Blog Stu

Cisco Live 2009 Social Media Wrapup

Here is the third and final installment of the Cisco Live Daily Blogger Techminute

As you can probably tell from watching these, we had fun making them (and were usually working on a very tight schedule).

After this final video shoot, Cisco also had a blogger reception.  To my surprise, since the event was held in Silicon Valley’s back yard, there were a number of social media luminaries that attended.

Here is a group photo (the Cisco bloggers were in attendance, but were not in this shot).  The photo was taken by Andrew Mager of CBS (who wrote the only live blog of the night), if you click on the photo, I had Andrew tag everyone with their Twitter IDs like I did for EMC World and the World Innovation Forum.

I always find it interesting to see how the real life personnas compare to the online.  Everyone was friendly and I had some great conversations about private cloud, Telepresence to the future of social media.

UPDATE: Here’s a second photo from Brian Solis (he has the names tagged if you click through)

Cisco Live Day 2 & Social Media

I’ve been really impressed with Cisco Live - most of the people attending are very focused on training and certifications; most will take the free T-shirts, but that’s secondary to the knowledge.  Here is the second Techminute with the bloggers:

As you might be able to see in the video - all of the bloggers are pretty passionate about some of the technologies being discussed.  Another item from the keynote that we didn’t even get to cover was John Chambers’ vision of the future of videoconferencing [imagine real-time language translation and search of content]; Bell Labs (AT&T/Lucent) had a similar vision back in the 90s when I worked for them, but the better/faster/cheaper networks today give us an advantage.

The Twitter volume at the conference has been lower than I expected w/ 10k attendees, but I would guess that there isn’t a lot of overlap between the guy who wants to attend a 2 hours IP SLA class and has interest in being active on Twitter.

To round out my day, I had dinner with bloggers Len Devanna, Louis Gray and Hutch Carpenter.  We spent a few minutes discussing storage (poor Hutch got to hear the vision of virtualization in the datacenter), but mostly discussed the developing social media/Enterprise 2.0 industry.  As I’ve mentioned before, there are great voices online, but it’s the connection with the real people that is really priceless.

If I can help with information on storage networking or social media, please feel free to comment here or contact me through one of the various tools.

Cheers,

Stuart Miniman

http://nohype.tumblr.com

Twitter @stu

FriendFeed http://friendfeed.com/miniman

Cisco Live Day 1 videos

Over ten thousand people descended on the Moscone Center in San Francisco.  It’s fantastic weather here this week and since the Moscone Center spans a few buildings, people get a few glimpses of daylight in between classes, keynotes and pavilion hours.

I had the opportunity to shoot 2 videos with Cisco on the first day.

First I sat down with Kash Shaikh to discuss FCoE.  With the T11 standards now past committee, customers can now confidently start evaluating and deploying the technology.  We discussed things from the storage (FC) perspective.  We’re hoping to shoot a second video later this week where we will discuss FCoE from the networking (Ethernet) perspective.

As I mentioned in my previous post, Cisco is using the latest technologies to extend the conference experience to those who can’t attend in person.  One of the ways that they are doing this is by having a short video each day with bloggers, discussing what is happening at the show.  Since things were just kicking off on Monday, James Urquhart, Chris Hoff and I talked about what we’re going to be doing and what technologies we’re excited to see.

In the video, I mentioned a VMware demo of VMotion over distance.  The blog post discussing this is http://blogs.vmware.com/networking/2009/06/vmotion-between-data-centersa-vmware-and-cisco-proof-of-concept.html.

Go to http://www.cisco-live.com/attendees/virtual to watch John Chamber’s keynote today and Padmasree Warrior’s keynote tomorrow.

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Best Regards,

Stuart Miniman

http://nohype.tumblr.com

Twitter @stu

The Summer of FCoE

Now that the FCoE standard has hit the next milestone by being approved by T11, there has been an increase in requests for information on FCoE.  Next week, I will be attending the Cisco Live! conference in San Francisco.

At the conference, I will be giving mini-presentations at the EMC booth (Booth #436) on the Evolution of the SAN which in 5 minutes gives a taste of how FCoE allows for a converged network and is an important building block for the Virtual Data Center and the Private Cloud.  I’ll be looking to have some further discussions since 5 minutes really doesn’t do the topic justice (no time to even touch on the cabling which has been a major discussion point with most customers).  It also looks like I will have the opportunity to participate in Cisco’s Techminute, which will be a panel discussion with bloggers (hoping to grab Chad Sakac to join me from EMC and from Cisco Omar Sultan, Doug Gourlay, James Urquhart and Chris Hoff) which will be videotaped and posted to the Cisco Live social media microsite and YouTube.

