I started my technical community building journey when I worked at EMC. I worked in the Ed Services organization building training courses and certification tests, and then I started running the Proven Professional community (and helped start the social media movement at EMC). The biggest thrill I had was interacting with a group of smart, opinionated techies from around the world. I even ran a social contest at EMC World for all the people who couldn’t be there in person.

Then I went to Dell, to build a storage community out of the Compellent and EqualLogic communities plus the PowerEdge customers. That was amazing, and one of my proudest career accomplishments. But the thing I loved the most: I stayed connected to people from the Proven community. After all, we are all a big guild, even if we change our jerseys every so often.

Then the EMC Elect was started. I have to admit, I was more than a little jealous. I still was (am) part of the Proven community because of my certifications, and by that time I was a Tech Center Rock Star, but there was no way I could be an EMC Elect working for Dell.

My how times have changed. 🙂

I came to work for Spanning, an Austin company that has a SaaS backup and recovery service to protect SaaS apps, and they had been acquired by EMC. And then the Dell – EMC news broke. We certainly are living in times of immense change.

So this means: I FINALLY I get to be an EMC Elect member! The entire list is here, I’m honored to be included in this company! I’m stoked to be able to bring my SaaS evangelism to all of y’all, and help you remember that cloud is more than PaaS and IaaS. And I know (from experience) that I can count on y’all to help me keep it real. I’m working on something big for EMC World too, so hopefully I’ll see lots of you there!

Big thanks to Mark Browne for doing the hard work to pull all of this together, and especially for getting me involved. I know from experience you are the unsung hero, please know it’s very appreciated!