A New World

This past week I attended two events that stretched and twisted by my idea of what makes a "conference" beyond any previous imagining. First, I was a featured speaker on Social Media at The BD Event, a storage industry gathering in Palo Alto. The name of the event was cause for snickering in some circles--the letters didn't stand, as some suggested, for "bondage and domination" but rather "business development." So get your minds out of the dungeon.

The second event, She's Geeky, was an "unconference" for women in tech and other geeky pursuits. I recorded two podcasts for my weekly women in tech series, TechnoGirlTalk while on site at the event and got to know a whole lot of really interesting women. The podcast was also a proud "community sponsor" of the event.

Both events were a departure from the traditional. The BD Event was, as my copanelist Stephen Foskett put it, a deconstruction of the trade show concept. It kept all of the good stuff, which involves meeting and talking with others with whom one might do business, while dispensing with the clutter--booths, vendors hawking new products, and so on. There's a nice video of Stephen explaining this on analyst David Vellante's Wikibon blog.

Here is the video:




As Stephen says in this video clip, this is what the future of what we're currently calling "social media." It's about "democratizing and personalizing communication." And as I learned later this past week, She's Geeky is part of a larger "unconference" movement, in which folks are thinking about how to tap into human ways of relating that yield new and energizing results. This is related to the way that neurons are interconnected in the brain, and all kinds of other exciting research areas. Man, is this my kind of thinking!

At She's Geeky, there were no preplanned panels or talks--the participants themselves determined this at the start of each day. The organizer, Kaliya, who is known across the interwebs as IdentityWoman described the structure to me as "more organized than a cocktail party but less than a panel of talking heads."

What struck me about this was how similar this "offline" event was to the way that my online life now functions. I went to a meeting or panel, and then if I met someone with whom I clicked in some way, we took our conversation over to a table, sat down and chatted further. Then we stood up and joined the larger stream. It worked beautifully, and it made me wonder if our culture's obsession with structure, leadership, and climbing the ladder may be crumbling in the face of these more natural and creative ways of connecting with others.

So, with all this in mind, I have to admit that I was less impressed by another gathering that took place this past week. This was one in which a charismatic leader stood up and pronounced from on high that there would be a new product sent down to the masses, and that it would be good. And speaking of snickering, this one had a name that caused much mirth among the female population. According to Gizmodo, the #2 trending topic on Twitter is not the actual "iPad," but the parody word "iTampon" -- ahead of "Apple," "Steve Jobs" and other relevant words.


Perhaps even the famously social-media-paranoid Apple might want to consider some sort of crowdsourcing before making another mega high profile gaffe like this one. Or, barring that, they could at least remember to include a woman or two on their product naming committee.

Would You Tune into a Bitch Session?

Soon, this blog will be much more than a bunch of words. It will be a multimedia extravanganza of sound and fury, signifying everything there is to say about tech, social media and other such important concerns. Today, I head to San Jose to do a video interview with mystery man number one, whose name will be revealed at a later date. Film at 11. (Or, actually, more likely, film at noon in a couple days as I work on editing the video...)


And watch out for a NEW podcast series featuring women in technology. The idea was inspired by an interview I did on Infosmack, a weekly podcast focused on storage and related tech on cool community site Storage Monkeys. In it, we dissected the question of "booth babes" at VMWorld and other tech trade shows. Greg Knieriemen brought me on along with two guys who were, at the time, jousting over the question, Stephen Foskett of Nirvanix and Kirby Wadsworth of F5. (Here are their respective posts on the topic: http://siliconangle.net/ver2/2009/09/10/dont-make-your-startup-look-stupid-with-booth-babes-and-chotchkies/ and http://storagesanity.blogspot.com/2009/09/ahwhippersnapper.html.)

At the time, I pointed out what to me should be obvious--there are plenty of intelligent, interesting and yes, beautiful women in tech. What do we need to hire models for? My argument was further bolstered at a show just a few weeks later when Jay Livens of Sepaton tweeted that he went to Kirby's F5 booth at a storage conference and asked the booth babe who the head of marketing is for the company. Surprise, surprise, she didn't know the answer. Well, perhaps the problem was that her head was so full of debates about data migration and file virtualization that she didn't have the bandwidth for such unimportant questions.

Anyhow, the upshot is that I've had it with the stereotype of the unattractive geek woman who lacks social skills. And I'm out to prove it wrong, week after week. Here's the question, what should I call it?  

