Wow – what a compliment….

I’ve been crazy busy for a while – and it’s a beautiful thing to see the vSpecialist team (aka “Chad’s Army”) grow and blossom.   The newbs are becoming vets, and helping the other newbs.   It’s becoming self-sustaining, and it means that I can be focused on a lot of other things – which is great.

I’m very proud of the team collectively and the individuals that comprise it.

It means I have no lack of confidence (though I wish I was there – work/life balance) that they go to Cisco Live 2010 and cover it without me.  It means that craziness like the picture below happens – yes… that is John Chambers in the VCE booth getting his vSpecialist shirt :-)

We try to have a lot of fun – and I love the team.

It’s a bit crazy because today these two links crossed my path – posts by Elias Khnaser and Nigel Poulton

It’s crazy to have outside folks making those comments.  Flattering, but they give me WAY too much credit.

When Joe asked me to take this gig (the job: “make sure EMC is the best choice for customers, partners, and for VMware themselves – on our own merits, and drive that across all aspects of EMC: engineering, sales, marketing, and the corp-to-corp alliance”) – I remember like it was yesterday…   First of all, you couldn’t have stopped me from jumping into it with a 1000 wild horses.   Second – he asked “so, what are you going to need”.

My exact words were “we’re going to need an elite delta squad of warrior monk types”.   He asked me to elaborate :-)  

My comment was that it would require a weird blend of skills, and we’d need a lot of cerebellums cut from that cloth.   Outgoing, experts in VMware/Storage/Networking, willing to be creative and find ways to get things done.   Really partner friendly (as EMC tends to be an field execution machine, sometimes slowing down momentarily to partner up is something we need to consciously remind ourselves to do – and is absolutely critical.)

I’ve been really lucky.  People (many, and Elias and Nigel both say this) that it was a conscious effort to build “social media/influencer" mass – but I have to say, if that is the case – it was a happy accident.

The reason there are so many people on the team that have loud voices, are on twitter, write blogs, author books, do VMworld sessions, make PowerCLI tools etc, etc… isn’t a conspiracy, but rather they would do that ANYWHERE they worked.  It’s in their blood.   Frankly, I couldn’t stop them if I tried.   I didn’t try to hire that outcome, rather the people we needed naturally did that on their own.

I also know from my discussions with a lot of folks they think somehow my team is this “weird thing” at EMC – different than the rest of the corporate culture.

I can’t tell you whether we’re different.  All I see is what I know, and what I see.   BUT – this doc that Polly Pearson worked up, it IS the EMC I know and love – which suggests that maybe it’s not just us.

EMC: Innovation, Passion, Success

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Comments

[corloff]

Glad I was able to take that picture of my vSpecialist brothers! You guys rock!! I did have a matching blue dress on :-)

[Chad Sakac]

@corloff - I wish I was there with you guys! Caroline, you rock!

[gguglie]

All my congrats to you and the vSpecialist, your "Army" is an ispiration for me: have a wide blend of skills and be creative!
I hope to become part of this group of very talented people leaded by you!