Category Education

Welcome to Washington DC! Is what we would have heard.. err.. no, but seriously :) Hi! We are here in the Capitol as the starting point in our whirlwind tour for Charity, Non-Profits, Education, Learning, Consulting, Technology and innovation!    Also known as the IT Grand Prix sponsored by Microsoft and NPower working with non-profits and more!   Most of us arrived either last night, or this morning, but nonetheless we are all here!   So, how did we start off the day?!

After eventually getting from the airport to the shuttle to the hotel, I took a walk over to meet my fellow Red Team member Daniel Nerenberg and Gold Team member Susan Ibach who waited for me on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.    On the way to meet them, I did pass by the White House where I took this photo of apparently Biden taking advantage of the fact that Obama was back in my native Chicago and moving some things out! err… I mean something else entirely! Though tweeting my ‘joke’ about that resulted in a rather awkward snafu of ‘auto-correct’ gone wild :)

In all, it was a good start off to what is already a fairly confusing (intentionally) adventure of working with non-profits, charities and others as we travel our way over the next several days before finally descending upon New Orleans.      For those who had not seen our ‘agenda’ so to speak, here is the breakdown of where our travels will take us:

• Tuesday, June 1st – Washington DC
• Wednesday, June 2nd – New York City, NY
• Thursday, June 3rd – Houston, TX
• Friday, June 4th – New Orleans, LA

After which point, we take a brief moment to relax before each of our respective responsibilities take charge at TechEd, whether it is running labs, working a booth, interfacing with customers, or in my case – Covering the event for the Media, Press and general community so you can get a unique perspective on stuffs, so to speak :)

And if that doesn’t wrap up the day.. Enjoy this little story my good friend Jorge sent me… Notice: my little picture/name are there on the left/middle.   I guess that’d translate into.. I made it onto the Front Page of the Chicago Tribune! :)    In the meantime, if you have not already joined the Red Team! Please do so :)  It’s for our charity NetHope that we are trying to win $10,000 for!

Enjoy, and look forward to sharing the festivities and events of Days 1 and beyond for you!   Take care and talk to you soon!   – Christopher :)

This is my cross-posted official Red Team Blog post! The original can be found here: Join our race for Charity and be a Champion for Change in Haiti!

Hello! I’m Christopher Kusek! – You may know me in the twitter world as @cxi (Why yes, I do have people come up to me and call me cxi… it’s okay, I don’t find it too weird!)

But there are some lessons to be learned here, both from this blog post, and from the whole of this event.

1. The first lesson is… Try not to run yourself too thin when you’re at a company conference the week of an event kick off, it will definitely show in your team’s presence :)
2. The second lesson is, don’t be on an opposing team when you have someone get behind their cause, like ours of NetHope!
3. And the last lesson is.  Have fun :)

So, what am I saying here? It is definitely time to have a GREAT Time!    For those of you who have first met me through my various blog posts around education, learning, certification, technology centric things… or various Zynga Facebook games – Welcome :)

And for those who do not know me, let me tell you a little about myself :)

I am in few if any ways orthodox, it is not exactly part of my DNA, though it is part of the foundation of my success!    A success I like to transfer and convey on to others.

In my professional life (re: the part that pays the bills so I can enjoy the rest of my life) I’m a Technology Evangelist for the semi-large technology company EMC.     I love my job, and I equally love bringing people over to our company (If you are a rock star, LET ME KNOW and I can get you in front of the right people to bring you on board, I’m ALWAYS looking for professional, passionate, OMG AMAZING people! and frankly, it’s getting hard to find those from within my network (the last few I know just started 2 weeks ago… but we still have thousands of positions open world wide!)… Whoa this is starting to look like a commercial, but in reality… for those of you on the fence, I’d like to help improve and change your life and your future… which brings on to the second point of who I am..

