>> A cube at DMC World twenty fourteen is brought to you by D. M. C. Redefine, see innovating the world's first converged infrastructure solution for private cloud computing brocade. Say goodbye to the status quo and hello to Brocade. >> Welcome back to the Cube. This silken angle TVs live wall to wall Coverage of DMC World twenty fourteen here in the Sands Convention Center in Las Vegas. We've got three days to stage is over eighty guests. Lots of practitioners, execs, business leaders got a special segment. I'm bringing you today, bringing onto two thirds of the geek whispers, podcasts, Those in the story for the virtual ization and Claude Communities. No art is to guess. Well, let me introduce it's John Troyer, who's making his debut as the founder of tech reckoning. >> Thanks for having me. >> And we've got Amy Lewis influence marketing from Cisco. Name is your first time on the Cube, so, you know, welcome to the program. >> Thank you for having me on. >> All right, so So, guys, you know, we've been to a lot of conferences way we've hung out with, You know, the various influencers bloggers. It's changed a lot. This is my twelfth year coming M. C World. If you had told me twelve years ago some of things I'd be doing at this show, I wouldn't have believed you. I mean, I was one of the guys in a polo that only got out of out of the office once a year to give a presentation and, you know, talks in people about some cool tak um, and you know, social media is one of those things that, you know turn my career. Eleven. So you know what? Let's have a conversation about what's going on in the industry with kind of community influences and everything. John, maybe you could start us often. You know, Maybe if it leads in tow your new gigs? >> Sure, sure, on one on one, and things have changed. On the other hand, the same dynamics are playing out. Buying the buying cycle has changed. The buying process has changed. Customers are looking much more to their peers and not to traditional media analysts. Marketing folks, they can't find more ads. You can't send out more E mail. So what do you do? You need to get part of the conversation. We've been saying that for five or ten years, that's actually happened. Now the folks that were early on into the blogging space have turned themselves into communicators as well as technologists. We've seen, you know, their careers have have gone and all sorts of interesting places, for instance, you. But I think now that even we could talk about his art Is blogging dead? But I think now we're seeing it. We're seeing social media not as a trade or a practice practice, but simply a tool set that we all use. So that's all I'm saying is it's a It's more of a it spread throughout our organization. Not so much in one tiny niche, right? >> Yeah, Jonah, I love that point. I I I've been preaching for a bunch of years that this is an important skill, something you have to have their wonderful tools. But you've been doing community for a lot longer than Social Media has been around, and, you know, so it's peace, Amy, your influence marketing. What would please way out on this? >> Yeah, I chose the title, actually myself on purpose. To say it's not just social media, think social Media is very important, but like John was saying that to me is a set of tools. They're important platforms or important communications channels, but influencers the people who between the term citizen analysts they are unpaid analyst. But people are very passionate about technology, and they want to write on block and share, really engage their community. That's an important group of people. It's a really a buying center, and we have to find new ways to address them. So community is more important than >> ever. Citizen analysts thought, Let's focus that >> some of the >> people you know, I say some people goto event and they get it, get it, get wined and dined and they get to, you know, write about a bunch of stuff I'm like, you know you're better than journalists, you know, you'll You know you do some really good stuff and sometimes it's a little bit too friendly to the people that are doing it. So you know where do you see the role of kind of the press? You know, the analyst and the influencer? >> It's a great question I've been checking. We need to abstract the or chart. It is. It is a complicated question, but I think the traditional presses really trained and rightfully so in giving us that neutrality. So that is still a very important role. I think the analysts are paid Tio Tio, analyze particular sets, etcetera. They have nation specialty. I think the citizen analyst is interesting because they are what you don't know about the neutrality. But you do know that there are people who roll up their sleeves and really touched the technology. So that becomes a very interesting set because they really care about the technology Kazakh but could become their problem if they don't, you know, raise our voice and sort of engaged with technology and let the community know what, what the new trends are, what they need, what business needs. Our etcetera gives us a really applied version, the PR in the e R outside. >> Don't you want to comment on matter? >> I mean, these are the folks that they lose their jobs if they picked the wrong technology. So they have much more. Their discussions have it. They have more skin in the game. >> Aye, that's right. If you've got the practitioner, you know whether it be the end user sometime times it's the you know channel guy that they do that that's good, You know? What about the people inside the corporations that are also using these? >> I'm super bullish about the use of employees as advocates and evangelists in our community, both for technical education. And for the commercial part of our conversation in the enterprise space, we don't sell solutions with Russia. Your hair's a pressure and very nice calm. Give me a call. We sell