Confessions of an eBiz Junkie

Creative Marketing at Work

I came across an interesting post from Chris Brogan that led me down an intriguing path of exploration. The end result, an impressive marketing campaign that's likely reaching tremendous eyeballs at relatively low cost.

I'm likely missing bits to this story still as Facebook connect is giving me a hard time making the final leap to the end game.

Anyways, check out this video from Chris sharing the contents of a mystery package he'd received :

<Spoiler Alert>

Thankfully, Chris is still with us despite the media reports but this sure peaked my interest. I did a blog search for Frenzied Waters and learned that several other prominent bloggers had received similar packages. Naturally, many of them have blogged about the unique package - wouldn't you?

These things aren't cheap, either. After all, this isn't your typical paper-weight like giveaway... But getting an interesting piece into the hands of folks with such an established audience is a powerful way to get your message across an enormous audience at far lower cost than traditional advertising.

The clues end up bringing you to Discovery.com and the return of Shark Week. As noted above, my 'discovery' ended when Facebook connect wouldn't cooperate from the interactive piece on Discovery.com... A glitch that I'm sure will be worked out in short order. An interesting aside - Long John Silver's bought the most prominent ad space on the Shark Week site promoting their new Fish Tacos... Still not sure how I feel about this but I'm definitely not hungry now.

I wanted to share as it reminded me of the power of creative advertising. Kudos to the folks who pulled this campaign together. It seems to be spreading rather successfully - as designed.

EMC World Bloggers Lounge

I've been neglecting my blogging duties of late - Blame it on road trips. Fortunately, travel was for two great events - the Razorfish Client Summit and the Inbound Marketing Summit - Both were excellent. Of course I also managed to pick up the obligatory nasty cold during many hours at airports.

Down to business... Man am I getting excited for EMC World this year. It's not to late to grab a spot if you haven't already.

I'm most looking forward to the EMC World Blogger's Lounge, sponsored by our friends at ZDNet. It's a bit of an experiment, and we're very much open to hearing how we can tailor it to your needs. It's open to anyone who blogs (or microblogs)... All you have to do to get in is sign up in the comments section below... Tell us who you are and give a link to your blog, if you would.

Here are the folks who have been added to our 'members only' list:

Sam Diaz (Blog - Between The Lines)
Jason Hiner (Blog - TechRepublic)
Dennis Martin (Blog - Wikibon Blog)
Andrew Conry-Murray (Blog - InformationWeek)
Rich Bocchinfuso (Blog - GotITSolutions.org)
Jeff Jedras (Blog - varbose)
Apoorv Durga (Blog - PCM Blog)
Laurence Hart (Blog - Word of Pie)
Bas Raayman (Blog - Renegade's Tech. Diatribe)
Greg White (Blog - Inside Enterprise IT)
Vincent Santo
Chris Evans (Blog - The Storage Architect)
Eric Kiel (Blog - Network0)
Ed Saipetch (Blog - Gestalt IT)
Natalie Corridan-Gregg (Blog - Working Mother Experience)
Marty Glover (Marty - the 'bouncers' are going to be looking for a url before they let you in ;)
Inna Gordin (Blog - SharePoint Reviews)
Denny Cherry (Blog - IT Knowledge Exchange)
Marsha Glassner (Blog - WebSerf)
Charles Hood
Bob Muenster
Greg Schulz (Blog -The Green and Virtual Data Center & Storage IO Blog)
Devang Panchigar (Blog - Storage Nerve)
C Skornicka
Nabeel
Jeff Adam
Jon Tabar (Blog)
Han Solo (So far, no word from Chewbacca)
Nada Wheelock
Karl Owen
Charles Kronauer
Mike Fishman
Kelly Lavin
James Lally
Butch McCrackin

From the EMC Blogging Corps
Chuck Hollis (Blog - Chuck's Blog)
Barry Burke (Blog - The Storage Anarchist)
Mark Twomey (Blog - StorageZilla)
Dave Spencer (Blog - Dave Talks Shop)
Dave Graham (Blog - Dave Graham's Weblog)
Stu Miniman (Blog - NoHype)
Andrew Chapman (Blog - Never Talk When You Can Nod)
Ed Newman (Blog - Mr. Infrastructure)
Brian Henderson (Blog - Power Windows)
Steve Kenniston (Blog - Backup and Beyond)
Me (Blog - Confessions of an eBiz Junkie)

We'll have some special badge bling on day one... Stop by to pick it up as it's your 'key' to access the lounge throughout the event. Okay - we won't make you have it blinking ALL the time...