I absolutely LOVE helping people! I dedicate a large portion of my life around that; whether it be directly through career counseling and doing deeply technical and strategic things, or indirectly by contributing to a charity and helping out in my (tech) community.   The end result (I hope) is that these others who have grown as a result will be able to continue to go out and help others, allowing this chain of benefit to continue through and through!   I’m not saying that will always be the case, but I’m fortunate to have thousands of stories of others who have gone on and done just that and I am proud of every one of them!

So, why am I doing this? Why am I participating in this event to raise not only money for charity, but at the same time raise the bar for the community as a whole?  Because I get a 20% cut of everything we raise! err.. wait, no that’s not it! (no, it isn’t :))

It’s because I more than care about doing something to help improve the lives of others.. I am actually DOING something about it! And you can do something about it to!

There has been no better time than the present to join the RED Team! Seriously, think about it, the red team has Chief, and Simmons… sure.. we don’t have Church, but cmon.. he’s an AI… (if this doesn’t make sense, please visit redvsblue.com)

But seriously.   The time is here, the time is now, and the time to join our team, well, we can very clearly make it worth it to you!

I DO want to hear from you, as a part of this contest, and outside of this contest as well – Please do stay in touch and if you are looking for a job anywhere in industry.. well, I talk to hundreds of recruiters on a regular basis (industry wide) also, if you play Facebook games.. you can join my Mafia of 3000 people! ;)

Here is how to contact me, and please do sign up and be a champion!

Twitter: @cxi

Facebook: Christopher Kusek

LinkedIn: Christopher Kusek

Blog: PKGuild

FriendFeed: CXI

Email Personal: christopher.kusek@pkguild.com

Email Professional: christopher.kusek@emc.com

Youtube: christopherkusek

And for further social media context (Who doesn’t do this?! ) And so you can follow along the journey..

Foursquare: CXI

GoWalla: CXI

But above all, I implore you to go here to sign up for the red team! Register and join us! – Please comment on this post if you do as well! :)

And if there is something I can do to help you in particular in some various area.. let me know, and be SURE to let me know if you’re (also) attending TechEd!

I hope to hear from and see you all soon!

Christopher Kusek, CISSP, MCT

Technology Evangelist, Ninja [or] Pirate?!

Join the Red Team and help us save lives! – No seriously, we’re doing this.. and we want you to be a part of it! The details below break it out!

I hope you can help us out I am a virtual pit crew member of the Red Team in the IT Grand Prix.  This is a competition being put on to raise awareness of Microsoft Learning, training, and Certification. Starting on May 31^st a ground team will be racing throughout the US to help local Charities solve their IT problems. The winning team gets to donate 10 000$ US to the charity of their choice.

Our team is racing for the charity NetHope. They work all over the world to help aid groups leverage technology on the ground better. This could include bringing in technical people to build network infrastructure, or providing training to locals so that they can continue to build and support technology that solves all sorts of problems.

This race has 2 components. We will be racing on the ground in each city. There are also online challenges. That’s where you come in. If you could register as a member of the Red Team’s virtual Pit crew on the website www.itgrandprix.com and help us out with some of the online challenges our team would really appreciate it!

You can help him by joining the “Team Red” pit crew at www.itgrandprix.com and selecting “Join The Race” to sign in and associate your Live ID with the team. It’s simple to do, fun to follow the exploits of the team and also do something good for yourself (flex some of that certified learning / exams / helping others muscle) as well as others. Make sure you associate the live id that is also associated with your Microsoft Certification!

Once you’re registered here’s how you can help right away!

Let your followers know all about the IT Grand Prix, ask them to sign up for the RED team! Next, complete online challenges!! You can start right now:

Challenge: Take a certification exam

Criteria: The team with the most MCP exams taken by their pit crew between May 1 and June 4, 2010 wins the challenge.

Action: Register with Prometric and take your exam by June 4, 2010. No other action required.

Challenge: Recruit friends and colleagues to join your pit crew

Criteria: Each certification held by each new pit crew member (though May 21, 2010) is worth points to your team.

Action: Recruit your friends and colleagues to join your pit crew by May 21, 2010

Challenge: Participate in Born to Learn Discussion Forums

Criteria: In the IT Grand Prix forum, your ground team will moderate discussion threads. Participate in those discussions and the team with the most relevant posts wins the challenge.