it with relationships with people. I've been working on the social media since it existed, I suppose. And what we've seen over and over again is the social channels are really great for getting the word out. But without that personal component, it's like just handing out brochures. So you need your employees out there. You need your employees talking to folks. You need your employees without their representing your brand, just like they would have an event. I've seen that at something. On one hand, it's something that's so trivial that we all agree it's true. On the other hand, I don't. I think a lot of people are just realizing that now. >> So, John, you know, there's some some big companies, you know, creative certification programs to do some of this. There's some companies that just, you know, sign everybody up and, you know, it could be kind of an echo chamber or things like that. You know what? What do you see in these days? To kind of help out. You know the community >> well. There's a lot of software and a lot of programmatic things you could do. Those may be useful in terms of organizing you. It comes down to the people in the culture of the company and help much. You trust your people to go out. I think the best thing we can do is sit up platform for folks to be able to, to communicate. I think that's actually what Amy does really well at Cisco. >> X. It's, um I always talk about influence marketing as being people, platforms in content. And so I agree. I think that we sorted out some of the platform issues as we've learned about social media and grew up with it. I think that we are still working out the people in the content side and what's appropriate, how we can join together and do that and how we can creates a mute platforms may be using the tools of social tio to drive the conversation forward. >> All right. So, I mean, I got one for you. You know, how do we balance the kind of creation of information and kind of the community and fund? I mean, you do a lot of fun event you've got, you know, awful club this week. You've got, you know, bacon, stack and B bacon and bacon. I e I mean, I can't keep track of you, deport vacants and everything. And, you know, there'd be some executives here that would be like that, That social stuff. And they're playing games and things like that. So how do we balance kind of attic business value and greeting, you know, value to the community. And, you know, having fun in building community. >> No, it's a great question. A couple of years ago, I got a text in the middle of the night that said, Please explain to me how the bacon is a marketing play. Please explain this and you know, I need a power point slide. So if you've never had to explain, be bacon on the power points, I for that challenge out to everyone. But I think in the last couple of years people started to see it more and more as we're, uh, we're similar to the sales role, and that's how we've sort of changed the language. So I perform a sales like function, except I don't carry a quota. So it is about building the relationship like John was saying, and it is about balancing fun with your intent. So I think that if you create a fun environment, if you create an openness and willingness to listen, then the good things will follow. So you form the relationships of people. You open up their ability to create content with you because they don't feel under attack. They're ready to share. And again, it's it's kind of a magical formula. Be nice and create opportunity. >> Yeah, so >> I think we'll part of it's a generational ship. I think part of it a generational shift and part of it is a temperamental she So tradition again, going back to sales traditional enterprise sales. You might go and play golf with somebody, cause that's what you enjoy doing for our kind of geeks. Our golf is eating bacon and talking about the duplication strategies, right? That's where we're having the most fun. So it's It's just it's same sort of thing. Just a shift in generations. >> Yeah, I wonder if you know what, what role this community help in kind of careers. You know, I think you know, we're talking so much of these shows about, you know, if your storage admin. If you're networking admin and you know you're down there, you know, configuring Luns or setting up the land, you know, we're going to have a job in a couple of years because automation is gonna change. You know, how much does the community help in kind of those career paths and education? >> So, John, I think we should interview stew on this one. Should we have the geek whispers takeover. I think this is your great example. You've talked about you, you were on a career path and we hear this a lot, and when you raise your hand to volunteer, we sort of jokingly call the spokes uniforms. You both really enjoy the technology and like to communicate about it. When you raise your hand and make yourself known to the community, to your employers, to the world at large, it gives you different opportunities. And I think I don't think you go into technology really without wanting to have an evolving, exciting career. So I think that he's becoming proficient in these tools. Joining your community is an opportunity to learn from your peers to get back to your peers and to raise her profile and open yourself up to the possibility of a new opportunity or a new idea or different engagement. A new way to learn >> In today's business environment, communication is a key part of whatever you do, even if you're the guy sitting there configuring the lungs, because if you're not communicating with your teams and the application teams and the storage of network virtualization team, you're not going to succeed so I think that's an important part of it, right? Being a communicator, absolutely critical and art. Barney. >> All right, so either one of you feel free to answer, but I think back to my early days, you know, two thousand