Blog Stu

Halloween 2009 Star Wars Mini video Rachel [Princess Leia] and...

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 16:15:50 -0400

Halloween 2009 Star Wars Mini video

Rachel [Princess Leia] and Sean [Darth Vader and Storm Trooper Luke] act out some scenes from Episode IV. Includes bonus scene from Episode V. Happy Halloween and May the Force Be with You!

Confusion/Information Graph: A Simple Index Card Says it All -...

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 14:15:00 -0400

Confusion/Information Graph: A Simple Index Card Says it All - Common Craft

Augmented Reality Where is the buy it now button? Does it come...

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 12:27:31 -0400

Augmented Reality

Where is the buy it now button? Does it come in sunglasses format?

brooklyner:

jenrobinson:

Future of Social Networking with Augmented Reality

via missymace

World Business Forum Blogger's Hub Twitter List

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 21:19:42 -0400

A friend of mine has a new Twitter app called MixTweet. He was nice enough to take the Blogger’s Hub list and create a group. Below is an example of what you can do with a widget. You can also watch the steam of our activity at http://mixtweet.com/57889890.

I will be posting blogs from the conference at http://blogstu.wordpress.com/tag/wbf09. The hashtag for the conference is #WBF09.

Here’s a short movie that I put together from my visit to...

Sat, 29 Aug 2009 20:17:48 -0400

Here’s a short movie that I put together from my visit to Fenway Park on 8/28/09.

I’m a Yankee fan, but had a great time at the pahk, got to go on the Green Monstah for the first time and used my new Flip a bunch. See my YouTube channel for a video of Hall of Famer Jim Rice talking to a few of us and Kelly Clarkson singing God Bless America.

Gartner Hype Cycle v2.0 - from @scobleizer to your IT...

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 14:24:21 -0400

Gartner Hype Cycle v2.0 - from @scobleizer to your IT department

irq:

Geek And Poke: Gartner Hype Cycle Version 2.0

irq (@aneel): xkcd - A Webcomic - Tech Support Cheat Sheet

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 09:27:53 -0400

irq (@aneel):

xkcd - A Webcomic - Tech Support Cheat Sheet

"Insight in a Marketing-driven company is hindsight, while Insight in Innovation-driven company is..."

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 13:35:00 -0400

““Insight in a Marketing-driven company is hindsight, while Insight in Innovation-driven company is foresight.””

- From @Lerou on Braden Kelley’s Innovation Insight Contest

First name Mr, middle name period, last name FCoE ;) Courtesty of Global Knowledge at Cisco Live...

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 16:14:26 -0400

First name Mr, middle name period, last name FCoE ;)

Courtesty of Global Knowledge at Cisco Live 2009

Blog Stu goes to Wordpress

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 17:48:00 -0400

After receiving some positive feedback and finding some time during vacation, I’ve launched a new blog site.

The new site it http://blogstu.wordpress.com and will be my primary blog site. I will keep this Tumblr site and will continue to post or share items here occasionally, especially those that are less “work” related.

It took 5 years for Google to remove the beta label from GMail and I only took 1 year to go from my “beta” blog to launch the new site.

If you want to keep following, there are 3 subscription/RSS feeds:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/BlogStu - This Feedburner subscription allows me to migrate to different sites easily - ~~it is currently for the Tumblr site, but I will likely move it to the Wordpress site~~ (please use this as the primary place to follow me). UPDATED: Feedburner now points to the Wordpress site, please let me know of any issues.

http://blogstu.wordpress.com/feed/ - This is the feed for the Wordpress site (but please use the Feedburner subscription, so that if I change the url that the subscription will move with it).

http://nohype.tumblr.com/rss - This is the feed for this Tumblr site.

Thanks to everyone that has given feedback over the last year and hope you’ll continue the discussions on the new site.

FCoE Network perspective

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 16:08:27 -0400

My final video from Cisco Live 2009 is the second of two discussions that I had with Kash Shaikh about FCoE.

If you have any suggestions for additional topics about FCoE that can be covered in a future video, blog post or updated whitepaper, please let me know.

Cisco Live 2009 Social Media Wrapup

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 18:10:00 -0400

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

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 12:00:00 -0400

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

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 10:57:00 -0400

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.

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

Best Regards,

Stuart Miniman

http://nohype.tumblr.com

Twitter @stu

The Summer of FCoE

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 22:36:00 -0400

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

This just might be too geeky even for me.

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 13:33:59 -0400

This just might be too geeky even for me.

"The question is not what you look at, but what you see."

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 20:27:33 -0400

“The question is not what you look at, but what you see.”

- Henry David Thoreau

IDs, Vanity URLs and YOUR NAME

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 22:57:00 -0400

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

Here is Twitter Search in Plain English. The long awaited...

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 19:27:13 -0400

Here is Twitter Search in Plain English. The long awaited sequel to Twitter in Plain English (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddO9idmax0o) which has over 1 MILLION views on Twitter. Great simple videos! Common Craft is often imitated, but they’re the original “In Plain English”.

Tweetup or Meeting Connections

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 22:44:00 -0400

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