If memory serves, this will be my 5th EMC World (yes, the last 6 years since joining Varrow and now Sirius have been something of a blur).

Each year at EMC World has been a bit different for me. The first two years I was attending as a senior presales engineer and was heavily focused on session attendance – extracting technical knowledge out of the information that was publicly available and spending time with peers in my company + customers. The third year I’d become EMC Elect which made it partly about sessions+peers+customers but also about Elect private briefings/sessions as well as getting to meet a lot of great people (including dueling it out with Dave Henry for the Twitter reach leadership board). Last year EMC World was literally 1 week after the acquisition of Varrow by Sirius – it was the first year I didn’t attend a single breakout session (I did get a lot of live blogs out of the General Sessions) due to Elect sessions + customer events + lots of meetings with EMC executives (a mix of business & technical albeit more slanted towards technical).

This year looks to be more like last year – I’m really looking forward to spending time with my peers from Sirius (especially since I’m now part of a national company with people spread across the country) and other EMC Elect. In general I’ll be at the EMC Elect lounge whenever I have downtime. I plan to attend all the general sessions and do live blogs (being Elect helps there as can sit in the press area :-). Finally, at last count I had (8) executive meetings/briefings on the calendar along with other Sirius folks. The ones I’m personally most excited about are the VCE Partner Technical Advisory Board and a meeting with Chad Sakac BUT that doesn’t mean the others aren’t looking very worthwhile and appreciate the people who have made time to meet with myself/Sirius.

Like last year, this looks like it will be year with almost zero downtime — “go go go” each day from getting up in the morning until heading to bed.

As I’m typing this on the plane, I’m readying myself for another marathon of a week….here we go! 🙂