Cisco really does an amazing job using many technologies to allow participation in the conference.  For those that can’t be there in person, there is a Virtual Conference - you can watch the keynotes (including Cisco’s CEO John Chambers and CTO Padmasree Warrior) for free or pay for access to the technical sessions.  Cisco is also utilizing Twitter; there is a CiscoLive account in addition to the CiscoDC (which Omar runs) and the hashtag for the conference is #clsf.  There are lots of ways to watch the Twitter stream remotely - check out this TwiTip article from Jeff Hurt (it’s talking about Twitter chats, but the same tools are very good for watching and/or participating in a conference that uses a hashtag).

From my Twitter experience at the World Innovation Forum and EMC World, the keynotes are where you get the best Twitter experience.  Not only do you have everyone focused on the same subject, but there should be time to read the incoming thread, which I doubt that I will be able to do while taking a 2 hour class on DNS or while talking with other participants during the pavilion hours.

Beyond next week’s conference, there is a Cisco Data Center of the Future conference on July 15th.  EMC will have a keynote and you can get whitepapers and videos from the virtual booth.  There are subject matter experts online to chat.

I will also be participating in the EMC Innovation Lecture Series on September 2nd - watch for details on the EMC Community Network (ECN) site.  I will be discussing FCoE and the innovation journey of many decades in search of a converged network.  The Innovation Lecture series is open for all to attend, it is a webcast with live Q&A and the sessions are all posted on the ECN site listed above.  BTW, for those that wonder, FCoE makes up about 1/3 of my work, but is the only technology that I can publicly talk about at this time, which is why this blog covers FCoE related material and social media which I explore in my spare time.

Hope you’ll be able to join one of the events.  Please post any questions that you have and enjoy the summer - it will be a busy one.

Stuart Miniman

http://nohype.tumblr.com

IDs, Vanity URLs and YOUR NAME

With the recent rush for vanity URLs on Facebook, I’ve had a number of discussions about User IDs and vanity URLs on the various social media sites.

Hopefully the proliferation of accounts/profiles will end soon with OpenID, Facebook Connect, Google Friend Connect and other initiatives. Until then, here are my thoughts on the topic:

• The most important thing on these sites isn’t necessarily the vanity url or ID, but your name.  Make sure that you are consistent with your name.  This means that if you happen to be Bob Smith - don’t also be Bobby Smith and Robert Smith.  I have some IDs that are “stu” or “stuminiman”, but I always use “Stuart Miniman” as the name on the account.
• When choosing your name, I agree with experts like Louis Gray and Dan Schawbel who recommend not putting any punctuation “.”, “-“, “_” in between your first and last name when choosing an ID or url.
• Don’t obsess over the vanity urls too much - for most networks, people will either be logged in and searching for your name or you will be sending them a link.  If you have a common name, you may need to add a middle initial or number (BobESmith or BobSmith7) - once again, consistency and details so that people can find the correct Bob Smith are useful.  I’d recommend against using your company name as part of the ID to differentiate, since you could leave the company or the company could change names.
• Twitter: make sure that your “name” is entered properly.  If you have ID @bobsmith - you need to make sure that your name is Bob Smith or neither the Twitter “Find People” or Google Search will know that you are either a Bob or Smith.  While it is best to have your name, if you can go with a shorter ID that is easy to remember - this is the 1 site that I would recommend going for something other than your full name.  Personally, my name is long and not easy for people to remember how to spell.  I would never get Re-Tweeted if people had to have @stuartminiman - and forget about someone sending me a quick direct message from their mobile.  I was lucky enough to grab @stu.
• LinkedIn provides the option for a “Public Profile” url - this is great for quickly sharing an “online resume”, but the url does not show up in Google Searches (your name and profile # show up instead).
• Your “Bio” on Twitter and FriendFeed will also show up on searches - if you are looking to grow your personal brand, fill these out with good details.  Another way to not have to worry about people finding you is to use an aggregation site like FriendFeed - one stop for everywhere just about everything that I’m doing on the web.

Unfortunately, the more common your name, the harder this becomes.  I’ve got it easy, not only am I the only Stuart Miniman, but there are only a few in the Miniman family that are online (and let me know if you bump into any of my cousins or other relatives online - although we are not part of the Lego series), so other than some Mini Cooper fans, I’ve been able to get Miniman as an ID relatively easily.

In closing, a QUESTION FOR YOU, I’ve been considering opening a blog on TypePad or WordPress (Tumblr is great for casual posts or sharing multimedia, but it is a bit limiting):  1) Do you like what you’ve seen here and find it of value for me to continue/expand? 2) What do you think about which platform to choose and should I use my old website url (http://www.minimans.com - my wife ran the site, haven’t touched it since we had kids, see the family corner for some fun stuff)?

