It seems to me that I'm a little late to the party when it comes to blogging about EMC World 2008. Many of my blogging co-workers have already signed up for a blogging get-together.
I've been invited to speak at the conference, so I'm going. I'm a little anxious about it for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, I'm coordinating the last-minute details of a demo that our research team in China is putting together (more on this below). That's always a little stressful, but hey, it's not like I'm the only engineer at EMC trying to pull something together.
You know what the real problem is?
Mark Twomey's public speculation about my wardrobe!
I'll admit that I'm not the emperor of style. My wife (and daughter) routinely roll their eyes when I try to play dress-up. But to have one of the most widely-read bloggers in the storage industry engage in sportcoat speculation results in a lot of pressure!! [Note to self: ask the conference team to provide cool (um, free) EMC polo shirts for each day of the conference].
What's The Demo About?
EMC World is well known for allowing unfettered access to the engineers that build EMC's products. There are always demos-a-plenty that allow engineers to show their stuff. And it's usually in the context of currently shipping or recently announced products. The demos that I and several of my co-workers will show, however, do not fall into that category.
This year at EMC World there will be a very different set of demos (and I'm not talking about the exhibit hall). EMC World is introducing its first-ever public "Innovation Showcase". The rational behind this is to emphasize that EMC is not just a company that acquires; we're driving integration through innovation. The showcase will also educate EMC World attendees that EMC leads innovation and cultivates new technologies for future value.
This section of the conference will publicly highlight EMC's Global Innovation Network for the first time. All attendees will get an inside peek at how employees such as myself are pro-actively encouraged to collaborate, propose, and prototype new ideas and processes. There will also be private tours for c-level attendees, analysts, and partners. Here's a quote from the conference guide:
Find yourself surrounded by innovation and conversing with EMC technology architects demonstrating intriguing new concepts with codenames such as Project Futon, Web 2.0 TCE, WARP, and Project Florence, among others. Born from a new collaborative spirit and process, these concepts may, in the future, find their way into your business environment.
Innovation Implies Implementation
Innovation occurs at EMC in a couple of ways. The first way tends to focus on combining assets of different acquisitions made by EMC over the years. Employees are of course encouraged to participate in this type of innovation (this was the subject of a recent post). In addition to employee collaboration, EMC has a dedicated Corporate Technology Review Board to formally evaluate the architectures and features of newly acquired companies.
The second way that EMC collaborates is the reason I'll be at EMC World. I've blogged about the strong focus on social media within EMC, and how EMC is relying on all employees everywhere to participate in innovation. In the summer of 2007 I was one of 410 worldwide employees to submit an idea to EMC's Innovation Network, and one of 30 employees invited to present the idea at "The Contest" back in October.
When our idea placed in the top three, EMC assured us that implementation would follow. Any innovation network which stops at the idea phase would have no teeth. So in 2008 a very good team of software engineers in our China research facility were assigned to implement the idea. We've been having conference calls for weeks, trying to stay true to the original idea while putting together an informative demonstration. Along the way we've been evaluating whether or not the idea is truly feasible and marketable.
It is.
And that's why I'm going to EMC World.
It will be unfettered access to the way we think, create, and build.
Hope to see you there. I'll do my best to dress up.
Let me know how I look!
Steve
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