• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Foskett Services

You are here: Home / Archives for Commentary

Commentary

February 5, 2012 by Stephen Foskett

Twitter Zen: Setting up Your Account

When you create a Twitter account, you will be asked to enter some profile information, including your name, URL, description, and photo. All of these are critically important: Many people will look at them to decide whether they want to follow you. If you have not set these up, other Twitter users likely will ignore you!

Consider carefully how to make your Twitter profile reflect how you want to be seen to potential conversation partners. You can only have one profile picture, one URL, and one name, so what do you want to say about you?

Make sure your ID, name, avatar, and URL are entered, and create a reasonable description of yourself

Your twitter ID should be capitalized appropriately to help people identify you. I use capital S and F to show that SFoskett is my first initial and last name. If your twitter ID consists of multiple words run together, consider capitalizing them in CamelCase to highlight each word.

If you wish to be identified as a real person, enter your complete name in your profile. Know that most Twitter clients will highlight the name rather than the twitter ID, so this is what people will see as they read your tweets. I use my full proper name, but others sometimes enter a humorous description of themselves. But this should not change too often to avoid alienating your followers.

I picked this Polaroid photo by Jennifer Huber because it is distinctive, recognizable as me, and includes a relevant and amazing piece of computer history in the background!

Your avatar photo is one of the most visible elements of your Twitter account. Many people change their avatar fairly frequently, even though this can be confusing for followers. I like to keep mine consistent, with only occasional tweaks, so that I’m more recognizable. And I recommend that “real people” Twitter accounts use a recognizable photo of their face.

Twitter only lets you enter one URL, so make sure it’s a good one. Recognize, too, that Google and other search engines use this URL to associate a twitter account with a website. Although many people have a large Internet presence, it is important to pick the one site that best represents you. I use my blog URL, since I can control that content and include links there to my other sites.

Pay some attention to creating an interesting and informative description of yourself for your profile. Don’t stress too much over this, since it’s easy and non-disruptive to change it later. But know that many potential followers will read it, so it should reflect the type of conversation you would like to have on Twitter. If you are sneaky, you can stick another URL in your description, but don’t count on people clicking on it, since most clients don’t allow this.

You may also enter a location in your profile, but these are not widely used, and a static location value may be more confusing than useful. You can tweak the colors and backgrounds of your profile page, but this is much less important since many people use a third-party Twitter client and will not see this page. So don’t stress much about location and colors.

Filed Under: Commentary Tagged With: avatar, description, profile, Twitter, URL

February 4, 2012 by Stephen Foskett

Twitter Zen: A Global Conversation like No Other

The most important concept to grasp is the fundamental nature of Twitter: It is an ongoing, global, democratic conversation. It is not a blog, USENET, Facebook or MySpace, or an instant message platform, though it does have certain elements of all of those. Let’s take a look at these elements in a little more depth.

Discussions on Twitter continue constantly, whether you’re there or not. And discussions are meant to be ephemeral, vanishing after just a few hours. Twitter is like a dinner party where everything you say hangs around in a thought balloon but fades rapidly after. In my experience, the mean time that a message will be read is about 15 min. After this, tweets tail off and vanish in a few days.

Twitter is global, encompassing many languages and disciplines. But each user self selects their own content based on who they “follow”. Everyone’s experience with Twitter is different, because everyone follows different people. Some talk about technology, others about celebrities, local happenings, sports, or sex. And many discussions take place in languages other than English.

Twitter is also wonderfully democratic, allowing direct conversation between people who would not otherwise be able to converse. I have interacted directly with celebrities (and sometimes their ghost tweeters) and industry titans, and it is wonderful to see how many people are thrilled to converse with me.

Critically, Twitter is a conversation not a broadcasting platform. I wish marketers and “social media experts” would spend more time helping their clients actually to converse on Twitter as real humans, rather than simply spamming it with nominally on-topic content. The best tweeters are those who engage in real conversation not just shout from the rooftops.

Filed Under: Commentary Tagged With: discussion, social media, Twitter

May 12, 2011 by Stephen Foskett

Live Events For The People

Nothing beats meeting in person!

