Q: How can you tell a conference is a technical conference?
A: When the ratio of PDAs to attendee approaches 2 to 1.
The amount of IM, Twitter, SMS, email, and phone calls was amazing. All kinds of devices: iPhones, Qs, Nokias, and of course Blackberries. Lots of people doing the “Blackberry Prayer” with heads bowed and hands folded over the keyboard.
Web 2.0
One thing new this year is the amount of Web 2.0-style coverage of EMC World. The conference website itself uses a Flash-based “information growth ticker”, social networking opportunities, AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript And XML) based agenda builder… and links to EMC bloggers, some of whom are blogging about the show itself.
I’ve mentioned Twitter a few times. For the first time this year, Twitter has been used by attendees to “micro-blog” about EMC World in real-time. These posts, hash-tagged with “#emcworld” could be aggregated and sorted by a variety of tools, creating a virtual news stream. See my link at the bottom as an example.
On Wednesday, a special lunch gathering for those Twittering about EMC World was convened impromptu. And in a rather solipsistic manner, it was set up using Twitter. Half a dozen of us collected and spent an hour and a half discussing social media as a way to connect, enhance and improve communication with Partners and Customers.
Customers
One of the reasons customers attend is to save money, lots of money, on how they manage their information infrastructure. I spoke with one presenter who said he had spoken to a customer after his talk, and was able to show them how to consolidate in a way that would save them half a million dollars a month in energy costs.
Keynotes
In conclusion
Q: How can you tell a conference is a technical conference?
A: Wednesday night, the show’s entertainment was Billy Crystal, Emmy winner, Tony winner, and past host of the Academy Awards ceremonies. He began the evening by greeting the room with:
“Good evening and hellooo nerds!
There are attendees here from 79 countries. It’s like being at Angelina Jolie’s house.
Nothing says Las Vegas like 7,000 engineers.”
A great conclusion to a great show.
By the way, I’ve reported more details via Twitter. These can be found in the news stream when you click here
Bill Petro has been a technology sales enablement executive with extensive experience in Cloud Computing, Automation, Data Center, Information Storage, Big Data/Analytics, Mobile, and Social technologies.