eight, I was so excited when I got invited to a couple of conferences. A blogger, you could kind of get a pass, and I would, You know, ten might take my own vacation time and usually spend that on expenses because my employer at the time didn't get it. It was this innovation conference in, like, in a New York City with four hundred people, and it was like, kind of amazing. I've seen people go to B m world on their own dime where they can get a pass. I mean, you know, it's great to see when you when you got the passion. So I guess the question I wanted to ask is, you know, with companies today, who should they be inviting? How do they do it? You know? You know. Is it you know, the blogger Or is it the, you know, empty Alexis co expert? You know, bm where be expert, you know, What? How's that? How's that changing? Or is it >> changing? Well, I think what you've seen happen over the years is something that was a little more unstructured, which was a kind of blogger relations program. Working with both customers partners, employees in your ecosystem has turned into something a little more formal. We created the V Expert program in two thousand nine to formalize what we were already doing. It's an analogy to the endless relations, press relations, investor relations, sorts of programs. So I mean, it's it's it's a little more buttoned up. It's a little more of a membership thing, but we I know both of DMC and BM where and it Cisco, Francisco champions to try to embrace all the folks that are out there blogging. I think you know, if you're a market or you need to make sure that you're keep your eyes open and you don't just talk to the people that you've gathered in your living room, Bye. You know, a lot of it's pretty easy if you're enthusiastic about technology, if you're engaged with the technology, if you put some effort into it, it's actually pretty easy to get involved with one of these programs there, there, there and there, there, fourth of people in them right there. They're not there to say the glory of the emcee and glory of Cisco and glory of'em, where they're there to help you with your career. They're there to give you tools to give you networking and, you know, hopefully get you to places like this. So I encourage everybody that that's interested in starting, you know, go ahead and get started. It's easier than you think to get involved. >> I agree with that, and I think that way want to be almost like an airline program that you'd actually want to participate. And it's sort of my job like this is a customer service activity, and I often talk about if you talk about the large pool of influencers. Maybe they haven't identified yet. Or maybe they prefer to stay independent. Or maybe they do have interest in a lot of different technologies. Me for them to engage in one of these programs, that stolen, important set of people that you have to deal with the mark, you know, and again set up these blogger days have longer briefings. But like John was saying, When you have the group of people that you name and give it a program name, this is a little bit of inside baseball if we don't talk about giving program a name and funding can follow. So if you're working in a corporate marketing environment, it's really important to explain to people that marketing structure behind what you're doing and when you treat them as a class, it gives you some advantage is you can scale out a little easier. You can provide more assets to those individuals, and it frees you up to Dio. What I love to do, which is is to really engage with those individuals and create content with them. So, >> yeah, so how is engagement these days? You know, I think back, you know, that you know, ten years ago, you talk. You know, one percent of the community would, you know, be doing almost all the contribution. Ten percent might be a little active and everybody else's lurker. You know, when we founded Wicked Bond Day, Volonte actually has on his business card that he's a one percenter which goes back to you know it. It's, you know, the one percent that causes all the trouble, the one percent that causes all all of the commotion. So, you know, with this wave, I mean, we were founded off of, you know, economics in crowd sourcing and everything else, and the Cube is all about, you know, sharing information. We put it all out there. We want everybody to contribute and, you know, give that feedback. You know, How are we along now? You know that that journey to get more people involved. >> I think the opportunity is there more than ever. I think you're right. I mean, there's always gonna be a percentage of people who want to raise her hand, the class that want to give up their PTO to go to a conference that that had this other life they just can't help themselves. And so in some ways it's finding the most impassioned and giving them opportunities. But I think that with the platforms and the scale, there is a greater opportunity for people. They don't want to start their own block. For instance, one of the things we do it Cisco champions is allowed people to guess, block or allow them to come post a podcast. So I think there are more more ways to and there, you know, that's one example. There's lots of other groups that provide people again a little bit a dose of it so they might not want to run a full media company on their own. They don't wanna build Q, but they want to participate. And I think that we have so many more opportunities for them to do that that we're seeing group. >> We're seeing platform ships over the years. I think we as technologists human beings have a tendency to forget their past relatively quickly, as people have moved from the MySpace world to the Facebook Twitter world. I think actually, we're headed for I don't call it I don't want to call it post Facebook, but it certainly is. A multi platform world made >> it just like >> it's a multi device world. We're not