We'll be giving away a few Flip cameras with hopes that winners capture their EMC World experience and share it with us. Winners will be announced first thing Monday at EMC World and posted here as well (No employees on this one - sorry). Stop by, say hi and see if you are the proudowner of a shiny new Flip camera.

I said this was an experiment, right? Well, we're going to try crowdsourcing the weeks' activities. We'll have a white board in play - and if there are people, topics, etc that you'd like to discuss or meet, simply add it to the board and we'll do our best. So far you've expressed interest in meeting some of the EMC Bloggers - and we'll make that happen.

Lastly, we'd ask you folks to tag your world content with EMCWorld. At the end of the day, we look at this as an opportunity to better get to know one another... And how better than to ensure we're aware of the conversations?

Sign up if you haven't... Truly looking forward to meeting all of you!

Let's Get Social @ EMC World

EMC World... It's right around the corner. I'm going... How about you??

I sure hope you are, as EMC and ZDNet are teaming up to do something pretty cool this year. If you're reading this post, you'll probably want in.

How about a 'members only' lounge designed exclusively for our blogging (and micro-blogging) friends? You know, a place just for you... Comfortable chairs, some spare laptops if you need them, wireless access, plenty of plugs for charging up - that sort of thing.

Sounds cool, huh?

How about if we throw in exclusive access to some of the EMC leadership team?? Nothing like chatting tech with industry leaders in a private and comfortable setting.

Wow, that sounds really cool...

How about taking some time to chat with EMC'ers around how we can better engage in the 2.0 world... What would you like to see EMC doing? How can we better communicate and collaborate with one another?

Heck, I'm getting giddy just thinking about it.

Still not enough? Man, you're a tough sell...

How about we raffle off a handful of Flip cameras to club members during the first day with hopes that you 2.0 folks capture your EMC World experience on video and share it with the world?

Yeah, I thought that might do it.

You want in? Easy... All you have to do is add a comment below and you'll have access to our special Bloggers Lounge. Let us know who you are and provide a link to your blog or Twitter account so we can get to know you better before the event.

Also, if there are special things you'd be interested in (different topics to chat about, certain EMC'ers you'd like to meet, etc;), let us know in your comment. We truly want to make this YOUR event.

Spread the word and see you there!

New Bloggers in the 'Sphere

Well, not new per se, but new to me anyways. It looks as though these guys have been part of the conversation for some time...

I recently came across Chad Sakak's blog - Virtual Geek. Chad's the Sr Director of our VMWare strategic alliance. On his blog, Chad discusses all things virtual. A good read - although in full disclosure, some of it's a bit hardcore... Trying to follow a couple of Chads posts gave me one of those 'ice cream headaches'... Man they can hurt.

Also of note, Craig Randall is sharing his thoughts over at Craig's Musings. Craig is a Software Architect within our CMA division and blogs about software services, service-oriented architecture and all sorts of neat things ECM.

Two great blogs from fellow EMC'ers. Be sure to stop by and say hello. Of course, you can check more of our provocative and awe-inspiring bloggers here.

Alltop - All of the Top Stories

Friend and fellow blogger Adam Cohen turned me on to Guy Kawasaki's latest project, Alltop. Alltop's tag line - "We've got all of the top stories covered all the time". I'd describe the service as a user friendly aggregator of relevant blogs organized around high level topics.