Action: Visit the ITGP forum, find your team’s threads ( your team color will be in the title), and participate in the discussion.

Challenge: Did you know you can track the number of times your VBC is viewed? Create and promote your Virtual Business Card to win this challenge.

Criteria: The team with the most cumulative views of their pit crew’s Virtual Business Cards wins.

Action: Create your VBC and share it. Make sure you have the VBC linked from our servers (image versions do not count)!

Challenge: Take the Are You Certifiable Challenge

Criteria: Play the Windows 7 track and the team with the highest cumulative score will win.

Action: Play Are You Certifiable, (make sure you login with the same Live ID you used to register for IT Grand Prix), and select the Windows 7 track.

Challenge: Update your newsletter subscription preferences

Criteria: We recently added the ability for you to choose how you want to receive your MCP or MCT newsletter: monthly, weekly, or even daily. The team with the most people who have updated or confirmed their subscription preferences wins. That’s it!

Action: Update or confirm your subscription preferences.

Update your MCP Flash newsletter preferences

Update your MCT Flash newsletter preferences

We also have a Facebook fan page where we will update you as we move throughout the challenge you can find here:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/IT-Grand-Prix-Red-Team/118301818209916

If you want to find out more about NetHope check out www.nethope.org

Thanks so much for helping out! If you have any questions about this don’t hesitate to reach out!

Wow… Oh and Wow… Look at me publishing this DAYS Later.  The first reasoning behind that is frankly.. I WAS and still sort of AM Exhausted! OMFG it was quite a tiring yet amazing experience! I believe the best follow-up quote I had (which I tweeted and just noticed it didn’t send) on my way home from the airport in the cab was… “I’m so tired I was wondering why it all of a sudden got dark and realized my eyes had closed!”  So, quite the great and amazing set of experiences.. oh, but don’t take my pre-fix word for it… get ready for the final coverage of the event!

Day three of the EMC World Conference also happened to be Day 1 of the TC (That’s Technology Consultant if you’re asking) conference.  This is a great event where our finest TC’s, TC Managers and some various other ninjas get together and well.. Learn stuffs together!   In the picture above you see a small sampling of ~1700 of EMC’s finest, all collapsed into a single room to learn together as one!   I wish I would have gotten more photos on the whole of day three (or four, or five) but my coverage was limited and I was focused on the events at hand.. so you’ll need to take my word for it!    This particular session/meeting above is what kept me.. well, for quite some time, so long that I missed the “Bloggers Lounge” group photo.  So don’t take the word of some of the bloggers that I apparently don’t exist because I wasn’t in the photo! It’s not true! :)

We had the great pleasure of having a birthday here at the EMC World this year – the birthday of the wonderful @c_weil – As you can see by this beautiful Symmetrix cake above, there was definitely some planning which went in to it :) (I was so disconnected from things going on… I didn’t find out until I saw the cake! shame on me I say!)  It was great to finally meet her in person in this event of events where Christina was receiving an award as part of the Women’s Leadership Foundation (Please let me know if I’m bastardizing the name/etc :))

But that’s not all, right? I mean, seriously… how can that be all?!   I didn’t get many good photos to speak of later until we had our team dinner (but who wants to see photos of my entire team.. I’m not sure if they want that out there, so I won’t share :))   But I did get to have a great interview with a great organization!

I’d like you to meet StudioE! They’re the folks who the customer/community of EMC’ers are able to leverage and other magical mysterious stuff.. I’d say watch the video to find out more, as well as visiting their website.. I’ve talked with some others who are in StudioE and from what I hear, it’s a great program to be a part of, makes me wish I were a customer!