In this age when video conferencing has come to the palms of our hands, not to mention our laptops, desktops, and tablets, it is tempting to be dismissive of live events. Who wants the hassle and cost of flying across the country and staying in a hotel when we can see each other wherever we happen to be? But attending events live and in the flesh is a totally different animal from online interactions. Nothing beats meeting in person, and techies more than most should get on the plane and go to events, if only to build stronger connections with their peers!

This was really brought home over the last two weeks as our own Stephen Foskett flew to Las Vegas (twice) and New York for Symantec Vision, IBM’s Storage Innovation Summit, Interop, and EMC World. The interactions we had at these events was priceless, and it will pay dividends the whole year through. We saw cool new technology and met interesting new companies as well as getting to know folks better.

One person who understands the value of personal contact is Thomas Jones, of “Coffee with Thomas” fame. Thomas understands that our back-stories are often as interesting as our day-to-day work, and he’s quick to connect on a personal level. We enjoyed sitting down with him, and turned the tables, interviewing him for a change. Watch the video below and subscribe to his podcast!

This personal connection and community-building is one reason we work so hard to put together the Tech Field Day events and spend so much time away from home. Truly, nothing beats meeting in person, and nothing beats the great folks in our community!

Filed Under: Commentary Tagged With: Coffee with Thomas, community, connections, EMC World, events, IBM, Interop, podcast, Symantec Vision, Thomas Jones, travel

May 9, 2011 by Stephen Foskett

How To Make Your Event More Blogger-Friendly

Do your events foster discussion or scare bloggers away?

With traditional media and analyst organizations declining in numbers and influence, conference organizers are turning to social media for coverage and attention. If identifying and attracting bloggers is difficult, keeping them happy at an event is doubly so. After three years running the Tech Field Day and a decade attending conferences, trade shows, and other events, I’ve learned a thing or two about that. Here are my suggestions.

Make Blogger Passes Available

Trade shows and conferences have long offered free admission to members of the press, and many events cater to industry analysts as well. But do bloggers get invites too? Many independent influencers don’t write for a living, and even professional organizations operate with limited budgets.

Every event should offer a number of free passes for bloggers and other social media types. These blogger passes should be all-access and should include special meetings with executives, presenters, and attendees. It can be a challenge to identify, invite, and vet potential attendees, but that is another topic for another day!

Offer Travel Support

Non-professional writers often don’t have the luxury of an expense account to draw on to attend events; many even have to take vacation days or unpaid leave. Merely offering a ticket will not be enough for these desirable attendees: Event organizers should offer to pay airfare, ground transportation, and hotel costs too. Once again, vetting prospects is key, since this can easily get out of hand. But paying for travel is a great way to entice attendees!

Give It Some Structure

Many bloggers are industry event neophytes and need guidance to help navigate the schedule, while others are just too busy to do much pre-event planning. Offer to create a custom schedule, including key presentations and event highlights, one-on-one interviews, and time off for writing. But make sure they can opt out of certain events if they choose – not all are willing to go with the flow! Offer a custom schedule in printed and electronic form, too.

Shepherd Gently

On-site guidance and shepherding is a tricky task. It can be helpful to remind bloggers where and when they should be in a scheduled event. But be careful that you don’t appear too strict: There is a fine line between influencing and imposing! Your best ally is an organized insider who can help guide their peers through the event.

Identify Yourself

Social media is exceptionally real-time focused, so make sure bloggers know who is talking at all times. Handouts with names, titles, bios, and photos are a big help, as are table cards and large, easy-to-read nametags. Never assume that the audience knows your PR staff or CEO at a glance.

Mix and Mingle

Make your staff and guests available to the audience, and resist the urge to clump together. Events can be great fun for the PR team to bond, but insider conversations can exclude the very people you are trying to reach out to. Avoid talking shop and focus your friendliness on the invited attendees.

Provide Wi-Fi and Power

What good are bloggers if they can’t blog? Make sure there is plenty of power and open Internet access everywhere they will go. Go crazy with the outlets, providing two or three at every seat, and set up special powered spots at keynotes and mixers. Make sure the Wi-Fi network is mobile-device-friendly, without excessive splash screens and passwords that interfere with iPad and smartphone users. Typical paid hotel Wi-Fi is a non-starter; set up your own.

What’s the Hashtag?

