SNW Day Two 10:00am - Bloggers Evening Recap

SNW Day One was really busy from early morning to late in the night. For me, the highlight of SNW Day One was the Bloggers Evening. The turn out at the evening was better than expected.

I sent out a reminder early afternoon to meet outside the hotel lobby bar at 6:00pm. Bruce Moxon, Blake Golliher, Clark Hodge, Claude Lorenson, SW Worth (both starting a Microsoft Stoarge blog) and myself initially met outside the lobby bar. We talked for half-an-hour standing outside the bar about blogging and storage.

Blogging concerns expressed during discussions were about making sure the information posted on the blog doesn't run afoul with employers as well as respecting the NDAs and confidential information of employer and suppliers. As we had a mix of storage bloggers representing vendors, services and end user, the blogging concerns were very varied. Past couple of days, I met quite a few ex-bloggers who were quickly discouraged not by their employers or any external entities but from absence of readers resulting in loss of blogging enthusiasm.

Unfortunately, we missed Marc Farley as I didn't get a chance to check email before Bloggers Evening and he had replied to my reminder mentioning being delayed for few minutes.

In the end, Bruce, Blake, Clark and myself went out for dinner to a nearby Italian restaurant. We had spirited discussion mostly about storage and blogging. We talked about how posts from opinionated and analytical bloggers make for a better read than people who just want to write nice things, marketing spiel or creating a very polished post. We also got in to discussion about our favorite upcoming storage companies, favorite conferences and events, favorite technologies and how changing storage landscape may impact few existing storage players.

Afterward, Blake and I also got in to discussion at hotel bar about social networking and its migration in to enterprise, our careers, interests, storage landscape and what's next for us.

Overall, Bloggers Evening turned out to be a great get-together. I echo the statement expressed by Bruce and others.

When is the next bloggers get-together?

I hope next Bloggers Evening is sooner than later.