I should have known better….There is no way that I could remove my innovation post along with ALL of the other EMC content without getting a lot of questions. So I will briefly explain….
I have removed ALL emc related content (which unfortunately bumped into some of my other interesting posts on innovation and Exchange 2007). I know that a lot you are readers because of the EMC content and others are readers because of the messaging content. I apologize if you are an EMC content reader, I hope that I will find a way to share with you in the future.
For now, I plan on keeping my bills paid……hopefully I can do that while keeping the meager content that remains on this site. If I figure out a way to pay my bills and still talk about other things like EMC, I’ll do that too.
If you are interested in EMC related content, I highly suggest you check out Mark Lewis’s Blog, Chuck Hollis’s blog, Storagezilla’s blog, the RSA blog, or the VMWare blogs. They are all fantastic blogs done by fantastic people….
Josh's Wordpress Blog 
November 15, 2006 at 2:50 pm |
Is there a way to get a copy of my comment back?
November 15, 2006 at 3:58 pm |
Well now there is something to ponder….
The comment is yours, as is everyone else’s who commented on the varying posts that were removed. Since those opinions are yours and were written by you….a non-emc employee…how can EMC or their employees have any control over what you say? This is not hosted on their system and I am not using their computers to touch the site. I chose to remove my content for now!! But EMC said nothing of removing everyone’s comments (both good and bad about EMC)….
I guess this would be as good a place as any to re-post those good and bad comments…
November 15, 2006 at 5:38 pm |
Josh,
Sorry to see that you had to remove some of your blog content. From the start, I had the policy of “Don’t bite the hand that feeds me until it is feeding me.”
At this point, I refuse to cover both positive and negative sides of my employer and its products. It does make little bit difficult to talk about storage stuff on the blog knowing that you have to skip the topics you know most about.
In the end, it allows me to become more creative in finding storage topics to talk as well as my knowledge of what is happening in storage world outside my employer – A very desirable trait valued by others in the industry even if the current employer doesn’t appreciate it *wink*
Anil
November 16, 2006 at 4:09 pm |
This is true Anil,
Certainly something to keep in mind. I think I may stick with you on this one and keep to blogging about other companies in any industry :)
November 17, 2006 at 5:23 am |
It’s kind of a bad practice to remove content once it’s deployed. Since it was pushed out with RSS, and there are services such as Archive.org it’s retrievable anyways.
I suspect you were told to clam up by corp communications, I’m really sorry about that Josh.
In a few years, companies will be issuing blog accounts just as they are email. In fact 10 years ago, companies were fearful of issuing internet access to employees.
Perhaps assist with creating the blog policy, given that 11% of internet users may be blogging, and up to 44% may be leaving comments on blogs, forums, and other feedback tools this won’t go away. In fact, EMC employees may talk about EMC but just use a psuedoname, that could cause for even more trouble.
Perhaps send the right folks to the blog business summit and other blog related workshops.
Hope this helps.
November 17, 2006 at 6:59 am |
Thanks Jeremiah, It is true that it is kind of a faux pas to remove a large set of content. Your opinions on the subject are great and unfortunately not known well enough.
The statistics you state are interesting. The most popular search that hits my site is “Bad things about working for XXX” (well “Josh Maher” has been catching up though), but almost everyday a search term similar to that would generate a good number of page hits. I thought it was odd at first and then realized that I had a sort of responsibility. If these people (corporate HR or potential employees) were interested to know what it was like to work for XXX, I should give my opinion, so I added small phrases to my posts to indicate that the things in a particular post made me feel good about working for XXX. Now when a person does the same search, what will they find? A lot of people trying to beat XXX at what they do, some people mentioning that they don’t work for XXX anylonger because of some bad reason, and some forum posts by miscelaneous issues about XXX. No cohesive story about what things in particular are good or bad about a person’s experience….Of course this is one example, the types of searches that drive people to my site have almost all been interesting to examine….
November 27, 2006 at 5:44 pm |
There’s two sides to this coin.
XXX company should always be happy to receive feedback from employees. It does makes sense however to engage these problems internally, (and always be sure to offer a solution to any challenge you present) If you were for some reason not able to provide feedback internally, that’s a real shame too.
Silencing the feedback of employees is particularly bad on the blogosphere. Employees can be your greatest champions, brand advocates and bring customers closer to you. (think about it…who else is going to do it? an Ad firm?)
Employee bloggers that tell the truth about companies (good and bad) will likely build trust with their audience. This trust brings folks closer, (isn’t this what companies want? people to come close?) Unless you’re blogging about some specific internal policies, it’s likely that customers already know about the areas of improvement of any XXX company.
Let’s get back to trust. The most well known blogger in the tech industry is Robert Scoble, who used to work for Microsoft. His role as technical evangelist was to build trust and bring customers closer. As such he was the BIGGEST CRITIC of Microsoft via his blog. As a result: customers came closer, (as did critics) and products and services were built better from real-time feedback.
I’m proud that I’ll actually be starting at Podtech.net tomorrow, and I’ll be working with Robert.
I wish you the best Josh.
November 27, 2006 at 10:05 pm |
Thanks for the feedback Jeremiah, I am pretty stoked that you will be starting over at podtech tomorrow. I know that you will do great things over there and I hope that you will be able to help more people with the concepts that you have helped me with since I started blogging.
As it sits now we have made some huge strides internally at EMC for blogging. Storagezilla, myself, and a lot of other internal folks (including the RSA crowd) have made some progress and are hoping to get more progress for internal and external blogs.
I personally came to EMC as a user (I thought it was best of breed, and I still do), so I was really excited to hear about a lot of the work they are doing and be a part of the changes happening here. They are really setting some trends for information management vs. being a storage vendor and it is something that I am glad to contribute real product changes to. The internal culture is in disarray because of it but that should be more then expected. So XXX company not knowing how to handle a situation is a bad thing, but something the world and myself can live with while the rules get worked out…..
I hope that after you get to podtech you will still be involved in the storage blogosphere and will let me know the next time your in Seattle…
December 5, 2006 at 9:55 am |
Ill do that Josh, next time I’m in Seattle.
Oh, did you know EMC podcasts are on podtech.net?
December 5, 2006 at 4:27 pm |
I did not find them until now, I am going to have a listen today…Thanks for letting me know!!
December 22, 2006 at 4:41 pm |
[…] Network World recognizes some of the top bloggers in the Data Storage industry. Master Jon Toigo was the first to notice…Sadly, it falls a bit short as it primary emphasizes blogs from data storage Vendors (companies). Blogging is not about companies….it’s about people, often the common people. […]