Time to Retire the #HireDaveNow Hashtag

You read that right. After what felt like a very long job search (to be fair it only felt that way because it was, in fact, very long), I no longer need to use the #HireDaveNow hashtag. This frees me up to focus on other Dave-related hashtags, like the very timely #WriteInDave2020, the crowd favorite #ThanksDave (which I’ve only learned just now some people are using in a very serious fashion), and the one that started the Dave-related hashtag phenomenon, #LetDaveDrive.

Acronis logo

By the time you’re reading this, I will have already started my new job as a Senior Product Marketing Manager at Acronis. I’ll be way over at the technical end of the marketing spectrum, helping folks understand how Acronis solutions work and helping people understand the business value of technical features. Continue reading

Cisco Names Champions for 2018

At the end of last last week, Cisco sent out the official “Welcome” emails to the folks they’ve named as Cisco Champions for 2018.

What are Cisco Champions exactly? you might ask.

It’s a fair question, I’ll admit. Started in 2014, the Cisco Champion program is a way for Cisco to recognize those members of the IT community — who are not Cisco employees — who are going above and beyond their job descriptions to find ways to contribute to and share knowledge with that IT community.

To quote from Cisco’s website:

Cisco Champions are passionate experts who share their perspectives with the community.

In my experience, that’s exactly who they are. Sometimes I feel like there are people out there who are only interested in joining community programs like this one in order to grab some free swag, but I’ve never gotten that vibe from any of the Cisco Champions I’ve met in person or interacted with online. In general, I find them to be very enthusiastic about the technology we all use and very eager to learn — and help others learn, too. I find that I get energized when I spend time with this community.

Cisco recognizes Champions in the following interest areas:

  • Data Center
  • Collaboration
  • Enterprise Networks
  • Internet of Things
  • Security

With that said, I’m both proud, humbled, and a little nervous to have been named a Cisco Champion for Data Center for my 5th year. Proud because, well, it’s a honor to be selected. Humbled because when I look at the other folks who’ve been selected, I see several folks who I’ve looked up to for a while, and someone has decided that I belong in the same grouping as them. And a little nervous because someone has decided that I belong in the same grouping as these folks — a little concerned about not living up to expectations.

Anyway, thank you Cisco, and congratulations to all the other Cisco Champions, both new and returning!

Most-Read GeekFluent Posts in 2017

Hello, and welcome to 2018.

It’s a new year which means it’s time for a new check-in on how content on this site did during the previous year. Let’s start with the ten most-read posts in 2017. (All statistics used in this post are gathered from the WordPress app.)

Most-Read Posts in 2017:

  1. What’s New in VMware vSphere 6.5 (2016) – 6,958 views
  2. Use Your Windows Laptop as an Isilon Console Terminal (2013) – 1,973 views
  3. What’s New in Isilon OneFS 8.0 (2016) – 1,963 views
  4. Magic Balloon: A Whiteboarding Creativity Game/Exercise (2013) – 1,728 views
  5. Cisco Enters Hyperconverged Market with HyperFlex (2016) – 1,344 views
  6. Job Search Mode: Engaged! (2017) – 1,168 views
  7. Summary of Monday’s Announcements at Dell EMC World 2017 (2017) – 917 views
  8. Pure Storage Announces NVMe DirectFlash and New FlashArray Model (2017) – 881 views
  9. Pure Storage FlashBlade is Now GA (2017) – 838 views
  10. EMC Announces Next-Generation VMAX Storage Array (2014) – 813 views

The first thing I noticed was that only four of the ten most-read posts in 2017 were actually written in 2017. The second thing I noticed was the huge gap between the #1 and #2 spots. The most-viewed post, on vSphere 6.5, actually received 19% of the total views the entire site got during 2017.

Most-Read Posts Written in 2017

I know this list is less “fair” to the more recent posts, but that’s just the way things go.

  1. Job Search Mode: Engaged! – 1,168 views
  2. Summary of Monday’s Announcements at Dell EMC World 2017 – 917 views
  3. Pure Storage Announces NVMe DirectFlash and New FlashArray Model – 881 views
  4. Pure Storage FlashBlade is Now GA – 838 views
  5. Job Search Successful – I’m Headed to the Cloud – 562 views
  6. Things Marketers Need to Just STOP Doing – 354 views
  7. Cisco Announces Champions for 2017 – 338 views
  8. Premise vs. Premises: A Modest Proposal – 307 views
  9. HPE Acquiring SimpliVity for a Bargain Basement Price – 229 views
  10. An Open Letter to Influence Marketers – 222 views

I’ll admit I’m happy that “Job Search” post got top readership. It and the various social media work around it were instrumental in helping me find my current job.

I do wish my “Modest Proposal” had gotten more reads — and that the proposal itself had a far higher adoption rate.

I’m a little sad that the “Open Letter” made it into the top ten. I think the Addendum I wrote to it is actually a far better piece.

The Power of Search

60.7% of all pageviews on this site in 2017, came from search engines. Most folks aren’t necessarily looking for me, but they’re looking for me info on things I’m writing about. They’re doing what I do — running a search and then reading what they’re referred to. Makes me think I might want to look into some SEO at some point.

Conclusions?

I seem to be branching out with what I write — both top ten lists this year cover a wider variety of vendors and topics than the lists have in past years.