My first thought was to call it "Bitch Session." Funny, irreverent, and... um, maybe a little too irreverent? When I bounced the name off my husband, his first reaction was to laugh, but his second reaction was to say, "who would go on a show with that name?" So I ask you, dear readers. What would be a better way to sum up a podcast featuring some of the smartest and most engaging women in technology today? The name needs to be still hip and fun, but perhaps oughtn't invoke the oh-so-politically incorrect word above? Or, are you okay with it? Inquiring bitchy minds want to know....

Party Time! A Tech Gossip Column

I've been having way too much fun lately. And by that I mean going to parties and calling that "work." Wednesday and Thursday of last week were taken up with many a drink- and talk-fest for Tech Field Day. I was on the organizing committee for that event, which brought together bloggers and other influencers from around the world for two days of tech deep dives at Silicon Valley companies. (See my earlier post for background.)

Here's a pic I took when first arriving Wednesday evening of two of the Tech Field Day attendees, Devang Panchigar ("StorageNerve") and Chris Evans ("The Storage Architect") in the lobby of the San Jose Airport Doubletree. In the background, Tech Field Day organizer and Gestalt IT publisher Stephen Foskett is getting help from the desk about his lost luggage--just one of the many snafus that threatened to derail things (but which somehow never did).

The Field Day itself was a blast, but much has already been written about that, so I'll leave that to the experts. Suffice it to say, this was a group of smart people. In fact, they were so smart that I found it hard to keep up with the conversation, even when it wasn't about tech! That's just sad if you think about it. (Starting to consider going back to school in order to prep for future Field Days...) Here's the list of all the attendees--which is also posted on Flickr with face mapping here:

Greg Knieriemen (Storage Monkeys/Infosmack), John Obeto (Absolutely Windows), Carlo Costanzo (VMWare Info), Rod Haywood (Musings of Rodos), Rick Vanover (Virtualization Review, TechRepublic, Rick Vanover's blog), Stephen Foskett (Gestalt IT, Packrat, Enterprise Storage Strategies), Nigel Poulton (Ruptured Monkey), Bas Raayman (Renegade's Technical Diatribe), Ed Saipetch (Breathing Data, Gestalt IT), Simon Seagrave (TechHead), Chris Evans (The Storage Architect), Devang Panchigar (StorageNerve, Gestalt IT), Greg Ferro (Ethereal Mind, Gestalt IT), John Hickson (Studio Sysadmins), Robin Harris (Storage Mojo), Rich Brambley (VM/ETC/Gestalt IT).

Luckily for me, Field Day event planner Claire Chaplais and I got to have a little girl time to balance out the XY intensity of the thing. I'm just gonna spill it--while the boys were over at 3Par learning everything there is to know about thin provisioning, chunklets and Symantec storage, Claire and I were getting pedicures at a place on Santana Row. A much needed little break!

Thursday night was Tech Field Day's big bash at the Computer History Museum. True, there were a few other tech-related parties that night, which posed some competition. I was tasked with sending out last-minute invites, and I have to admit I began to panic as person after person told me they were already booked. But as it turned out, our party had just the right mix of folks.  So for those who instead headed to the annual Ubergizmo awards night, Uber10, or the Outcast CEO bash in Menlo Park, all I can say to you is, what could possibly compete with a party that included a video of storage rapper 3P and me shopping for computer junk at Weird Stuff?

http://www.storagerap.com/2009/11/boy-the-gestalt-it-tech-field-day-yesterday-sure-was-fun.html

The party was quite the who's who of the storage/virtualization/networking industry of Silicon Valley: TechValidate CEO Brad O'Neill (who also sponsored the party); from 3Par: raptastic blogger Marc Farley and marketing guy Craig Nunes; Bhava Communications folks Liz Zaborowska (founder and principal), Aaron Quinones and Dana Loberg; John Mark Troyer, the social media guy at VMware; Jim Sherhart of Data Robotics; Karriem Adams from MDS Micro; Jon Toor from Xsigo; a guy from Intel wearing a vintage black leather jacket, Georgiana Comsa of Silicon Valley PR, two people from HP--one of whom was Erin Collopy, who accepted an award for creating the whole "Field Day" concept--and many others. A crew from my client Ocarina Networks were there as well, including Mike Davis and CEO Murli Thirumale, who seemed to be getting along great with the participants--chatting amiably with Gestalt writers Edsai (Ed Saipetch) and StorageNerve (Devang Panchigar).

