Confessions of an eBiz Junkie

Innovation Day at EMC

I have the absolute pleasure today of participating in EMC's Innovation Conference. It's hard to imagine a year has passed since our last event. As I type this, I sit in our Santa Clara facility (California) watching a live broadcast from Bangalore, India where EMC CTO Jeff Nick is opening the days ceremonies. Santa Clara is but one of 13 satellite sites across the globe participating in the days activities.

Breakthrough thinking, adding value to our customers, adding value to EMC, improving the industry at large and identifying ways to further encourage innovation are all among the criteria for idea submissions. This is a wonderful program that really helps highlight the incredible talent, thinking and creativity that thrives within our culture.

In 2007, this program generated about 400 ideas. This year, about 1500 submissions from across the globe made for a tough competition. Kudos to the team that invests the time to pull this together, those who submit ideas and to the culture that simply feeds on innovation.

As I sit here listening to Jeff review the 100 finalists, I'm struck by two things... Certainly the creativity and breadth of ideas is simply staggering. But the focus on the customer is the most impressive aspect to me. It's evident to me that improving our lives by advancing the digital world is among the core drivers for idea submitters and employees alike.

Also of note, just how much our social efforts are paying off. EMC|ONE is at the very hub of global collaboration for this program. Like any such offering, it connects people and effectively enables innovation on a global scale that was simply not possible a few short years ago.

I managed to spend a few minutes with Dan Campbell. Dan is Vice President of Sales for our Western Division, and is also the executive sponsor for the California based events taking place around the Innovation Conference. Dan provides his thoughts on the importance of innovation to EMC, and to our customers.

New FTC Guidelines and Social Marketing

On Monday, the Federal Trade Commission approved revisions to the guidelines it gives advertisers on appropriate use of endorsement and testimonial ads.

The update includes new examples to reinforce the notion that connections between advertisers and endorsers (connections that may not be obvious to consumers) must be disclosed. These are timely updates with the continued emergence of word of mouth marketing via the social web. 

From my point of view, this is a welcomed update. We continually work to understand the online behaviors of our audience. Peer to peer content continues to be among the most trusted sources of information during the buying cycle, regardless of size of purchase. Before purchasing just about any product, I always turn to opinions of others for perspective.

The notion of paid blogging (and micro-blogging) has been an emerging and heavily debated trend for some time. To me, exploiting consumer trust by seeding fictitious or paid 'peer reviews' is simply bad business, and runs the risk of truly damaging the credibility of user-generated content and the social web in general.

There's much more detail in the entire update for those interested.  I look forward to digesting a bit more, but in the meantime, will continue to take the approach of transparency rules... It's the safe and proper approach.

Are your ears burning?

Anyone every ask you if your ears were burning? If so, it means they were talking about you in some fashion or another. I often wonder in what context my name came up? Was it good or bad? Who else was in on the discussion?

Imagine if I could have a tool that let me know when such conversations were taking place... Letting me know when I'm being talked about and in what vein... I'd use it - you?

Readers of this blog know that we're focusing energy on driving awareness and subsequent proficiency within the 2.0 world across our global employee population. No small feat.

We've used channels like 'Lunch and Learn' events, monthly community meet-ups, internal Tweetups, etc; - All designed to drive awareness, comfort and proficiency within the social web.

I wanted to share another tool in the arsenal that we've just launched as it may be of value in your toolkit as well. The 'dashboard' below is running on a couple of large plasma screens within EMC campuses' with more being added soon. It pulls in near real-time tweets and photos tagged to our brand.

Friends who hung out at the Bloggers Lounge at EMC World will recall something very similar.

The bottom line - we're putting conversations about our brand front and center. We're using this to remind folks that conversations are taking place 24x7 - and we need to not only be aware, but be listening and engaged.

Will it drive awareness across the enterprise overnight? No... But, it will draw a crowd. It will have employees asking others "What's that? What's a Tweet? How can I participate?". In the midst of transformation, such questions are music to my ears.

Domain Scams - Wanna Buy a Bridge?

Just wanted to share one of those things that crossed my desk and invoked a "Really?!?!" moment.

The world of domain management can be quite complex, but is also a critical component of your digital strategy. Many overlook the fact that a slip in renewing your primary domain(s) could result in your email and web sites becoming unavailable... And in extreme cases, you may not be able to get it back.

As you'd expect, we get emails daily from folks who either want to buy or sell us domains. This one was particularly interesting...

An email offered to sell us a particular domain with EMC in the title. It was for a bargain basement price of $199. What a steal!!! As is par for the course, we did a whois lookup to see who the current owner was and learn about the domains history.

Here's the twist...  It's not registered. No one is currently holding the domain. For a mere $20, I could register it myself in about 18 seconds.

It's clever, I'll give them that. Unsuspecting web folks may be apt to jump on this 'deal of the day', only to unnecessarily give the 'middle man' a 10x markup for doing absolutely nothing.

I'm inclined to buy it for $20, then respond to the 'seller' advising that we're extremely interested in acquiring it - and are assuming that the $199 is just to get us in the door to start bidding.. :)

Keep an eye out, my friends.. And since we're on the topic, when was the last time you checked in to see if any of your domain assets were up for renewal?

Going In With a Plan

It's so easy to be enamored with emerging social tools. You're hard pressed to watch the news these days without hearing about Twitter this or Facebook that. If you're sitting anywhere near a marketer, you can almost hear the gears ticking as visions of mass messaging blasts dance merrily in their heads.

