Around The Block Blog
by Justin Braun, Manager, Microsoft & Virtualization Solutions, Dell Compellent — September 13, 2010
Editor's Note: This blog was originally posted by Justin Braun on his own blog: The Braun Blog.
I’m still getting caught up on events, so I thought I’d share with you a little about our participation in the 2010 Tech Field Day held in Seattle, WA.
Back in the middle of July, Compellent had an opportunity to participate in Gestalt IT Tech Field Day. As it says on their website, “This unique event brings together innovative IT product vendors and independent thought leaders, allowing them to get to know one another. It is a forum for engagement, education, hands-on experience, and feedback.”
Compellent was thrilled to be part of the experience as one of five sponsors for this event. Others included F5, NEC, Veeam, and Nimble Storage, who used Tech Field Day as their official launch.
The event focused around these different vendors who had the opportunity to present their technologies to an esteemed panel of delegates. The delegates, which comprised of technologists and bloggers, came from around the world.
The evening of July 15th included a reception and dinner at the Boeing Museum of Flight. This was about the coolest thing I’ve seen. I have a love for aviation, but to see where some of the first aircraft were built was simply amazing.
The welcome reception was held in the “Red Barn”. This is the original Boeing airplane factory. The smell of the wood barn interior makes you feel like you were there. Seeing the woodshop tools that were used to create the different components of the flying machine was pretty cool.
This was an opportunity for us to meet the other vendors in attendance, but more importantly to meet all of the delegates and learn more about them and what they do. Liem Nguyen, the director of Corporate Communications for Compellent helped to coordinate Compellent’s sponsorship and involvement, and is seen below with Kirby Wadsworth, a marketing exec with F5 Networks. You can’t tell from this picture, but Kirby was rockin’ some pretty sweet yellow slacks that night.
Most of the delegates in one form or another were involved in IT, but specifically this Tech Field Day was focused on virtualization. So, the basis of what we talked about centered around our virtualized storage solution, but also the integration points with Hyper-V and VMware.
Bob Fine, Director of Product Marketing, Scott DesBles, Director of Technical Solutions, and myself tag-teamed to present the Compellent solution. Bob and Scott provided the Compellent overview and a roadmap discussion which seemed to keep the panel engaged, and we also discussed Live Volume while demonstrating the Compellent Storage Center and its ease of use in addition to Enterprise Manager, the “single pane of glass” which can be used to manage multiple Storage Centers in your environment and the interface that enables the world-famous “6 clicks to replicate a volume’”.
Check out Liem’s blog post about Tech Field Day with some exclusive interview footage of the delegates and shots from the Museum of Flight.
We had a blast meeting with the delegates and other vendors in Seattle. We’d love the opportunity to do this again and continue to share the Compellent story.
Did I mention the view in Seattle? For this last picture, I was amazed at how close the parking lot was to the runway at Boeing Field. We were able to get some great photos and videos of the experience. Here’s a nice shot of a cargo aircraft on approach with Mount Rainer in the distance.
by Liem Nguyen, (former) Director of Communications and Social Media, Dell Storage — July 27, 2010
This post is about four storage geeks who flew to Seattle to meet up with a Minneapolis-based VMware evangelist, spend a few hours in a barn with the descendant of a Nigerian chieftain, talk to a lot of other outspoken thought leaders and launch a product not on our company’s roadmap. All in a period of 24 hours. During that time, there was also a conversation about the differences between tiered storage solutions and Live Volume vs. VPlex.
In some ways, Tech Field Day Seattle was a like a movie about male bonding, virtualization and data storage that Cameron Crowe could have made with Judd Apatow, if either of them knew the difference between Token Ring and JRR Tolkien. But more on this later.
The Players
Back to those four geeks, Justin Braun, Bob Fine, Scott DesBles and yours truly started our Tech Field Day on Thursday night, July 15, at the Museum of Flight out by Boeing Field. Compellent sponsored a reception held at the Red Barn inside the museum, which housed artifacts in the history of Boeing and aviation. That’s when things really started to take off.
Soon, we met Jason Boche, who heads up the Minneapolis VMUG and talked about having Compellent present at a future VMUG event. It’s been a couple years since we were in front of that group, and I thought it was hilarious that I hadn’t met Jason before seeing him at TFD…in Seattle. At dinner, I sat next to John Obeto, a Microsoft expert and CEO of a managed service provider who mentioned that somewhere in his bloodline is a Nigerian village chief. We made the rounds, and it was fun meeting people we had only “talked” to before via Twitter or on their blogs.
The next morning we met up with everyone at the Microsoft Partner Solution Center, building 25, on the Redmond campus. Many thanks goes to John Porterfield, Compellent alliance manager, for making all the arrangements, not just for Compellent’s session but for others held at the MPSC. John and a couple other Compellent team members have an office there and regularly conduct lunch ’n learns and demos with Microsoft and other partners. (Follow John @allianceguy - his spot-on observations about Microsoft, consumer issues and the industry deserve a bigger audience.)
Is Live Volume the Affordable VPlex?
