Pleasure: Great People attending Uptime Symposium, Part 1

i didn't attend Uptime Symposium, but I had a 11:30 meeting with Dell so I headed over to the hotel bar. 12 hrs later I was still at the bar.

One of the great things about the data center industry are the people.  Some of the companies I was able to chat with are the following. I am sure there others I missed someone, and my apologies for not listing your company. 

Compass Data Centers

RagingWire

Fieldview Solutions

Jones Lang LaSalle

Norland

RTKL

AOL

DELL

HP

Spencer Fane

Walsh Construction

Verizon

Data Foundry

Digital Realty Trust

Ramprate

Skipping the Vendor/Analyst Pay to Play Dance

Observation:

The data center industry is part of the pay to play dance that exists between vendor and analyst organization.  ZDNet does a pretty good job of describing the situation.

One of the comments explains the dilemma of an analyst in the pay to play.

RE: Pay to play: The vendor / analyst mating dance

toppundit 24th Sep 2009

I was an analyst for many years at a pay-to-play analyst firm, and like many of my peers, I strove to maintain my personal integrity, despite the many, many pressures I felt to say the right thing. At the end of the day, I found it was impossible, and I quit doing that kind of work. 

It wasn't the overt stuff. Despite many, many suggestions, I never, ever wrote anything that I thought was untrue. But in this business, the nuances matter. You end up giving people the benefit of the doubt, when you shouldn't have.

You also found that it was impossible to call a spade a spade. If some poor guy plunked down $20,000 of his savings to get our firm to say that his nonsense software had some merit--this really happened, the company now long-gone--it was hard for me to look the guy in the eye and say, "No way," and as for my boss, well, he's the guy who negotiated the deal. So you try to thread your way through with phrases like "interesting" and "still some way to go." 

Many data center vendors feel compelled to be at all the trade shows as a lack of presence would indicate you are not commited to the market.  So, your marketing expenses grow as you "ante up" to play the game.  In addition to the trade shows, you pay the analysts to analyze your company.  You up your event sponsorship to get more leads.  Arghh!  This is so frustrating when it doesn't pay off.

It is so appealing to skip this dance.

One of the best ideas I heard at Uptime Symposium, Don't print your marketing material

Yesterday, I went to Hyatt Hotel next to the Uptime Symposium.  I said I wasn't going to the Uptime Sympsium and I didn't.  I walked in the hotel bar at 11a and I didn't leave the hotel bar until 11p.  I spent 12 hrs in the bar.  Well the bar, the patio, the bathroom, and the restaurant.

I think I saw all the people I wanted to see without taking one step into the conference or exhibit area.  Now, it was not my plan to be there for 12 hrs.  It was just once I stepped in I kept on running into people I know.  I am so glad the the 451 Group's media group changed their media pass requirements and I didn't have a badge.  If I was sitting in presentations or in the exhibit hall then i would miss the people who I saw in the bar, and i would need to commit more than 12 hrs.

Hanging in the hotel bar is a typical way to network, but yesterday was an extreme and I hope I don't make this a regular habit.  Although I must admit it was time efficient and cost effective.

One of the guys I spent the most amount time catching up with is Chris Crosby at Compass Data Centers. I like Chris because he is one of the few who have a computer science degree and we can talk about some really cool ideas.  

One of the best ideas I think Chris is doing is one of the greenest environmentally sensitive things a start-up can do.  Don't print your marketing material.  Create documents and videos to explain your company, solution, and technology.

Here is the brilliant part of what Chris is doing and why I think it is one of the best ideas.  The typical old school way is I need to give the potential customer material.  i don't know about you, but how many people are walking around with bags of marketing material?  Compared to 20 years ago the amount of paper is hopefully less than 10%.  I never grab marketing material anymore.  How many of you think your printed marketing material gets share?

So besides saving the environment why is this so good?  Because, Chris has taken it to the next level.  When you have a potential customer you can create a custom folder on a file sharing site and send the customer the link.  This link with GBs of information can be shared with cowokers.  OK, but why is this so much better.

Because Chris has added Google Analytics so now he can measure effectiveness of his material and information he has given to potential clients.  He can see how long people stay on his site. Where they enter from.  IP addresses, Company names from domains.  Countries, Cities that look at the content.  Let's see you do that with your printed material.

This idea would never make it into an Uptime Symposium session, but it did make it into a conversation in the hotel bar.  

There are many other things Chris and I talked about and we'll both be blogging about more ideas discussed in the hotel bar.

In less than 24 hrs Google's Story of Send video reaches 149,713 views

Yesterday I posted on Google's Story of Send post.  And, my specific metric to see how well the video did was that when I looked at the video it had 301 views.  Well less than 24hrs later the views have hit 149,713.

A Google Search for "the story of send" has 2,810,000 results

With my post at least for now in position #9

Part of the high video traffic was the media picking up on the release.

The Google Data Center team has got to be ecstatic with the coverage.  For those who think blogs are dead and Twitter is the answer.  Try to tell this story in 140 characters.  Now you may get more Twitter Traffic if you are Ashton Kutcher, but is the media going to cover your story.

Four reasons why a speaker is presenting at a conference

Now the following may sound obvious, but I don't think people lay this out as simply.  Why is this speaker presenting at this conference?

#1 The person is selling you their company, product, or service.

#2 The person is looking for a new job and getting their name out there and what they do gets them known in the industry.

#3 The person is passionate about the topic and wants to tell the world.

#4 The person has done a great job and as part of the reward gets to speak on the achievements made.

In general as most industry conferences, I would say 80% of the talks out there are category #1.  That leaves 20% for #2, 3, 4.  And out of the 20% maybe 25% are good talks.  So there are 5% of the talks worth seeing.  Huh, maybe that's why I get so bored attending most conferences, and spend most of my time in the hallways networking.