I got an exciting piece of news when I woke up this morning and as usual looked at my twitter feed. The EMC Elect list of 2016 was announced and I was honoured again with this title this year.

Since 2013 when this program was first announced, I have had the fortune of being part of the EMCElect group which is purely honorary in nature and like all vendor programs is about evangelizing and talking about technology – but obviously reflects and promotes EMC products.

The significance of EMC Elect title may mean different things for different people. Being an EMC customer I definitely look at it from the perspective that it allows me more insight into EMC products that I use and also get to share my knowledge with others through various social platforms. Overall, I have always loved sharing my knowledge and thoughts on various technologies so this title is a wonderful reward in return and I have a similar title – VMware vExpert as well. I do utilize my self learning to understand and get knowledge on other technologies as well but that’s a different track.

All social community programs have employees, evangelists and customers and their goals may differ. From my standpoint, at no point of time am I asked to specifically talk about EMC products or promote them – as I am a EMC customer I don’t want to do EMC or VMware’s marketing for them. But when you love a technology and use it or get familiar with it – anyone interested and liking the technology will share that story. That is exactly what I do and the program appreciates a customer talking about the good things they do – I share the things that need improving in private .

Since the program started in 2013, it has evolved significantly. It all started with the fabulous efforts of my dear friend – Matt Brender (@mjbrender), followed by by Sean Thulin (@sthulin) and now for last couple of years successfully managed by Mark Browne (@dathbrun) and most recently Mary Kilgallen (@marykilgallen) who has joined forces with Mark in 2015.

From online knowledge sharing expert sessions to VMworld, EMCWorld, and other worldwide conversations – it has been present in all places.

Personally, I want to see a couple of benefits – Eval/lab license to try out new EMC products, trial or special licenses for EMC cloud being on top of my list.

Attending EMCWorld and VMworld as an EMCElect is special because you get exclusive access to people you want to interact with (engineering and product teams), are invited to special events – some executive and some technical, and finally at the end of the day social events to hang out and network with other professionals.

So there’s a lot of benefit in being an EMCElect and I sincerely appreciate being part of this fabulous group.