Originally posted by: TonyPearson
Continuing my coverage of the of the [IBM Edge 2013] conference, I have some photos of people I ran into at the Solutions Center.
Here is Sarah Hale at the Emulex booth. Emulex is one of our suppliers for host bus adapters (HBAs), headquartered in Costa Mesa, California. There is an ongoing controversy at IT events like this on whether to fly in experts from the home office (in this case, the Emulex home office is not far away) or use [locally available talent]. Some of those working the booth seem to hide their residency, while others are proud of where they live. When I asked Sarah how long she had been working for Emulex, she had the best answer of the week ... "Since 2 O'clock!"
For my readers who complain that I only appear to take pictures with beautiful women at these events, I present a counter-example. Here is Lang Levstek, a good friend of mine from Detroit. Officially, he is an IBM Storage Sales rep across Michigan and Northwest Ohio, and I have flown out to visit his clients several times this year. His wife took the photo and noticed that Lang and I both wear identical wristwatches, a detail we had never noticed before.
Some have asked me how I am able to get so many people to take pictures with me. In this case, these two ladies, Paige Taylor on the left, and Kate Williams on the right, both from [Centerline Digital] yelled "Hey, There's Tony Pearson, let's get a picture with him!" When I was the chief marketing strategist for IBM's System Storage product line, I worked closely with the team at Centerline Digital to develop marketing collateral. I will be going to Raleigh, NC in a few weeks, so I may just have to stop by to visit their new location!
The folks over at Bridgeworks in United Kingdom have developed an awesome storage protocol accelerator called [SANslide] that helps with remote replication across long distances. Here is April Trinidad, who works for [Agilesys], the Master Distributor of the Americas for SANSlide products. Bridgeworks and Agilesys were on hand to promote the [SANSlide 150V7KSVC] that supports Storwize Family products.
This is Julie Dufour from IBM Worldwide Marketing on the Tivoli Software side of our business. The Tivoli team has been renamed the "Cloud and Smarter Infrastructure" group, so if you see "C&SI" on people's business cards, now you know what that stands for. Julie has been involved with IBM Pulse events. Next year's [IBM Pulse 2014] conference will be held once again at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Feb 23-26.
Here is Jennifer Dennis from our Austin facility. I went to school at the University of Texas at Austin, and am often back in Austin to help out the EBC there. Like Tucson, Austin has both hardware and software labs, and Jennifer is from the Software side.
It has been said that all women look both taller and thinner when they take a picture next to me. This tall one is Moran Mazig, a relatively new IBM storage sales rep. She came from Israel and now works in the New York area. You might think she is standing on a box or something, but no, we were standing on level ground. She is literally that much taller than me. This is not an illusion!
Here is Joanne Blais from IBM's Corporate Headquarters. I have only been to HQ once in my career, back when I was chief marketing strategist, filling in for the VP of Storage to present our numbers to Corporate Marketing leadership.
Here is Kelly Groff, from IBM's recent acquisition of Texas Memory Systems. She was there working the booth to help answer questions about IBM's FlashSystems line of all-Flash arrays. Lurking in the background is my Tucson colleague Ahmed Almoustafa, our Storage Front Lines mission manager.
Here is Jessica Duda, a new storage rep in the Seattle area. I have family living now in Seattle, so I hope to see them the next time I visit clients with Jessica in Washington State.
I have a lot more photos of the event, so I will stop right here and continue with another post tomorrow.
technorati tags: #IBMedge, Solutions Center, Emuulex, HBA, Sarah Hale, Convention Models, Lang Levstek, Paige Taylor, Kate Williams, Centerline Digital, BridgeWorks, Agilesys, April Trinidad, Julie Dufour, Tivoli Software, #IBMPule, IBM Pulse, Jennifer Dennis, Moran Mazig, Joanne Blais, Kelly Groff, Jessica Duda