opposed PC world in that. I think you're seeing the rise of more specialized communities. They come back again from from our from our origins back ten or twenty years ago. I think we're seeing that people want more deeper engagement along the company. A lot of the report building and kind of conversation. And hey, how are you? Goes on on Twitter. But I think people are really looking for a place where they can have a better conversation, more interaction, more lasting death that might not be on their own. Blogger in their own kind of indie web sort of style, roll your own block. But there are more and more platforms that people are making available for this kind of connection again. What was once niche eventually permeates the whole >> yes. So, you know, the concern I have is it's tough because it is so dispersed right now, you know? You know, I love Twitter, you know? Hi, I'm stew, you know, on Twitter. And I know you guys are big on it, too. And I don't love the multi platform discussion. You know, I always love when you dropped that kind information on the community. But, you know, how >> do we How do we get that >> depth? It's one of the things I always worry about is, you know, people will read the headline and, you know, just react at it and, you know, they might even share it a bunch, but they haven't read it. Uh, so how do we get that deeper engagement? Deeper understanding. I mean, you know, I always say, you know, the I'm too busy is a poor excuse because, you know, you know Michelangelo and I'd sign that many hours in the day way we did and, you know, sure they didn't have their phone buzzing all over >> the place. >> I actually think we should do less. Not more. I think I think too much information, too many channels, too many corporate channels, too many personal channels, too much bad content. The world does not need more crappy content. So whether you're a individual, blogger or marketer, I'd say just turn the dial back a little bit. Did work on better, longer pieces that add more? I think that's the only way that we can shift the conversation. >> Yeah, long for love it. Oh, no, absolutely. I still read so >> well. It's a curatorial function as well, that we have to be responsible. And that's yet one more way people can participate. We see people rise and in the community because they're really great curator Sze, because they syndicate the content in ways are interesting to others because time is of a value so that becomes a real asset. And the skill is Well, >> yeah, great. Great point. Could you know, so many times I'm like I really like to do a thousand word post on this, but, you know, sometimes all I'll come out of this show and take, you know, I did a year ago. I did it. I didn't article on the federation. You know, the ZPM were pivotal and coming out of the show, I've got a lot of new data, and I could really quickly take some photos. I've done. Takes some of the notes. I take some of the tweets and, you know, put together an order. Won't take me as long. I mean, I'll probably do it on the plane ride home. So what I wanna ask next is, you know, you guys see a lot of things out there. What coolest thing you're seeing either at a at a conference or event or you know what? What? What's catching, right? What? What's interesting? Done. >> There's a whole new side out there called Tech, right? I don't know what's cool out there again. I'm seeing multi channel multi, a lot of experiments. There's some cool stuff going on with the indie web. There's I mean, everything is mobile. I don't know. There's just a lot of places. It >> sounds like you Let's give the plug. Integrity has finally cool things and, you know, solid. But something >> like that tech reckoning is a site that's gonna bring. It's an independent site. It's not associate with any vendor. It's going to bring some of the community and enterprise community together to talk about some of these things about Where is it going as a whole? Where's technology going, where our career is going to try to help us get to whatever this you know, it is a service. Third platform, Whatever you wanna call it, where the heck were going? It looks pretty interesting, and it looks like it isn't gonna be quite the same thing. So we're trying to bring together a set of people and just tackle some of those problem and also work together and collaborate. It's so much easier with open source with cloud. With all the tools we have available, it's so cheap and easy to build new pieces of technology, not just a type of each other words online, but to actually build stuff that I'm very excited about. The power taking going far. This from open source, right? Taking the power of people to come together and build cool new stuff. That's what I would like to. >> Still, I'm just angry that you scooped Matt and I on getting to interview John first about >> tech recognition. So, Amy, you you do some cool things that some of events we talk about, the waffle bacon, you What have you seen out there that that's kind of interesting? Or, you know, how do you find some of the cool new ideas? >> Yeah, I think you always I'm working with a really talented events team right now. And I think one of the things I've seen them sort of transform is that social is not other, you know? And we're seeing the social and this concept of community permeate and really think about our audience to really engage that core base, those those tech enthusiasts, and to see what you can do to in engage them. So I'm saying it in real life and in these community platforms. So I think that's been one of the other great trends is watching people band together and various kinds of consortiums. I won't name names, but there's a few folks outlook community. We're seeing a lot of this happen where they're sort of grouping together, and they're saying if they pull their resource is what happens, they might be able to gather enough money to go to a