I have been with EMC for a year, for those of you that know me personally you know that the 1 yr mark is when I make up my mind of whether to stay with a company or look for something else. I think it takes a year to really see the culture and understand the job requirements that weren’t in the online posting. As I hit this small milestone I tend to have conversations with those in my life that are more enlightened or at least help me to focus on myself. Mostly monks and want to be monks that have been my friends for years. (Note: if you don’t have a monk as a friend I highly recommend it the conversations are never direct and often filled with more questions than answers)

While the decision itself is personal and I begin to be introspective about where I am and where I want to go I had a bit of a realization. My monk friends would say that it was a moment of clarity or a vision of utopia. Who is to say for sure but what I realized is no one tech company has all of the answers. No matter how broad their portfolio of products is. This most likely explains the EMC, VMware, Pivotal federation of companies. But from a broader perspective maybe the truth of the matter is there is space for so many because of the differentiation of each, the niche products fill a need and solve a problem.

So what was my realization?

The realization was that if we set aside the concept of making money (I’m not a communist just stick with me) and all of these tech companies were one massive organization of geeks collaborating and building and innovating at will then what could we accomplish?

I honestly believe that geeks could run the world in a way that would make life easier for all people. Not that our tribe is any less prone to the –isms that cause segmentation but because we try to be inclusive based on knowledge and technology.

The community is our real world answer for this notion. For me the IT community has taken so many shapes over the years but currently it’s influence is seen via twitter and show floors as well as small community events. There teams form and people collaborate on new projects outside the confines of their regular day jobs. This is pretty amazing to me and I love being able to contribute to these projects and learn and help others learn.

It’s to the community managers and operators and my IT sisters and brothers on there that I want to thank for this last year. You all have made my first year on the vendor side fly by and have helped provide the clarity of my place in the community and industry at large.

Thanks to everyone, I can’t wait to see what the future holds.