on a Media/Analyst pass.
Naturally, I’m excited and looking forward to it. This conference seems to be causing a small amount of confusion for folks who’ve attended past events. Folks who came from the EMC side (I include myself in this group) have to keep correcting themselves when they call it “EMC World”, and folks who came from the Dell side have to keep correcting themselves when they call it “Dell world”.
But “Dell EMC World” it is. I’m looking forward to seeing the joint solutions and how the two technology portfolios are coming together.
On Wednesday at EMC World, I caught up with Kate Hutchinson of EMC Educational Services. In the MiniCast episode with the least background noise so far, we talked about the EMC Proven Professional program and other educational services offered by EMC.
We recorded in a lounge space maybe 50 yards from where the Proven Professional testing center was set up, so I headed over to take a certification test after we wrapped up.
You can hear Kate’s perspective on technical education here:
On Wednesday at EMC World, I had the opportunity to do something I haven’t seen (or heard) done before:
I appeared on an episode of EMC TV while recording my podcast.
Or EMC TV guest-starred on my podcast while filming a video episode.
Yes, Greg McCarthy and I interviewed each other — while being broadcast live on-screen all around the conference.
It was a lot of fun doing the double-recording. We started the video first, and Greg started out interviewing me. Within the first minute, I started recording, too, live on camera, interviewing Greg. The video ended first, and we continued for the full 15 minutes of the Minicast.
When I can find a link to the video, I’ll post it here, but in the meantime you can listen to the audio here:
As a bonus, I was recording sound when the video started, so you can hear the beginning of the video here:
On Monday at EMC World, Natalie Corridan-Gregg, Director of Competitive Intelligence for EMC held a session on Competitive Intelligence and Marketing. I wasn’t able to attend her session, but I was able to catch up with her on Tuesday to talk with her about it.
Full Disclosure: Earlier in my career, I worked in the Competitive Intelligence Group at EMC, and for a while reported directly to Natalie. So, obviously, the topic is one of great interest to me.
Natalie and I were able to take advantage of the EMC Radio space in the EMC Social Media Lounge to record our discussion live at EMC World. You can take a listen here.
Tuesday morning at EMC World, the Solutions Expo was opened up early to allow Media and Analysts some time on the show floor when things would be less crowded. In the middle of the Expo floor, EMC had installed a stand-alone, raised-floor data center.
Stephan Voss, Director of Product Marketing at EMC, and a long-time colleague of mine, took some time to talk with me about that data center set-up and what EMC had on display in there. We recorded this episode about ten feet away from the entrance to the demo data center.
On Monday at EMC World, I had the opportunity to sit down with Ed Beauvais, EMC’s Director of Isilon Product Marketing. Ed was gracious enough to agree to be interviews for the MiniCast. We talked about new features in Isilon OneFS 8.0 and how they fit into EMC’s “Edge to Core to Cloud” message.
At one point in the interview, it appears that Ed and I confused each other about CloudPools functionality. Ed and I chatted about that after the 15-minute time limit and cleared it up pretty quickly. Turns out we were talking about two similar but different things.
Ed was saying that CloudPools does not, at this time, allow you to use an IsilonSD Edge virtual instance running in the Cloud as your remote tier. I neither confirm or deny whether or not that functionality is on the Isilon roadmap. (No, seriously, I can’t. Sometimes I use that phrase to be cute and let folks know that I know something I’m not allowed to talk about yet, but in this case I can’t tell you anything because I really don’t know. Ed gave me nothing on this one at all…)
What I was talking about was using a physical Isilon cluster at another site as your remote CloudPools tier. That is supported, and can be done today.
With that clarification in mind, take a listen to Ed and I talking Isilon.
Being part of the Media program at EMC World gave me the opportunity to sit down and talk with Mark Geel on the same day EMC announced their Unity unified storage platform.
Take a listen to what mark and I had to say about Unity below.
The second Episode of the GeekFluent MiniCast was recorded live at EMC World on Sunday while the show floor was being constructed around us.
For this episode, I wanted to try something new. There are a lot of un-boxing videos out there, but no one seems to do unboxing audio recordings, and since I had just received my EMC World backpack, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to try it out.
To assist me in this unboxing, I was joined by Mark Browne and Lauren Friedman. It’s the episode that asks — and answers — the question “Why aren’t there more unboxing audios?”
Today, at EMC World, EMC announced their new mid-range unified storage platform, called Unity.
Some time last summer, I remember thinking that it was weird that we hadn’t seen a “Mega-Launch” event announcement from EMC. VNX2 seemed due for a refresh, but nothing happened. Now I know why — the EMC team was working on Unity instead.
I’ll be clear up-front: Unity is NOT “VNX3”. This is a completely-new architecture, and one that finally actually delivers on the “Unified” promise that VNX never quite achieved. Continue reading →
I’ve been thinking about trying podcasting for a while now, and so, with EMC World happening, well, right now, it seemed like the perfect time to just dive in.
That said, I’m pleased to announce Season One, Episode One of the GeekFluent Mini-Cast, recorded today.
The name comes from my decision to limit episodes to 15 minutes maximum length.
For the introductory episode, I’m joined by Mark Browne and Greg McCarthy of EMC. We recorded on the show floor of EMC World 2016, as it was being built around us (you can hear the construction noises quite clearly in the background). In this episode we talk about podcasting itself and its place in social media.
Take a listen below.
I’ll work on getting a presence on iTunes and Stitcher and all that, but for now I wanted to get this first episode live as quickly as possible.