(still plowing away on some heavyweight posts…. but it is American Thanksgiving, so….)
Most of all, I’m thankful for my family.
Next, I’m thankful for my friends.
..and I’m thankful to be lucky enough to be in the middle of what’s a very cool conflux of technologies, market changes, and to be in a gig that lets me lead a global team, and interact with customers and EMC, VMware and Cisco engineering in all sorts of cool ways.
It’s not all roses though - a peek into the after-hours life of vSpecialists…
We, like all our brothers and sisters within EMC and EMC partners work very hard. We, like them – are driven by technology, customers, passion. Sometimes, it takes a little extra coffee and Red Bull (EMC customer – thank you very much!) :-)
But – we also have fun :-)
So here’s the background….
- After a full day of internal and customer meetings
- After the vSpecialist manger GeekWeek.
- BTW - GeekWeek is when new vSpecialists finish their onboarding, ending in a Kobayashi Maru style-challenge. It’s an opportunity to play with/hands on/break with UCS.future, EMC.future, and VMware.future – trying to make things work that are crazy :-) Suffice it to say that our team failed, but failed spectacularly :-)
- We want the leaders (me included) to not lose our chops – so we go through it too – we all must know as much as we can.
- After a big VMUG in Atlanta
- After a late night customer event post VMUG
Note - NO ONE KNOWS EVERYTHING, and we, like everyone, must always try to be humble.
After all that – we did something crazy/fun from 8:30pm to 1:30am that Wednesday. I only point that out so no-one misunderstands and things we are not focused on the tasks at hand, or are being frivolous:
- our priority is our work – this stuff is “on top of the day job”
- this is the cheapest type of marketing possible, and great value for EMC’s dollar – guerilla marketing
- when you see it – we’re just having fun, don’t read into it any more than that.
And yes, it IS wicked awesome fun :-) THANK YOU to my teammates.
If you’re interested, read on. Here are preview shots as a tease. You’ll see some of the output – which hopefully will amuse you (I GUARANTEE I’ll look like an idiot, but it’s all in good fun) – in December.
These were all taken at Patchwerk Studios in Atlanta. Check out their client list – you can now add “bunch of nerds” to that list – one we fit right into :-)
If you EVER get the chance to check it out, well, in the immortal words of Ferris Bueller:
“It is so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up ...”
…one of the sound engineers had a Ferrari – making the quote even more apropos :-) (note – for comparison’s sake – I drive a Honda Odyssey :-)
Brian Whitman – vSpecialist vet and leader for Mid-Atlantic, belting out the tunes.
That’s a lot of buttons/switches. Makes storage look easy to use :-)
YES – I’m a total dork :-)
Crazy shot capturing the reflection….
A motley crew – but friends all!
And – for fun – here’s the last – this is some of the Americas technical vSpecailist leadership team, wrapping up late night on Thursday – well after the office is completely shutdown.
Funny thing – look at this post from almost exactly one year ago – literally the same VMUG, the same crew, the same empty parking lot.
THANK YOU to the vSpecialist crew and all the people we count on, lean on at EMC, VMware, Cisco and the partner community – we’re all as passionate and as committed as ever!
… I’m now in full on 2011 planning, and it’s going to be the most awesome year yet :-)
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