As of late, I have been asked to do all manner of speaking engagements to large audiences.
I don't know whether it's the season, or people are more interested in what EMC has to say than before -- it doesn't really matter. All I know is that my calendar is now relatively full with all sorts of high profile speaking events.
And, of course, this is causing me to reflect a bit on what's going on, and what it might mean.
The Wide World Of Vendor Speaking
I take customer speaking opportunities very, very seriously.
It's a huge investment in time on their part, and on our part. I put an inordinate amount of time into figuring out who they are, what they want or need to hear about, and getting my messages tuned for their ears. For me, every speaking opportunity is a big deal, regardless of the context.
And, of course, you only have one opportunity to make a bad impression ... ;-)
As you might know, I've been with EMC since 1994, and -- during that time -- EMC has evolved from a small, scrappy technology vendor into something considerably more compelling.
At one time early on in EMC's history, most of our speaking venues were with customers considering a large storage decision, so that's what I did a lot of. Later on, we targeted industry forums to explain who we were, and what we did. There's also the pay-to-play "sponsorship" events where you get a keynote slot in exchange for a signficant contribution to the cause.
As the venues expanded, so did the message. Keep in mind, EMC has literally transformed itself through R+D and acquisition over the last four years -- we've become something very different, so there was a need to use our venues to explain what we'd become, and why.
I don't get asked so much to present at those kinds of gigs these days.
Instead, I'm finding myself in a relatively new situation: very large customer or partner is having a leadership meeting, and they want an outside perspective on the industry, trends, and so on. This is exactly the kind of gig that might have gone to an analyst organization, or other high-profile third party in the past.
But now, they're starting to ask EMC to come and share some thoughts about where it's all going.
Don't get me wrong, I think the new requests are pretty cool. But, at the same time, I've had to really change what I talk about, and how I talk about it.
Meeting Expectations
How many times have you listened to a vendor drone on about their products, their technology, why they're better than some other company (maybe one you've never heard of) and so on?
We almost expect vendors to do this when they get up and speak. And, trust me, EMC does plenty of this product-and-technology, it's-all-about-us type of speaking.
Better up the scale is what I call the "single issue" presentation: take a single issue of importance (e.g. energy effciency, SOA, information security, virtualization, et. al.) and do the panoramic view: definitions, problems addressed, different approaches, common challenges, and -- of course -- all the wonderful things that a vendor is doing to make the world a better place.
I see this done well far less by vendors. I think it's more effective (and interesting) than the first approach, but -- at the end of the day -- you're dealing with a single issue, and the world isn't that simple, is it?
The majority of what I see EMC doing well today is this sort of "single issue" style of presentation, e.g. find a topic that the audience is interested in, and go deep, so to speak. I happen to think we do this better than most -- we seem to have more to say on a very broad range of topics.
Take any one issue (let's say virtualization), and we can either spend three hours going through different perspectives and capabilities, or -- alternatively -- distill it into 30 minutes of highlights that are guaranteed to be relatively interesting and enlightening. And we can do the same for many other topics.
But I think there's a third level out there -- call it "contextual" -- where you zoom the lens way back, talk about how megatrends will affect what we do and how we think about problems in the very near future.
In this style of presentation, there are no clean, neat answers. We're talking about entirely new challenges where there's no clear consensus about what the right answer might be. And, when we dig into the challenges, they don't live in neat boxes, they interact with each other in interesting ways.
For the last month, I've been doing this style of presenting at these leadership events, drawing from the material I outlined recently on 10 (count'em 10!) blog posts, introduced here.
The Response Is Getting Better and Better
If you do a lot of presenting, you know how hard it is to come up with entirely fresh material, code it up, and then deliver it smoothly and confidently. I'm near the end of one of those cycles -- I've reconstructed my core material, re-assembled it, and it's getting better and better.
First, I don't talk about EMC much. I talk about how things are changing, and what it might mean for the organizations we work for, the new role(s) of IT, and I even take it down to a personal level in some cases.
Now, of course, for each challenge I talk about, I share EMC's perspectives, how we see the problem, and what investments we're making around it. But -- let me make this clear -- it's not vendor chest-beating by any means. I freely admit that these are new problems, no vendor's solution is perfect, there are many alternatives, many unanswered questions, and so on.
So, I've tried this approach out in many different (but related) venues: a large financial institution, a world-class system integrator and outsourcer, a globalized conglomerate, and so on.
Uniformly, they tell me pretty much the same thing:
Great presentation -- you made me think.
It's all related, isn't it?
Loved the fact that you didn't bore us with technology mumbo-jumbo, or turn it into a 30 minute EMC infomercial.
And I'm now thinking of EMC very differently!
The Bottom Line
No, I'm not soliciting more speaking engagements -- I can only tolerate so much airplane time before I get very, very cranky.
I think the real lesson for vendors everywhere is effective communication -- talk about things your audience (and your customers) really care about. Make it more about them, and less about you.
As someone who takes customer speaking very seriously, I'm perhaps the luckiest guy in the world.
I work for a company who has a very good sense of what's happening out there, and what it might mean, and has made a mind-boggling array of investments to play in this new world.
And, trust me, it's a lot more fun talking about this sort of stuff than arguing "who's got the best technology".
Because, in the final analysis, it'll matter more about what we do with the technology, rather than the technology itself.
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