Being that they have Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and the new ECN… well, to tell you the truth, I dragged/stole the icons off of their site! Makes my work easier! :)

And on the final-final day I got the opportunity to attend what was a HIGHLY and HEAVILY attended session of the VPLEX Labs! (What does highly attended mean? After each lab session.. there were HUNDREDS waiting outside of the room ready to pile in to play with VPLEX.. I consider that to be fairly heavily attended :)) I heard there were similar things happening for the Unisphere demo labs as well, but hey… I like new juice and VPLEX is new! :)

What did I learn from the VPLEX session, well.. I learned… I’ll find out soon if (via access to the lab) whether I can expose some of the internals and share with you far more than you’d normally typically see! Oh, and be excited about some other things to come.. I talked with some groups and there will be some amazing things coming on the horizon over the next several months, which will equal a win for people all around!

So, in wrap-up, let me break down the high-lights of this past week and over the events of everything encountered!

• Counting Crows put on a rocking concert, and apparently I do not remember nearly as many songs of theirs as I thought! (++)
• I believe someone in my hotel at Colonnade stole my Counting Crows Concert glow cup, WTF?! Yea, no idea there, but it WAS in the room! (-)
• EMC definitely knows how to put on a Bloggers Lounge! OMFG that was amazing and really a shining beacon for the community as a whole! (+++++)
• EMC really has no idea how to coordinate the unique requirements of Vegans and Gluten Free folk, I wonder how Halal and Kosher is handled (—)
• The Partner Pavilion was populated by the best of breed in industry who really knew how to engage and take care of the customers in attendance! (++)
• VMware is a real stickler with their SWAG, making me ‘listen’ to their presentation and answer a question to win a T-Shirt #advertisingfail ;) (null)
• (Disclaimer… I merely hovered nearby at the end and knew all of the answers they were positing, I told them I could run the preso if they wanted)
• Labs, Labs, Labs – Wow, people could not get enough of these! Every one in attendance was a clear winner who got time with those (+++++)
• I lost my voice by the third day.   Imagine me barely able to speak, well, an extremely distorted version of my voice total suck (null)
• Boston as a city took care of us, with numerous highlights and an accommodating Public Transportation (T-Line) (+++)
• The Red Sox put on a great game which we had the opportunity to be a part of an amazing ecosystem of characters, they’re real family the fans. (+++++)
• Brocade put on an OMFG great event the likes of which were unparalleled the whole week, well done!  Yes they were strict on attendance but they made sure me and my people (you people :)) were taken care of, so I commend them for that, and a special shout out to @charleshood of charleshood.net! (+++++)
• Emulex put on a good event too, but I didn’t show up until the end, so I cannot really speak to the full character of the event but I heard good things from other attendees, so champion for Emulex (I do like Emulex, and they’re not paying me to say this – and I don’t drink nor eat food at events, so it’s not like they’re convincing me somehow :)) (+++)
• Beantown Bash was pretty good, I did spend a fair amount of time trying to get my customers who forgot their badges into the event, so… that should have been communicated to them a little better of the importance of the badge (That, and find better ways for me to circumvent your security to get them in, and yes Security does not stop me from getting what I want) (null)
• The TC Conference was by far the most amazing employee focused event I’d ever been to.  The care and attention and access we were given, both to our needs, driving us technically and enabling us as individual leaders, and not to mention the sheer number of our leaders who turned out to talk with us (not to us) including Joe Tucci, it’s no wonder this is one of the best places to work for (often not recognized outside of our walls).   If you were ever looking for a good reason to work with these rock stars, this event certainly shines as an example – Just let me know and I can get you in touch with hundreds of others who will tell you their take!

So in final… I’d like to thank EMC, the Partners and other Vendors, but most importantly the Customers which made all of this possible.   If not for you, well, there’d be no cool technology to be solving problems… and I’d have no reason to go out to Boston! :)

I hope you find these summaries and break downs useful, I know I will go back and reference it and probably end up getting yelled at about the SWAG (Hey, it’s for my customer! And it’s true, it is!   Don’t you dare tell me I can’t get my customer the little trinket you have, or you’ll find yourself staring down the gaze of an upset @cxi and I don’t get upset ;))

I hope you all had a great time, and I’d love to hear your take, experiences and more, and how to make the next one just as successful! (Anything you share I’ll be sure to communicate it upstream to people who will not only listen, but even take action!)