A screenshot of the main page:

Getting added as a source was as simple as drafting up an email with a brief description of who I am and what my blog's all about. The folks @ Alltop are very much open to feedback as they look to evolve existing categories and build out news ones. Once identifying a category that's of interest, you can jump right to it by going to (subject).alltop.com - In my case, Socialmedia.alltop.com.

An interesting approach on aggregation. Guy has a long track record of delivering interesting and innovative thinking. Thanks to the folks @ Alltop for being so responsive and for being open to suggestions for other future categories... Alltop.com is definitely something to watch.

EMC World Bloggers Unite!

It looks like I'll be attending EMC World this year - along with fellow EMC bloggers Mark Twomey, Barry Burke, Bill Petro and Steve Todd.

I thought we'd try something a bit different this time... I'd like to round up all of the attendees who will be blogging, Twittering, Flickr'ing, Utter'ing or (insert your favorite trendy tool here) their way through the event...

I want to gauge interest from the community and will work out logistics based on how many folks sign up... If two of you sign up, Storagezilla and I will be hanging out in the parking lot of the Manadalay Bay with a six-pack of Schlitz for a meet & greet and a game of kick-the-can. Any more than that and we'll find a formal venue where we can get together and have some fun...

I've put together a Wiki for sign-ups. If you'll be @ World and want to get together for a blogger meet & greet - please sign up here (The password to update is community). We'll use this Wiki as main point of information sharing as we try to pull something together.

There's also the EMC World community for attendees. If you haven't already signed up - check it out. There's a cool 'people finder' like app that let you find peers with similar interests and get together for a chat. Discussion forums are also available to help you interact with the minds behind the event and other attendees to help shape the breakouts and talk about what you'd like to see @ the event.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Edit - One more thing, Twiiter users, be sure to follow Twitter.com/EMCWorld for real time news & info during the conference...

Blogs Abound

EMC has had a presence in the blogosphere for well over a year now. We'd originally started out with a small handful of key voices, and the experience to date has been quite positive.

This week, we've extended our presence considerably by adding several new employee blogs. In the interest of full disclosure, most of these folks aren't new to blogging. Like myself, the majority have been doing it for some time. For others, our internal Social Media platform was a great way to test drive blogging and hone their voice before going public.

So what?

Good people, good conversation and muchos huevos

Staying on top of the latest and greatest technology / trend / site du jour while balancing the necessary daily tactical stuff can be a challenge. For me, one of the best ways to keep up is through social events with like minded folks.

I had the pleasure of sharing a more than healthy breakfast at Henrietta's Table this morning with just such a group. Thanks to John Wall for pulling the event together, and to C.C., Jenny, Lisa, Alyssa and Jeremiah for the conversations and laughs. Discussions were all over the place - from High speed internet propoganda, to a Facebook vs. LinkedIn debate, to Jenny's crazy little SLR lensey type thing that was getting attention from even the non-webby tables.

Coincidentally, Boston's Oktoberfest was taking place right outside of Henrietta's. After a larger than life breakfast, some of the group chose to check out the local museum scene, others to get home to the family while others walked the Oktoberfest event piling fried dough and Sam Adams into the same crowded space as the seven egg omelet... (Seriously, what's wrong with me??).

Thanks to all - Hope to see you at the big shindig on the 18th!

Cheers.
LD

The Internet Evolution

Just wanted to call your attention to a new site that launched this morning (10/1)... Described as the site for news, analysis & opinion about the future of the internet, Internet Evolution looks to be a site worthy of a closer look. The voices of the site are as impressive as their overarching theme... Jonathon C. Abbott, EVP and COO at WGBH, Dr. Ram Charan, Paul Mockapetris (the inventor of DNS) and our own Diane Green (President, CEO and co-founder of VMware) - just to name a few. Take some time to browse the site. Only the first day of launch (congrats, btw), and there's already days worth of interesting reading.

On an unrelated note, we still have space left for our Boston area community event. If you're in the area on 10/18, be sure to sign up! We've got an exciting list of attendees already... Looks to be an outstanding event.

Cheers,
LD