Twitter hashtags can be created on the fly, and your attendees will create a few if you don’t standardize ahead of time. Every event should have a simple, short hashtag associated with it, and the best are consistent over time. “#CorpWorld” beats “#CorporateWorld2011” hands-down and still gets the message across.

Connect to Existing Social Networks

Set up a event-related groups on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Flickr rather than creating your own forum for event-related discussion. Walled-garden social networks tend to fail, and empty discussion boards are just embarrassing. Go where the bloggers are rather than asking them to come to you.

Keep On Top Of Things

Once you standardize the twitter hashtag and identify the online groups, actively follow the discussion and immediately address any concerns that come up. Real-time chat can rapidly turn nasty, but it can also save your bacon. If a presenter is boring the bloggers, he’s probably also turning off the rest of the attendees. Pull the plug or redirect the session rather than allowing the heckling to start.

Promote Them Back

The most valuable commodity in the blogging world is a link. Actively promote the bloggers who attend your event with lists and links to their sites, and share and tweet their coverage. Balanced coverage is much more credible than straight praise, so don’t be afraid to promote less-than-flattering content. You’ll gain respect from the bloggers and their audience if you acknowledge and engage rather than aggressively refuting their commentary.

Team Up

Social media is a two-way street. Rather than going it alone, event organizers should team up with bloggers, user groups, and organizations to maximize communication and cooperation. That’s one reason we created Gestalt IT, and why today I spend 100% of my time at Foskett Services organizing and coordinating events like this. It’s nice to see so many companies reaching out and getting involved!

Filed Under: Commentary Tagged With: bloggers, blogging, events, Gestalt IT, social media

April 11, 2011 by Stephen Foskett

Join Stephen Foskett for “The Deletion Dilemma”, Wednesday April 13

Deleting data is not as easy as many think!

Join Stephen Foskett of Foskett Services for the webcast, “The Deletion Dilemma” on Wednesday, April 13. Foskett will discuss the issues faced by today’s IT organizations when it comes time to delete data.

How should your organization deal with the issue of data deletion?

Suppose you are the IT manager of an organization and you have set up shares on network attached storage for your users. Now suppose your users delete their files as needed. Should the files be permanently deleted from your storage and backup medium?

The answer to this question is not a simple yes or no.

In most cases, best practices call for not deleting the file permanently. Any IT manager who has been in charge of storage infrastructure knows the most common storage problem is accidental deletions and “save over’s.  When a copy of the deleted file still exists, the accidentally deleted files can be recovered.  Nevertheless, keeping copies of deleted files can cost money and may pose other risks, such as legal liabilities.

In this webinar, storage expert, blogger and editor Stephen Foskett joins Nasuni CEO Andres Rodriguez to discuss the dilemma of deletion and the best practices around it. With many companies looking at the cloud to expand their storage infrastructure, simplify storage management and save money, questions arise as to whether or not cloud storage can offer these organizations the tools they need to properly handle deletions. Come and hear these two celebrated storage experts’ opinions and hear how Nasuni has solved the issue of data deletion in the cloud.

This webinar will be held on Wednesday, April 13 at 2:00 PM Eastern time. Register now!

Note: Nasuni is a client of Foskett Services. Although the content of this webinar was created independently, its production is part of a paid engagement.

Filed Under: Commentary Tagged With: data retention, Nasuni, webinar

April 8, 2011 by Stephen Foskett

Small Enterprise Storage Array Buyer’s Guide Now Available

We believe that a little buyer education goes a long way, but when it comes to storage arrays, especially in the lower end of the cost spectrum, information is in short supply. Each vendor uses their own terminology, presenting their devices features while glossing over their faults. In an effort to improve the availability of information, Foskett Services teamed up with DCIG to create a buyer’s guide for small enterprise storage arrays, and we are pleased to announce that it is now available for free download, thanks to Aberdeen.

Genesis of the Guide

Jerome Wendt and the rest of the crew at DCIG did a fantastic job pulling together information for their previous Midrange Array Buyer’s Guide, and we were inspired to get involved. Since the quality and quantity of smaller devices has expanded and improved rapidly in recent years, we thought this would be a good market segment to take a look at. After talking with Wendt, we signed on to gather this data for another DCIG guide.