conference or to fund a buddy or to get a hotel room that they've got extra spaces somebody can crash. So I'm saying it's very cool, sort of stitching together opportunity and working together to learn more. So again, the combination of the platforms, using the technology and then in real life connection. >> All right, so I've been asking all the questions here. So before we wrap up, you know, Amy, anything you want, Johnny, when as me, John same, we throw it open. When Whenever >> you first signed up for your Twitter account, did you think it would lead you here because you have the best Twitter >> account? No, actually, a friend of mine for me and Steve Todd, who was blogging before I was, and he said, You know, when there's trepidation when you're gonna get published and you never know where it leads. And we were talking about this after he and I were on the stage at Radio City Music Hall right after Bill Clinton had been on because they brought the bloggers down when we were there. And it's like, Come on, you know, I'm, you know, I'm an engineer by training, you know, I've done. You know, I've done some sales. I've done engineering. I've done you no operations. Technologist is hard. So you know, some of the places the people I've met. I mean, if you just reach out to people, it still, even though there's so many people on Twitter, you know, the people that right and our authors and bloggers, If you comment or you reach out to them, a lot of them reach back. I mean, you know, I still amazed at some of the people I've met get to rub elbows with. No, just just have had a blast with him. So >> get another one. So do you think unicorns can be trained? Do you think people have to be born with the skill set, Or do you think you can be a uniformed rancher? >> No, I think I think I think they could be trained. You know, it's absolutely it's Ah, it's a tough skill set. I mean, you know, doing video is not easy. First couple of times you do it. It's different there's there's all these muscles. You know, Writing is one of those things that you know. I thought I was an okay writer, but hadn't done a lot of it. They're things you do. So try it out. And that thing I tell you, you got to stick with it for a while. I thought Twitter was pretty stupid. First Go on it. But, you know, I stuck on it for another six months and have some fun with it. No, here we are six years later and you know it is a lot and, you know, blocking of writing and blogging and everything else you know all over. I >> like the muscle memory idea. >> It's hard. You were on camera, have remember not to scratch my face. Strange. He'll set, I ask. I actually, I'm seeing a lot of interest in short form video. I know the kids are all doing it. I mean, obviously, we're doing it here. You do it. It's part of your practice. But in talking with people about our new activities, it's just so easy to take a chair. I think that's actually, even though it's been coming up for years, I think where I think that's an interesting thing >> on all right now, I'll give one of those inside tips videos. Great. Some people don't like to watch video. Yeah, broadcaster great. Some people don't like to listen to him, you know, writing's great. Some people won't read. So you know what? One of the early lessons I had is when I was, you know, being a, you know, active member on standard evangelizing of solution. I did it everywhere it you know that give presentations that shows you put it up on slide chair. You do you two videos, you blogged about it. You talk to everybody, you bet that you can everywhere. And you know, it just permeates out there. It could be a bunch of works and then there's tools that are out there. >> They're all connected events, right? I've discovered recently, and I can't believe I just realized this. But it was with the conversation with Amy on our Christmas broadcast that even though I've been part of an online group for years, I'm part of digital marketing for BM. Where for years, Uh, actually, most of my work. Half of my work is off line having my workers meeting people in person, getting to meet them and connecting that online and offline. And the synergy there is just is immense. >> Yeah, absolutely. I mean, other than the keynotes, my phone stays in my pocket for the most time. Unless I'm going between events. It's the in real life and nearly getting to know things. I was joking, You know, Twitter went away. Tomorrow might be a little sad, but I can connect the most. All those people, we got him on LinkedIn, Facebook and, you know, email. I still use something. Don't taking their holds. Absolutely. So you know, to wrap. I guess if you want to, just You know what people find more on your podcast. Find your website. You know Amy, Like it start? Well, >> where >> are Equus? Versace, of course. Geek hyphen whispers dot com on way, published every week. So give us a listen. See what you think. And I'm >> Matthew Brender. Sorry you couldn't join this time, but it's a lot as it were. A DMC world and you two are here in Matthew's. >> It's hard. We're going toe to toe. It's true. We're going to record with him like it's a Max headroom figure on a yes tomorrow, so and also I'm on Twitter as calms mention and I block under that same constantly dot com girls have engineers. That's true. I have engineers, unplug dot com as well. And now sixty second Tech, the short first on the popcorn version >> and I. J. Troia on Twitter and tech reckoning dot com. I went inside. >> Hey, Amy, John. Thanks so much. We We love taking the podcast. Inception. Sile inside the Cube. Look forward to seeing you lost events connecting with the community and everybody. Definitely check out their stuff. I'm at stew on Twitter with yvonne dot org's is where most of my articles go, and, of course, silicon angled on TV is where you can find all the video. Thanks for joining us. We will be back with the rest of DMC world covered.