I wrote more about myself recently. Two of the top posts I wrote this year were about what I was up to.

I pretty much always feel that I’m not creating new content or posting as often as I “should” be. I’m not sure if that will actually ever change, but a good first step might be convincing myself that short posts really are OK.

Job Search Successful — I’m Headed to the Cloud

First things first: I want to thank everyone who has followed along and supported me during the recent job search. It’s meant a lot to me to know that I was never really alone during it.

A special thank you to all of you who contacted me and acted as “connectors”, connecting me to people, companies, and job opportunities.

During the search, a few people asked me why I kept mentioning my job search on social media. My answer was always the same — every time I mention the job search, someone new contacts me with ideas, suggestions, or to help connect me to a job opportunity I was previously unaware of. In fact, a tweet about my job search is directly responsible for connecting me to my new job. I’ll do a future blog post with more details about how social media helped my job search.

But, none of that is what you came here to read at the moment. You came here to hear about:

My New Job

I’m very happy to announce that, starting today, I’m joining the team at Virtustream.

For those who aren’t familiar with it, Virtustream is a cloud provider. (And one of the Dell Technologies companies.) Their offerings are designed for enterprises and global IT organizations. While they’re not a “household name” like the “Big Three” in cloud (AWS, Azure, and Google) are, I think Virtustream’s in a great place to get there because of the things that make them different than the Big Three.

The main difference I see is that using any of the Big Three is essentially a do-it-yourself experience. While you can do it all yourself with Virtustream, they also offer a full suite of managed services to choose from. Additionally, they also have offerings specifically built for Enterprises, for Federal, and for Healthcare.

What Will I Be Doing?

In the job posting, the official job title was listed as:

Senior Consultant: Technical Product Marketing

But, yeah, that doesn’t really tell you much about what I’ll actually be doing.

I’ll be in an individual contributor role, working with almost every team within Virtustream to create technical content, both for internal and external use. This will include articles, presentations, white papers, trainings, videos, whiteboards, demos, blog posts, and, well, pretty much any other format that folks would find as an effective way to consume information.

The job looks to be the perfect mix of “everybody already has a good idea of what they need from me” and “go forth to create and define this role for yourself”.

As a big plus, I’ll be getting to work with several folks I’ve known for years now who have not only earned my professional respect, but who I also actually like a lot.

So I’ll still be working with storage and virtualization, but I’ll also be moving that work deeper into the Cloud than I have in the past. Definitely looking forward to it.

Look Who’s Coming to Dell EMC World 2017

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.

A Brief Personal History

Continue reading

Job Search Mode: Engaged!

After five very happy years, I find myself back on the job market. Instead of attempting to take on a new job search entirely on my own (which is exactly what I would have done in the past), I’m looking to grow my “ask for help” muscles by, well, asking for help.

Besides, other folks have a different perspective on both me and the job market than I do — if only because they’re standing somewhere different than I am. Having additional viewpoints might help me find an fantastic opportunity that I might not have otherwise heard of, or might not have considered.

What Happened

Continue reading

State of the Blog Report: 2016

New Year’s Day. Today we find ourselves breathing a sigh of relief that we actually made it through the year that was 2016. It’s also a time to look forward with a mixture of hope and dread at the year that will be 2017.

This post focuses on looking back at how GeekFluent did during 2016.

With a total of 36,720 views, 2016 was the blog’s second-biggest year, coming in at 99.5% of 2014’s total of 36,900 views. A more detailed look follows below. Continue reading

Report on GeekFluent’s Predictions for 2016 — How’d I Do?

report-cardLast year I did my first “Predictions for Next Year” post. I see a lot of these kinds of posts near the end of the year. I wanted to take things a step further and look back to see how well I did.

It is, of course, difficult for any of us to be completely objective about ourselves, so to help keep me honest, I’ll spell out the scoring methodology I’m using to rate the accuracy of my predictions. Additionally, I’m explicitly soliciting feedback. If you think I’ve scored myself in any of the categories incorrectly (either too high or too low), make your case in the comments.  If your reasoning is sound, I’ll adjust the score.

Scoring Methodology

I made predictions on four distinct topics. To rate my predictions’ overall accuracy on a scale of 0 to 100, I’ll rate the predictions for each topic on a 0 to 25, with 0 points if I was completely off-base, and 25 if I was completely dead-on accurate.

So, without further ado, let’s see how I did: Continue reading

Off to the Bio-IT World 2016 Expo

Bio-IT WorldI’ll be spending Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday this week at the Bio-IT World 2016 Conference and Expo at the Seaport World Trade Center in Boston.

Mostly, I’ll be spending my time on the “Expo” side of things. I’ll be doing booth duty for Accunet Solutions, talking about the solutions we can offer Life Sciences customers.

If you’ll be at the conference, stop by the Accunet booth (#327) and say “Hi!” If you hadn’t planned on attending, but will be in the area, reach out — I can get you an Exhibit Hall pass.

The Exhibit Hall will be open:

  • Tuesday 5 April – 17:00 to 19:00
  • Wednesday 6 April – 9:45 to 18:30
  • Thursday 7 April – 10:00 to 14:00

Naturally, I’ll have GeekFluent stickers to give to anyone who asks.