Storage at 6,400 feet

Last weekend at Mt. Rainier.

What two storage bloggers talk over lunch?

Obviously, blogs and storage! And today my lunch with fellow blogger Josh Maher at Coho Cafe was no exception. I had great time talking to Josh about blogging and storage industry. I look forward to continuing our conversation.

He is a messaging and storage expert at EMC and maintains an active personal blog Messaging ... Technology ... Life .... Now I know whom to ping next time I have an Exchange or DMX question.

I am surprised that companies don't involve in-house bloggers before starting a company blog. I guess it's a case of "ghar ki murgi dal barabar." [an Indian saying meaning "things at home are rarely appreciated"]

We talked about the Puget Sound Storage Networking User Group (PSNUG). I used to be a regular at Toronto SNUG. I hope to see PSNUG becoming as active as TSNUG. But, it is very difficult to have an active user group without vendor support.

He also told me about Blog Business Summit in Seattle next month. I never attended a blogger conference before. But now I am wondering maybe I should attend one of these conferences. As I am interacting more with blog community, I am realizing that its time for me to start considering myself a storage blogger instead of storage professional who blogs. Nah! I am a cheap Indian so most probably I will chicken out in the end.

September is turning out to be "Meet Storage Bloggers" month for me, first Jeremiah and now Josh. It has been interesting shift - meeting fellow storage bloggers instead of non-blogging storage professionals, startup founders, managers and executives.

Open invitation to all bloggers in storage and IT infrastructure industry - whenever you are in Seattle, let's meet.

EMC steps in to Blogging Ring

It is great to see that finally EMC has stepped up to the plate and joined the blogging world by enabling half-hearted Mark Lewis to blog.

The Marketing folks wanted me to do it but, like many companies these days, I just figured this would fall into the legal abyss and never come out. ... Its not that I didn't want to Blog.

Someday, we will have battle of the blogs between storage vendors. Hopefully, Mark will show more commitment to blogging than Diane Greene at Vmware.

Tip #3: Put up a long-winded introductory post and then leave your blog alone - isn't it enough just to be able to brag that you have one?

It is interesting that both Dave Hitz at NetApp and Mark Lewis at EMC have comments disabled on their blogs. So far apart, but so alike. Why are they so afraid of having conversations in public with their blog readers?

Tip #1: Don't allow your visitors to leave feedback of any kind - after all, you wouldn't want them making fun of you; you had enough of that in high school!

Kudos to Hu Yoshida at HDS to embrace the blogging spirit of conversation by enabling comments.

As Mark doesn't allow comments on his blog, here is one question for him:

Is this a corporate Blog? NO. ... As my one disclaimer, I guess EMC does pay the monthly fee for the site (I hope I don't get taxed).

EMC is paying for your blog. You are going to write about EMC. Then, you are claiming it is not corporate blog. So what is your definition of corporate blog?