By Monday morning, I had recovered sufficiently from the craziness of Tech Field Day to attend a breakfast sponsored by Louis Gray (if you don't know who this is, you might want to find out) for a startup he's working with, My6Sense. Louis has a new consulting company that is shaping up to be very interesting looking, Paladin Advisors. It was quite an honor to be invited, and I couldn't help but look around the room at all the social media heavies in attendance, like Chris Heuer, founder of Social Media Club and Adam Helweh of Secret Sushi, and wonder just what in the heck I was doing there.
  
But Louis, Adam and Chris were all very friendly. Turned out Adam even knew more about my last name than I do. Apparently, Mugrabi can mean "from Morocco." I was wrong and you were right, Adam, wherever you are. The my6sense guys were really cool, as well. They were both Israeli and so I was able to throw around the fact that as a spouse of an Israeli, I've actually been there and stuff. I've even hit the Tel Aviv club scene.

I got chatting afterwards with the CEO, a serial entrepreneur named Avinoam Rubinstein. He was suprisingly down-to-earth, and bore a striking resemblance to the singer Lyle Lovett. He didn't like that I referred to his company as a "filter" -- with an infrastructure based on artificial intelligence, this app is far more than just a content cheesecloth. Yet in essence that is what it does, taking the firehose of information and serving up a trickle of content that suits one's own reading habits. The difference: It has the eerie ability to figure out your interests before you know you have them. As Louis put it while introducing the company, "my6sense knows me better than I know myself."

The founder, Barak Hachamov was extremely articulate about the potential of the service they offer. His vision--to offer something as useful to a mobile audience as Google has been for search. Here's the pic I snapped of him:

Notice that big basket of toast? No one touched a single slice. Oh, and did I mention that the breakfast took place at the Ritz Carlton SF? Yes, a fancy spot, but one that required I climb a hill and some steps in order to get there from BART. Good thing I didn't wear heels.

And... as I just discovered today, Stephen Foskett and I will be speaking about social media and what we learned from Tech Field Day at an upcoming storage industry conference, The BD Event in San Francisco January 26-28. VaNessa Duplessie, the event organizer will also be part of that panel. If you're in any way connected to the storage industry, I suggest you attend this event. They had an extremely successful one in Boston, and now we're lucky enough to have one in Bay Area.

That's the tech gossip update for today. Be well, do good work, and party on, dude.

Traveling at the Speed of Social Media

I expect to have a lot more to say about what to do--and what not to do--as a blogger after next week. That's because this Thursday and Friday are Tech Field Day, a new experiment in social media organizing. Sponsored by online publication Gestalt IT, the event brings together influential tech bloggers from around the world for two days of talking, blogging, tweeting and hands-on demonstrations at storage, networking and virtualization companies in Silicon Valley.

The event has been the talk of town among storage and virtualization bloggers. On Twitter, the hashtag #TechFieldDay has been active for weeks. In many ways, it's looking to be a model for how to do a viral campaign. Let the participants themselves talk about it, adding in their own thoughts and questions in whatever ways they see fit. And this is exactly how it's been going. Everyone involved is talking about it on Twitter--not to mention their own blogs. This in turn leads to even more chatter and interest. It's a positive upward spiral.

Perhaps most astounding: the event took just over five weeks' time to plan and execute--a lesson in how fast-moving the social web can allow one to operate. But boy has this been an intense month.

The powerhouse behind this is Stephen Foskett, publisher of Gestalt IT. In early October, he had recently returned from HP Tech Day in Colorado Springs and was determined to do something about it. The event in Colorado had electrified the storage blogging community--a select group of whom were brought in for a day and half of demos, tours, and talks about the company's latest and greatest storage offerings.

Until then, many of them thought HP was all over the place when it came to storage. As one skeptical invitee, Nigel Poulton of Ruptured Monkey put it, he arrived believing that HP just didn't "get" storage. He viewed their storage portfolio as "bloated" and "chaotic."

It could've been a disaster, but then again HP really had nowhere to go but up with these guys. And HP had its act together. It recognized that generating a whole lot of marketing "buzz" with slick presentations and PR wasn't going to wash with these hard-nosed, skeptical bloggers. So instead, the participants were given what looked to be carte blanche to poke around the HP site. They gathered around terminals and tried out HP LeftHand, setting up the cluster and getting a chance to see what happened if a cable was pulled out. In short, the crew at HP let them to do what geeks love to do--mess around with stuff in an attempt to break it.