In mid-2010, we began an assessment of the market by examining the systems we knew of in the space. We wanted to know what attributes identified and separated these devices. We distilled a list of key features of these products and created multiple-choice questions and answers to gather this data.

We also set about creating as complete a list as possible of devices in this segment. Some were obvious (NetApp, EMC) others less familiar (Aberdeen, Winchester) and a few were sadly overlooked by us at that time (Coraid, Infortrend). But even so, we were able to contact a good number of companies and many responded by filling in our online features survey.

Not every company responded, but we felt it was important to include certain systems. So we gathered that data and filled out the form ourselves based on publicly-available data. We reached out to the companies to verify our information, and many responded at that time, including some who hadn’t been involved initially. Products evaluated solely based on our own research include a bold footnote stating, “the information represented on this data sheet is based primarily upon conclusions drawn from publicly available sources.”

Evaluation and Ranking

Rather than simply presenting the facts, DCIG’s Buyer’s Guides attempt to score and rank the products included. This is where controversy sometimes arises. We fervently agree that each buyer will have his own criteria and this will significantly alter who “wins” a given evaluation. This makes these Buyer’s Guide ranking less relevant to each reader, but it is still useful on the whole.

It is desirable to have some mechanism to rank the arrays, however. Scoring features was simple: We applied our experience to the sector and judged each feature on its own merit based on what we expected in the market segment. But it was more difficult to decide how to rank features, categories, and the arrays as a whole. We decided that a simple feature-based ranking was most straightforward.

This means that our ranking springs from feature completeness, not how effective an array would be in any given implementation. The top-ranked arrays would be work in almost any environment, but the lower-ranked systems would be appropriate if certain features were not needed.

We also skipped considering price, performance and efficiency, but for more practical reasons. Pricing is highly variable, and we didn’t have access to solid information. And we were unable to actually evaluate performance and efficiency in a lab situation. It would be unfair to estimate or use third-party data so we did not include this information. We strongly advise buyers to consider them before selecting a product!

Production and Publishing

We produced the guide without knowing how the products would compare or who would “win” the ranking, and were quite surprised by the outcome. As usual, DCIG paid us for the data collection, collation, and ranking of products and worked with a graphic designer to create the final product. Once the guide was complete, they went to the higher-ranking vendors to look for a sponsor to distribute the guide for free.

We initially focused only on the upper band, products costing between $15,000 and $30,000. This guide was made available directly to end users, with no sponsor to offset the cost. But we wanted to expand access and completeness of the guide, and some new products were introduced since the original guide.

This is the reason for the second Expanded guide. We added $5,000 to $15,000 storage arrays as well as major new products introduced later in 2010 and early in 2011. Since Aberdeen did quite well in the ranking, they stepped up to sponsor the guide, allowing it to be distributed free after filling out a registration form.

All the work to this point was performed with no sponsor or financial support. DCIG took a substantial financial risk producing the document in this way, but any vendor involvement would have compromised the guide and results. At no time was product ranking or evaluation influenced by DCIG or the vendors. This is the only format we would have been comfortable being involved with.

Get the Buyer’s Guide

The Small Enterprise Storage Array Buyer’s Guide, Expanded Edition is available now!

Filed Under: Commentary Tagged With: Aberdeen, buyer's guide, DCIG, storage, storage array

  • « Go to Previous Page
  • Go to page 1
  • Go to page 2
  • Go to page 3
  • Go to page 4
  • Go to page 5
  • Go to page 6
  • Go to Next Page »

Primary Sidebar

  • Home
  • About
  • Clients
  • Services
    • Ambassador Programs
    • Event Management
    • Event Speakers
    • Tech Field Day
    • Video Production
    • Writing
  • News
  • Commentary

Footer

News

Storage Field Day Exclusive Comes to Pure Accelerate 2017

Tech Field Day Viewership Rockets Forward in 2015

Stephen Foskett Delivers Keynote at DeltaWare Data Solutions Emerging Technology Summit

More News...

Commentary

What Type of Marketing Videos Should I Create? Part One

How to Build Trust at Work (With Anyone!)

LinkedIn Management in 30 Minutes Per Week

More Commentary...

Subscribe Via Email

Contact Us

Contact Us Today

Copyright © 2023 · Executive Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in