Establishing a presence in the social web will likely backfire if you go in with intentions of pushing out your message in a 1.0 fashion. It's been said 17 bazillion times and I'll likely say it a bazillion more - it's about engaging your audience, establishing meaningful relationships and adding value.

Often times folks need to be on Twitter or Facebook because of it's shiny object appeal. Jumping in for the sake of it will likely lead to failure. Jumping in with clearly defined objectives will dramatically improve your chances of success.

Am I sharing the obvious? Perhaps. I mean, EVERYONE puts time into considering objectives, audience, success criteria, etc; before embarking on a project, right?

I was recently pulled into a discussion with an internal group who wanted to discuss their plans to leverage the social web. I accept the invite fearing that I'll have to do my usual routine discussing the need for commitment, desire to truly engage, and so forth.

How happy am I when I walk in and their lead in slide is 'Primary Objectives'.

It may seem obvious in any project you embark on. However, given the ease of setup in a 2.0 world, I fear it's very easy to shoot before aiming. Doing so will most often lead to failure. Even worse, potential damage to your brand.

Walking in with eyes wide open, understanding WHAT you're trying to accomplish, understanding WHO your audience is and considering how you'll MEASURE for success are particularly important in the social space.

The Digital Universe set for its own Big Bang

Greetings from EMC World. Things are in full swing here in Orlando, FLA... An amazing show last night from the Gin Blossoms, our bloggers lounge is full of activity and Joe is about to take the stage to formally kick off the week.

No doubt you'll be seeing plenty of activity coming out of EMC World this week, but I couldn't resist mentioning this IDC white paper on the Digital Universe. It's an update to a similar piece from last year, but the numbers this go are all the more staggering.

Some highlights :

• 487 billion gigabytes of information were added to the Digital Universe in 2008.
• In 2012, there will be five times as many bits created or captured and added to the Digital Universe as in 2008.
• For all the information we create as individuals - taking pictures, updating our Facebook profile, sending emails, watching HDTV programs - an amount greater than that is created or captured about us in the Digital Universe.

I found the paper numbing. It talks about the impact of the economic crisis on the growth of the Digital Universe. Turns out - there hasn't been one. By that, even more information was generated in 2008 than predicted (by a factor of 3%).

While the Digital Universe is expected to grow by a factor of almost 5 during the next four years, IT budgets are only expected to grow by a factor of 1.2. (Note - warning flag should go up here...)

So, we're generating tons of information - and ease of producing and publishing information becomes easier each and every day.

The need for security and information management techniques will be key to organizing, managing and CONSUMING all of this information in the days to come, and the demand put on IT organizations will be enormous.

It's a provocative and well written piece... Definitely take some time to give it a read. And don't forget, you can monitor your own contributions to the Digital Universe with this nifty Digital Footprint Calculator.

That's all for now. Standby as we'll be doing our part to contribute to the growth of the Digital Universe from down here at EMC World.

A Social Launch - Introducing Symmetrix V-Max

After much anticipation, EMC has announced Symmetrix V-Max. This is undoubtedly among the most significant launches in EMC history.

For those that want to understand the impact of this announcement, Barry is maintaining a complete list of launch day coverage. I thought I'd provide a point-of-view from a different angle. As I watched the launch process unfold, one thing was abundantly clear – Our adoption of the social web has touched virtually every corner of EMC. We started our journey in Social Media not too long ago. Now our launch teams consider a social strategy as part of their core launch plan.

How cool is that?

I'm getting Cozy with Mozy

I love these guys. What else can I say. Share your funny ha-ha computer disaster video and win a trip to Hawaii. How cool is that? (Wait... are employees eligible?) This one's a gem.

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GMail & Video Chat

Props to Google for the unexpected treat today. Video and audio streaming are now components within Gmail chat.

A nice addition for those who use Gmail as their primary mail & IM client. For me, it solves an irritating problem that I believe to be rather widespread...

We have a significant contingent of MAC users - especially within the web world. Most have built in iSight cameras - so the hardware exists to support video conferencing across the global team. Unfortunately, iChat requires firewall ports be opened up (if memory serves, 16 or so). Of course, getting folks to poke holes through your security takes a tad more than a short form and a nice little note. Windows users are taking advantage of LiveMeeting 07, but video conferencing in the product is limited to the full blown client. Naturally, there's no OS X version.

Alas - no easy solution for us MAC folks... Until today.

I came across the Gmail blog this afternoon, read the news, had what could be described as a small panic attack, installed the plugin and IM'd a pal. Voi la - internal video streaming without any new hardware or software, no new servers, nothing... Better yet, I'll still be getting holiday cards from my friends on the security team...

You've got to love it when someone unexpectedly drops a solution to a longstanding issue in your hands. Oh right, and for free :)

Thanks again, Google.

EMC Announces Atmos

I'm not going to try to get into today's announcement in any detail...It's not my foray and there are others doing a fine job already... Just wanted to call your attention to it as, from a user POV, this strikes me as pretty cool technology.

This morning, EMC announced Atmos - Policy based information management within the cloud. Chuck has a comprehensive write-up here, 'Zilla's provided his POV and Steve Todd weighs in with thoughts. I'm no expert on the details of this announcement, but found these blogs and the video below to be quite helpful in providing a high level overview.

My interpretation - and likely simplifying to a fault - this could enable me to access my stuff anywhere - anytime - through any device. I don't need to understand the bits & bytes to know that's pretty cool.