They were allowed to video whatever they liked, including a tour through the data center, where there was much drooling over the newest EVAs. These videos then popped up on their blogs. Great advertising for HP. All through the two days, many of us were glued to the #HPTechDay hashtag on Twitter, watching the photos and comments pop up in real time. In the end, even the curmudgeonly Nigel wrote that he'd decided HP "do get storage." High cotton.

A week or so later, Stephen was effusing on the phone to me about the potential of such an event for all manner of tech companies. He suggested I talk to some of my clients about bringing bloggers in and hosting them for something similar. "Hey," he suddenly asked. "What about having one single event, where several smaller companies could pool their resources and bring the bloggers into town together? What do you think?"

What did I think? I thought it was one of the best ideas I'd ever heard. At that moment, we both realized he had hit on a winner. If he could pull it off--and from what I knew of him, I was certain he could--it could be a chance for a whole lot of smaller companies to get the kind of exposure and understanding of their technology that I as a blogger and social media consultant was yearning for them to achieve. We both began to hoot and holler at once. "Yes. You really ought to do this!" I shouted. "I think I will. This really could work!" he answered. After we got off the phone, I half wondered if he would really make it happen. So many great brainstorming conversations go nowhere.

I found out just a few days later when tuning into the weekly VMWorld community podcast. The host, John Troyer said he had Stephen on the line with an announcement to make. Gestalt IT would be sponsoring and hosting something Stephen had dubbed Tech Field Day-- an "open blogger day" where influential people would come to San Francisco and learn about new products in storage, virtualization, security and networking. The date of the event? November 12-13. This was just over a month away. I gulped. Had it been me, I would've picked, I dunno, December. Maybe even January. Hell, February. Was he sure about that? I asked him when I got him on the phone. He was. "I work best on tight deadlines. And everyone can make it on those dates."

This was one heck of a chance to take, because at the time he announced it, he didn't actually have any companies signed up to sponsor the event. Without sponsors, there would be nothing to show the attendees. And the presenting companies were also going to have to foot the bill for the bloggers' travel expenses--costs that would run into the tens of thousands in all.

I knew that if anyone could pull the rabbit out of the hat on this, he could. What for most of us would be a recipe for ulcers and sleepless nights seems to have the opposite effect on Stephen Foskett. Ideas were pouring out of him.  It would be a "field day" like they have in schools. Three-legged races. Prizes. Contests. A sense of fun.

But would it come together? As a member of what had now become an ad hoc volunteer committee for the event, I was feeling the stress. He had commitments from three companies. But we needed at least five and ideally more like seven or eight to make it work. He confessed that he was experiencing a roller coaster of emotions. One moment he was sure there would be no problem getting the sponsors. The next he was panicked that the whole thing would fall through.

The event was less than a month away, and despite immense interest from several more potential sponsors, only a handful had signed on the dotted line. I reassured him as best I could that it would all work out, but in the back of my mind, I couldn't help but fear the worst. What if, when push came to shove, not enough companies were willing to pony up the money? This is a recession, after all.

In the end, he signed up seven sponsors: Xsigo, MDS Micro, Ocarina, Data Robotics, 3Par, Nirvanix and Symantec Storage. The beauty was that most of these companies were already in some kind of partnership, and so there were natural pairings that allowed companies to share sessions. In practical terms, this means that the bloggers will only have to be taken around to four locations--a morning and afternoon session on each of the two days.

As we were to find out, there would be many more ups and downs in the ensuing weeks. As of this writing, many details are still in process. We need name plate holders. Who will pick up the attendees from the airport as they arrive from Australia, London, Boston, Ohio and the many other far-flung locations this Wednesday? Two of my clients are presenting sponsors, Xsigo and Ocarina. Next week I'll be there to watch each one do a dry run of their tech demo--the success of which will make or break them in the eyes of the participants.

Still, it's hard not to be caught up in the euphoria as the day nears. Whatever happens, this is going to be a social media experiment for the history books. Throughout what has been something of an ordeal, Stephen has kept up the energy in all kinds of creative ways.