Compellent was up first on Day 2, starting at 8 am. We introduced the company to those who didn’t know about it us before, gave some demos on Fluid Data technology like thin provisioning, thin replication and automated tiered storage, and updated the group on our product roadmap.
We also talked at length about Live Volume. Rod Haywood of Sydney posed the question, “Is it VPLEX, but affordable?” Rod and a couple others were surprised we hadn't done a whole lot of marketing around Live Volume, which is a fair comment since we really haven’t said much. Partly because this is a new technology that customers are beginning to roll out. Though we blogged about Live Volume before, we typically don’t fully “launch” or put a lot of marketing behind a product until we’ve proven the concept with real customers who have fully implemented. This is just a different go-to-market philosophy from some vendors who announce products years before shipping.
One Token Ring Rules Them All?
About that product launch – no, we really didn’t announce a new product. Before we showed up, people were teasing one delegate, Ethan Banks, for being the token networking guy (get it, token ring?). Anyway, I got wind of this, so when the Compellent team got up to talk about how our persistent architecture is designed to support both 10Gb iSCSI and FCoE, we also said we’re announcing FC over Token Ring--as a joke.
Saying we’d support FCOTR even in jest to this bunch was like turning it up to 11. Pretty soon they were riffing on a standards spec. You can also check out some of the tongue-in-cheek reactions and also read a thoughtful essay from Mr. Foskett.
The Reviews
Of course, Compellent’s presentation was the best of the week. But for more objective observations, you can read the reactions from some of the delegates below. A couple of the guys are planning to write more so check their sites again later:
Over at GestaltIT, Stephen Foskett has the complete coverage for the Seattle event from all of the delegates.
The Wrap
Afterward, I managed to catch up with Curtis Preston to get his impressions on the future of backup (he is Mr. Backup after all).
And as a followup to the previous 3 questions blog I wanted to find out what Stephen thought about the whole thing.
I’ll update you with more links and videos as they appear. Justin Braun will also post his own thoughts on the event.
Many thanks to the delegates for their time, participation and great feedback on Compellent storage. A tip of the hat to Stephen Foskett and the incomparable Claire Chaplais for organizing a great Tech Field Day. We were very glad to be a sponsor. Other vendors should definitely consider participating in future Field Days. The next one, appropriately on networking, has already kicked off and you can follow @TechFieldDay for more info.
by Liem Nguyen, (former) Director of Communications and Social Media, Dell Storage — July 09, 2010
Compellent is excited about sponsoring Tech Field Day (@techfieldday) next week in Seattle. In case you didn't already know, Tech Field Day is run by Stephen Foskett (@sfoskett) over at Gestalt IT. A great group of bloggers from around the world will converge on Seattle to meet privately with storage and virtualization vendors. On Friday, July 16, Compellent will host the delegates in the Microsoft Partner Solution Center where we have offices and lab facilities on Microsoft’s Redmond campus. Stay tuned for updates from me. Besides Compellent, vendors presenting are F5, NEC, and Veeam, plus a new company will launch in Seattle. I'm looking forward to meeting a lot of new faces and connecting with people I've only talked to online.
Stephen and I thought it would be fun to ask each other three questions about Tech Field Day Seattle. You can see my comments on Gestalt IT. Below are Stephen’s answers:
1.
Why did you start Tech Field Day?
SF: The basic Field Day idea came from the community. At an HP-sponsored blogger event, they wondered aloud whether other companies could put on similar events and how they could make it work. Planning such an event is extremely difficult and expensive, after all. But the biggest challenge is getting the independent industry folks on board. It's hard to know who to invite and reassure them that it won't be a cheerleader session or a bore.
The breakthrough came when we thought of flipping the idea on its head: The bloggers run the event and invite the companies instead! We all saw the value of live and direct interaction with the companies we talk and write about but wanted an equal seat at the table when it came to selecting who to hear from. That's the core idea of the Field Day: Getting companies and independent voices together to talk.
2.
What are you planning on showing everyone in Seattle?
SF: I always want to challenge the delegates with products and technologies that are surprising or a little outside their comfort zone. I love when people walk out of a session saying "that's not at all what I thought it would be" or "I didn't know anything about that before now!" No one wants to sit through a boring presentation about something they already know and love - they're here to see something new, whether it's a technology, a use case, a value proposition, or a whole company.
I'm also looking to keep things on the right level. The event has to meet the needs of the delegates, both in terms of technical content and plain fun. I'm planning to mix both together!
3.
How would you know if you had a successful event?
SF: It's easy to know if the event is successful: The delegates and sponsors come right out and say it! Shrinking violets need not apply for the Field Day. We're all about open communication, and I'll know we're successful whenever a rousing, boisterous conversation starts.
Another great measure of success is the community that comes out of the event. When I see newly-introduced folks talking like old friends and relying on each other for help on various technical topics, I know things have worked out. The Field Day events tend to bring people together across the usual lines that separate different technical areas of focus, vendors and independents, and focus on large and small business. It's so cool to see a post-event conversation between these diverse folks, and everyone benefits.