EMCWorld 2011 will be in Las Vegas, so that’ll be quite a unique experience… :)

In closing.. it’s good to be home with my family, and my dogs! I wish you all well and get ready for the onslaught… the technology is only getting better! :)

I sure do say Wow a lot, but seriously, do I not have an infinite number of reasons to?! :)   Today in particular was a heavy and hectic one! (One in which involved a lot less photos being taken in general!)    But that is solely driven just on the sole fact of SO much going on! If you’re here in attendance at EMC World 2010, I hope you’re having as good of a time as I am! (I’m certainly having my fair share of busy times! :))

My day actually started off a little similar and yet extremely different than everyone else’s!  Not only did I get to take in Joe Tucci’s keynote, but in the final moments of his speech and presentation, as the clock ticked past 10:30AM, I was no longer under marching orders which entitled me to deliver this blog post!  EMC and AOL use VPLEX to reduce complexity in migrations, eliminating downtime!  What a way to start off the day, right?!

I was able to get that published, online and out to you guys from the amazing Bloggers lounge, where I had the great honor of finally meeting so many of my peers, good friends, colleagues and industry champions!    I’m not sure I have the power in me to even be able to reference even half of the folks of you… so feel free to make yourselves known:)

Knowing I had matters to attend to, I headed out from the Bloggers lounge over to the Partner Pavilion, a man on a mission as I was.. to visit my good friends at Brocade :)    It was at this point I finally got to officially meet in person the lord master, @charleshood of the infamous blog Welcome to my valve on the series of tubes.  Charles is quite a dynamic character, great guy and an absolute gentleman!  

So, other than Charles playing with my iPad (or that might be his.. I honestly forget.. doesn’t matter, right?! :))  As I was curious to talk to one of their masters of the IP stack solutions which Brocade brings to bear, I had the amazing opportunity to meet my new best friend from Brocade, Seth Fiermonti!  Watch the video to see Seth take me and your on a whirlwind tour of the NetIron MLX-16 IP switch from Brocade (all the benefit of Foundry with the honor of the Brocade name! :))

The time was however on… to take a trip back over to the Bloggers lounge… I did tour about a bit, visit a session.. and then came back down to catch this random glimpse of my best friend and honorable executive, Joe Tucci!   While I didn’t have the opportunity to shake Joe’s hand, I do have the honor of him understanding and respecting what we do as bloggers :)

After this point, it was time to head back out to the Pavilion floor to show all of the wonderful Sponsors, Partners and more that we truly appreciate them being there.. by taking their SWAG! :)

Check out these sexy new VMware stickers, they’re not only sweet! (No, they’re not pink.. but that’s the photo I took.. me thinks you ought to deal with that! :))  And one of the best ways to deal with this, is by watching @mrdenny compete to provision storage using the SMC for the VMAX – And realizing.. wow, it really IS EASY to win prizes! :)

But hands down, the best of the best is the photo of my fellow TC on the right there, Greg.  He said this (unprompted) which forced me to not only take his photo, but to share his quote :)

“This is what I envision heaven being like”.  And if you were there in that particular area, you’d find it to be sooooo true! Both from the stand point of how bright, lively and airy that section is, but equally taking other undertones of the premise of the Cloud giving you that ultimate kind of Nirvana, whereby… your future is heavenly! (and no, not because you’re dead. ;))

After this point, we headed off to the House of Blues for the Brocade event, where there were literally casts of thousands in attendance! The event itself was amazing, great, my feet are DIEING! My phone was low as it was, and the subsequent battery death resulted in fewer photos. :)  Perhaps my phone will last longer here on Day 2, so I’ll have the opportunity to share more with you :)

I hope if you’re attending you are having a great time! If you’re not, hunt me down and I’ll be sure you get the most out of this experience, whether it be through meeting who you need to meet, learning what you need to learn, and solving what you need to solve!   Rock on everyone, and ready for another raucous EMC World Day 2 coming soon!