For the past week, Gestalt IT has been running a contest, "Do You Know..." that tests people's knowledge of the companies that are presenting at the event. The winner will receive an iPod nano with video. (How I wish I could enter that contest!)

The time between our first conversation about it and the actual event date? A mere 35 days. This, my friends, is the speed of our new social world. To me, this shows that there is a world of opportunity out there, recession or no recession. What will you do with it?

Schoolyard Rules of Social Media

Ever found yourself wondering why some folks seem to rise to the top of the social media heap? These are the people who have no trouble garnering thousands of high quality Twitter followers, and consistently get invited to speak at the hottest industry conferences. They don't even seem to have look for a job--their stature ensures that offers roll in! But what if such success weren't as far out of reach as it looks?

Looked at in a certain way, the social media world is one big schoolyard. To crack the code, all you really have to do is close your eyes, lean back, and travel back to your elementary school days. Who got noticed? What did they do that no one else did? Below are a few I've identified. Feel free to add more in the comments field.

1. Pick fights. If there is one thing that makes everyone drop their jump ropes and tether balls to come running, it's a fight. At my elementary school, the fighters almost never got beyond a few half-assed punches before some teacher rushed in and broke it up, but by then there was a circle of 50 kids, all yelling "Fight, Fight, Fight!" at the top of their lungs. 

Both of the kids involved with the brawl were treated as heroes for at least a day after that. If they were boys, girls would start leaving candy bracelets and cootie-catchers on their desks. If girls, the boys would stand around in awe, and then make sure to pick them first for dodgeball at PE. 

So it is with social media. The trick here is to choose the right kinds of fights to start. You can try arguing politics or religion if you like. Most likely, you'll be ignored. But those who bait some other high profile social media maven about, say, whether Google Reader is dead and should properly be replaced by Twitter search get plenty of clicks and comments.

2. Be brash and opinionated. It worked for my arch-nemesis David Brooks when I was in the fifth grade, and it's working now too for a whole lot of folks, from TechCrunch titan Michael Arrington to EMC blogger Storagezilla. These are the types who get noticed because they're not afraid to speak their minds, even though it sometimes gets them in deep shit. Just as David Brooks used to tell our teacher things like, "I think all Jane Austen really needed was to find a real man," so too can you say the type of stuff that's sure to piss someone else off--or maybe a whole lot of people.

3. Get everyone under the big tent. Okay, so by now you might be getting alarmed. I don't have the kind of personality to pick fights or be brash, you're saying to yourself. In fact, the whole idea of controversy makes me break out in a cold sweat. Well, remember that student who was voted Class President every damn year? This was also the same kid who invited each and every classmate to his swim party at the end of the year--even Ivan Ackerman, the guy with the wandering eye that no one would sit next to in the cafeteria at lunch.

Those with a sense of community are some of the best known and successful bloggers/tweeters out there. I'm not talking about mindless retweeting or "helpful" links that are actually just plugs for you or your clients' product or service. That kind of thing is perfectly fine, but it's not the same. 

What I'm talking about is a real and consistent effort to bring people together. These are the folks like Stephen Foskett of Gestalt IT and Peter Shankman of HARO. They're the ones who you know will organize a Tweetup, and who are always on the lookout for a great new blog so they can talk it up online. In short, they're the people you look to for advice and connections--in fact, they fit the term coined by Malcolm Gladwell, "connectors" to a tee.

4. Be the class clown. What is the most talked about social media phenomenon right now? How about "ShitMyDadSays"--the Twitter feed with 616,000 dedicated, enthusiastic followers. This guy's even got a book deal. It's irreverent, hilarious, and very much like that kid at the back of the classroom who made all those fart sounds with his armpit.

5. Be a motor mouth. Remember that freckly-haired girl in the third grade whose hand shot up every time the teacher asked a question? You do? Well, you remember her because she made herself known again and again. Sure, she could be annoying sometimes (especially if she always had the wrong answer). But on the days she was out sick, the classroom seemed eerily quiet.

Again, this is not a recommendation to turn into a link-spewing machine on Twitter. I'm talking about conversations--the real kind, that involve more than one person, and some semblance of listening and interaction. Or be a provider of consistently amusing and useful links that people want to read and retweet. Social media star Guy Kawasaki has raised this to an art form. If you're already a bit of a chatty Cathy, why not use this to your advantage? I have.

So there you have it. All the tools you need to start rising above the babble. See you on the playground!