Thanks for stopping by,

Stuart Miniman

http://nohype.tumblr.com

Facebook, FriendFeed, LinkedIn: /miniman

Twitter @stu

Tweetup or Meeting Connections

I’ve been on Twitter for over a year now.  For the first few months that I was on Twitter, all of the connections that I made were with people that I did not know outside of Twitter.  Over time, there have been a number of people that I know that joined Twitter and there were some people that I met in person and then connected on Twitter.  There have also been people that I’ve gotten to know over Twitter that I’ve met in person.  This was easiest with people that I worked with (I wrote a blog post of one of my first “Tweetup” - which is where people who use Twitter get together).  Just like the cartoon on the right, how to you meet a Twitter connection: Meet in real life (IRL) and then connect on Twitter or connect on Twitter and then meet IRL.

The small group meetings with coworkers or individuals that I’d met through social networking does not properly explain the “Tweetup”.  Last week I had a meeting in Boston to see one of the bloggers that I met at the World Innovation Forum.  Michael Stallard led a great discussion about “The Connection Culture”.  It turns out that there was a large Tweetup only 1 block away from my meeting and since I’m not often in town (I live an hour outside of Boston), I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see what a big Tweetup was really like.  This one was dubbed #roofup (the hashtag is used on Twitter to allow tracking of an event easier) since it was held on the Roof of the Rattlesnake Bar & Grill.  There were well over 100 people and from people I talked to, it was one of the better events.  How to describe it? First of all, it is not a bunch of people standing around Twittering.  I would describe it more of a mashup of the dating scene and a networking event where the attendees are mostly in their 20s and “into technology”  (is it OK to say a little geeky? geeks are cool now, right?).  I chatted with two people that I knew through Twitter already and the host Sarah Merion (also pictured to the left with one of my coworkers Dan Schawbel, who everyone there knew).  Many of the people were very friendly, and if you wanted to discuss social media, it was an easy conversation to start.  If you’re into the scene, it seems that there are plenty of events going on.

The large group and loud environment weren’t really what I’d look for on a regular basis. I prefer a smaller and quieter location where conversation is easier and preferably where I know some of the people and have more shared interests.  Just today I got to meet 2 well known bloggers - Stephen Foskett (@sfoskett) and Christofer Hoff (@beaker).  I’d talked with Stephen on blogs and Twitter and when he planned a trip to Boston for a conference, he sent an email (yes, many of us still use email) and I gathered some other EMCers that he knew from online and we had a nice chat about social media, storage, kids and more over some curry.  One of the things that I really like about social media - if you strike up a dialogue with people online, it does build that virtual community (or Tribe if you’re a Seth Godin fan).  So whether you like small gatherings or large events, don’t be shy if you want to meet the people that you connect with on social media.

Cheers,

Stuart Miniman

Twitter @stu

http://nohype.tumblr.com

Twitter: Important? Urgent?

I had a thread on Twitter with some coworkers this morning about “etiquette” about when it is OK to not go back and read all Twitter activity.  It’s a difficult shift in thinking that you should not read everything.  The digital age has created way too much clutter for all of us.  Many people are still having a hard time managing their email volume (one of my first blog posts was about unsubscribing from all email subscriptions from public websites an replacing with RSS/Feed Readers).  One of my favorite business books of all times is the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey.  Look at the Covey’s 4 quadrants below and tell me, where does Twitter activity go?
I think it depends on what you are doing and who you are following.  Replies and direct messages to you might be important, but even though you can get lots of value out of Twitter, it’s very rare that anything on Twitter can be considered Urgent.  Sure, you can often hear about things on Twitter sooner than you can through other websites or email, but that doesn’t mean that the timeliness translates into value.  The really important things will usually be repeated by enough people that I’ll see it later on Twitter or FriendFeed; for many of the people that I want to watch closest, their best ideas end up in blog posts that I’ll read later.How do you not “miss” something important?  My tips are 1) use a Twitter interface that allows you to separate those accounts that are most important to you (I use Tweetdeck, and I’m at the point that I’ve “let go” of trying to see every Tweet, even from my favorites), 2) setup Twitter search(es) for the keywords that are most important to you and 3) subscribe to the blogs of those people/companies that regularly publish information that you find valuable.I’ve run into many people who get overwhelmed or “don’t have time” for Twitter.  Going back to Covey’s 4 quadrants, the way that we get more time is by working on Quadrant 2 activities which can reduce Quadrant 1 while we try and eliminate the distractions of Quadrant 3 and 4.  Figure out the value that you get from Twitter and make it easy on yourself by not expecting that you can read the updates of everyone, or you will get burnt-out.

If you’ve found my posts interesting, please consider subscribing.

Best Regards,

Stuart Miniman

http://nohype.tumblr.com

Twitter @stu