Its been almost two weeks since I have returned from EMC World and I am still trying to catch up with myself.

EMC World this year was amazing. I was very busy, I met lots of new people,Customers, Partners & EMC’ers alike. EMC announced 42 new products and IT transformation was a big theme this year. 13,000 plus people attended and it was a huge event. And as I said before, what mattered to me was the people. And it was true.
Sean Thulin does a great job describing EMC World this year in this blog post  and I recommend this post for a taste of what it was. His pictures are darn good. And I have borrowed some for this post.

Getting into it, we broke new ground in that we had experts who participated in the EMC Ask The Expert present at EMC World. This gave us a unique window for members of our Support Community who were not in attendance. They got a Support perspective from the experts regarding sessions and Labs they attended. And they shared this on our Community space for Ask the Expert!

It was also great to hang out with them in person 🙂

ECN Support Community Experts @ EMC World

We even got two of our experts to wrap an ask the expert event on video at EMC World.
You can catch that video at the end of this discussion thread.

The Support Communities are primarily about the the people who participate in them. In reality its their Community, the members are the primary stakeholders.  Engaging, helping other people, passionately advocating for their community and the members is what these people are all about.  It was great to be able to celebrate that this year in the V Bar, in Las Vegas,with attending Community members. The Party was in their honor for their contributions engagement and dedicated support over the years.

EMC eServices Team members with Senior VP Tony Kolish and VP Julie Larsen.

Our booth was busy during EMC World too, and our Ask the Experts contributors dropped by to talk to people about RAMP, Support Communities and of course Ask the Expert! It was great collaborating with the ECN Team and promoting RAMP as well as the forums.

As you’ll notice in the photos (thanks to @henriwithani) we had a trick shot performer in our booth who was highly entertaining 🙂

And I particularly liked that experts were engaging with customers on Support issues. In fact this candid shot I captured of @mjbrender & @henriwithani collaborating on an issue a customer asked them about just sums up why I love the Support Community. Problem solving and collaborating is awesome and fun!

But by far the best example of what the people of the ECN Support Community do for their members, and their Community was shared in our BUZZ Talk at EMC World when people got to “Meet the Legends” of our Community.

Video streaming by Ustream
Indeed, EMC World 2012 was an amazing, productive tiring and memorable experience. We did and learned an awful lot. And this will help us to provide a better experience for our Community going forward to EMC World 2013, which will again be in Las Vegas 🙂

Oh and last but by no means least props to @stephmcbride &  @emerhoff for all the hard work they did on getting the V Bar event together as well as all the other supportive work they did for the booth and eServices. Thank you both so much.