There seems to be a trend in the blogosphere the last months. I already tweeted about it a couple of time but decided to create a list to make it more obvious for some of you non-believers. I guess after reading the following list the question is “who is next” and of course “where can I place my bet?”.
- Simon Gallagher –> VMware
- Simon Long –> VMware
- Simon Seagrave –> EMC
- Bas Raayman –> EMC
- Rich Brambley –> Veeam
- Alan Renouf –> EMC
- Hany Michael –> VMware
- Kenneth van Ditmarsch –> VMware
- Scott Lowe –> EMC
- Frank Denneman –> VMware
- Rick Scherer –> EMC
- Ken Cline –> Quest
- Massimo Re Ferrè –> VMware
- Ed Saipetch –> EMC
- Mike Laverick –> Tech Target
- …. more to come soon! Believe me.
Now I’m not judging any of the people mentioned or any of the vendors recruiting these experts; It’s merely an observation. Better said I fully understand why this is happening. The VMware community is full of experienced and knowledgeable people and especially the bloggers have a high visibility.
Now, place your bet.
You forgot:
John Avery -> EMC
self reference
Place your bets here!
Well blogging gave me the exposure, luckily for me VMware followed up on it. Blogging is an excellent show case. So if you know you’re stuff, show it and before you know, they will be knocking at your door!
So, if you look at the Q4 figures of VMware and EMC, it’s not surprising that they are headhunting. Same with Netapp as they recently announced VMware, Cisco and Netapp collaboration. I think we will be in for a at least 3 to four transfers.
Is John Avery a blogger or a community member with a lot of visibility as I personally don’t know him?
John Blessing (aka vTrooper) -> EMC
You may want to add Brian Madden, who went to TechTarget at the end of 2009 🙂
Alessandro
Rumor is next week will be at least one more.
Hi Duncan,
I think its more of a tribute to the informed Bloggers than a hiring spree.
As an extra bonus, obviously the companies will get nice exposure too…
Louw
Hmmm…I’ve heard some rumors but I won’t let them out here, we’ll just have to wait…
added Brian Madden.
I think this is just a normal shift that we could have expected. Some of the smaller companies tried to get into virtualization and it didnt pan out. The economy and their lack of penetration into the market killed their attempt. This free’d up some of the names to move.
Add to that the fact that the big players (EMC, Cisco, etc) have been ramping up and have had the ability to pick up talent while the economy has been in a shambles.
Talent will always get a job. The names will get sucked in for the expertise and the potential business they may bring to the company. Expect to see some more of this, but really I bet you could run around some of the other industries and their “tight” communities and I bet you see some of the same things.
VMDoug -> Quest ?
Yeah… @VMDoug to Quest. Funny.
Duncan,
What’s happening is the vendors have realized that social media and the way communities and bloggers interact is becoming powerful marketing. They are targeting these people because they not only have expertise in the technologies, but also because they have developed expertise in creating technology conversations. People have lost their desire to believe/trust companies (eq. large marketing departments), so they seek validation through individual experts. It will be interesting to see how prominent and unbiased these bloggers remain in their new roles.
and what about @Beaker going to Cisco?
And, as you all know, EMC owns a majority of VMware.
yes but that says nothing about recruitment as they recruite independent from eachother.
>People have lost their desire to believe/trust companies (eq. large marketing departments)
That’s a statement I’m not fully agree with. There are still companies communicating properly with their customers without using FUDs.
vCloud initiative and Cisco’s UCS are long terms projects requiring experts and also requiring a lot of storage hence EMC and NetApp also recruiting…
To me the most interesting angle on this is….I read a lot of these blogs (couldn’t live without NetNewsWire) and have a decent amount of faith that the bloggers in question will stay relatively non-biased.
But….for the sake of example, Scott Lowe used to post a good bit of stuff on various NetApp items — how much time do you think he’ll be spending on NetApp gear now? He’ll probably still post on VMware….but I’d bet a lot of his storage posting will be more EMC-centric just as that’s what he’ll be working on all day. That’s not really a knock on his impartiality….more just a reflection of where he’ll be focused much of his days. From EMC’s perspective, that’s a huge win (although I’m not saying that’s why Chad Sakac hired him)….there’s one less prominent blogger who’s not putting up NetApp stuff.
I’ve thought about this too as I’ve pondered getting back into blogging (blogged a good bit 5-6 years back…recently have been really active in the NetApp Communities)….just how to keep the perspective that people expect. About all I can come up with is just being really upfront about the biases you’re aware of but can’t really help.
Of course Scott will not post a lot on NetApp anymore as he simply will not be facing it anymore on a daily basis. But even if he would not have moved to EMC but for instance to another partner with a heavy HP EVA focus the contents of his articles would shift.
Over time for most blogs the content of the articles does tend to shift anyway. From technical to more strategic or architectural for instance. From SMB to Enteprise etc. This is just evolution and there’s nothing wrong with that.
In this case it’s a win for EMC, but who knows who Netapp recruits tomorrow. There are more than enough prominent community members / bloggers around.
Don’t forget Michel Roth (Thincomputing.net), who was one of the first bloggers to make a move to a vendor (Provision Networks / Quest).
Disclosure-EMCer here.
I’ll say this – the reason for going after the bloggers wasn’t their blogging/marketing footprint per se.
after I put the 2010 strategic plan for VMware/EMC interaction (engineering, go-to-market, etc), of which VCE is a big part in front of the Exec team, the immediate discussion was:
“having a LOT more people with skills across the technologies, ability to learn fast, and communicate that to the customers and to the market (and help influence product engineering for simplification, accelerated VMware integration) is going to be REALLY important. Chad, hire ____ people, and make them be the best of the best, and able to learn fast”.
When _____ is a REALLY big number, it represents a huge recruiting/onboarding challenge, particularly when quality can’t dip.
So – recruiting people who, because they put themselves out there, I already know their ability to learn, communicate and tech knowledge helps accelerate that. That’s the primary driver for me personally. It does help with a market view, but that’s a smaller part.
Re: continued independence, I made it very clear to Scott, and to anyone else on the team, I would never ask them to change what they post/talk about (obviously no EMC confidential/proprietary info – which is in our blogger policy). If he wanted to write a NetApp post, positive, negative, neutral, whatever – I would encourage that.
It does get harder just because of the technology you’re in front of every day, and it gets really hard (heck I try, but it’s VERY hard) to stay “even handed”, and even if you are, since you’re at a given vendor, people will assume you’re being biased (which heck, maybe you are and it’s inevitable).
For what it’s worth – that’s what’s behind it.
Also – if anyone reading this is interested, reach out to me. _____ is a REALLY big number 🙂
John Avery helped w/ vmunderground.com party last year. He’s well known in the Midwestern USA circles.
but he’s not a “blogger” as these chaps are.