Interview with Steve Chambers (@stevie_chambers), Wikibon’s first analyst outside of the US

By Rosalind Carr (@Rosalind_at_O) and Rose Ross (@Rose_at_O)

The Countdown Team catch-up with Wikibon’s newly appointed Senior Analyst Steve Chambers, who is flying the flag for the Wikibon community in the UK. We chat hot topics in cloud for 2015, the best way to pitch him and his favourite industry events of the year…

Tell us a bit about yourself.

I’m a living paradox: I love my home town, but I also love global reach.  I love football, but I’m a Leeds United fan.  Most importantly the tech world I came from is being eaten alive, and I’m cheering on Pacman.

Tell us a little bit about your firm and its interest in the cloud. 

Wikibon meets my paradox criteria because it has history and future and I love it because it always aims to look at the crazy world of IT from the perspective of the bamboozled end user.  There’s so much change, variation and hype that it’s a nightmare for enterprise IT to make sense of it all: all those folks want is to make the best informed decision, and I think the channels of Wikibon are one way to help that.

The STORRIEs – Awards nominations extended to Friday 4th April

By Rosalind Carr, @Rosalind_at_O

Make sure you are in with a chance to win at the prestigious STORRIE’s this year, by nominating this week!

There’s something for everyone, with a wide range of product, company and reseller categories that are free to enter.

Finalists can enjoy a glamorous black-tie Awards Ceremony in London amongst other storage industry peers on 12^th June.

Dates for your diary:

Nominations close Voting opens/Finalists announced Voting closes AWARDS CEREMONY

April 4th April 11th June 2nd June 12th

For further information please visit www.storage-awards.com

Interview with Desiré Athow (@desireathow), Editor of TechRadar Pro (@TechRadarPro)

By Rosalind Carr (@Rosalind_at_O) and Rose Ross (@Rose_at_O)

Following our article on Desiré’s key event advice and tips (“5 golden PR rules for events”), we chat top tech events, PR pitches and hot topics in tech for 2014…

Q.  Tell us a bit about yourself.

Originally from Mauritius, been in this country for the last 10 years or so. English is my third language and my degree is in sociology. So to land in this country and to work as an editor on one of the biggest B2B websites in the UK is an absolute treat. Prior to working on TechRadar Pro, I was the editor of ITProPortal for 8 years and have been covering and writing tech for my entire adult life.

Q. Tell us a little bit about the title you write for and its interest in data storage/mobile/cloud/infosec/virtualization.

TechRadar Pro is a fairly new title, we’ve been around for less than two years. However, because it has been carved out of TechRadar, UK’s biggest technology website, we already have a significant amount of uniques, far more than more established websites. I seldom write unless I attend an event, have an exclusive or snatch an important interview. As for our areas of interest, our roots lie in computing but my team and I have been working hard on diversifying the content production to include business technology at large.

5 golden PR rules for events…

By Rosalind Carr @Rosalind_at_O and Rose Ross @Rose_at_O

 In the midst of a busy events period, the O-team have had some tips from Désiré Athow(@desireathow), Editor of TechRadar Pro, and are armed with a trusty event PR checklist at the ready!

 

Here are 5 handy hints for PRs looking to make the most of event opportunities with the press…

 1.      Timing is key in the run up to events – Do not wait for the last week to invite journalists to briefings- pitch as early as possible to bag a slot in their diary! With an initial conversation in advance, you’ll also have the time to get a sense of what they’d like to discuss, and can prepare accordingly if a briefing is arranged.

2.      Communicating with the press – Each journalist is different in the way they like to be pitched. For instance, we can definitely understand Désiré’s aversion to out of the blue PR calls pitching interviews with unknown companies. However, there are now so many ways of communicating, that over time, you can gage different journalists’ preferences for contact.

Rose Ross talks to Hans De Leenheer, independent Blogger and vEXPERT

By Rose Ross, @Rose_at_O, and Rosalind Carr, @Rosalind_at_O

This summer Rose caught up with Belgium based independent Blogger Hans De Leenheer @hansdeleenheer, chatting storage, virtualization, American Football and Storage Beers… Check out his latest insights at  http://hansdeleenheer.blogspot.co.uk/

Q. Tell us a bit about yourself:

As I was previously a systems engineer, I suppose initially I fell into blogging by putting solutions to problems encountered into a blog to help tackle these problems. In the last three years, I have put my focus more towards storage, compiling the how to’s and offering my insights into different areas of storage and virtualization.

As I started blogging more about new products and industry moves I gained interest from the vendor community. I got invites from DELL, HP and others to come to their events as an influencer. The best thing I do is being passionate about technology and sharing that passion with others, whether that is through writing, presenting or just speaking to people in person. And that is what I do today; I represent vendors when they need someone passionate to explain their technology.

Meet Colm Keegan (@colmswiss), Senior Analyst at Storage Switzerland (@StorageSwiss)

By Olivia Shannon, @Olivia_at_O

Colm Keegan has been involved with Storage Switzerland for several years as a ghost writer, but came onboard full-time at the beginning of this year. His background in end-user support and technical sales gives him a perspective focused on helping IT end users reduce their costs and enhance their IT systems. Part of that role involves identifying the latest emerging technologies that can help businesses solve their challenges around managing large amounts of data. He is interested in all kinds of storage technologies, including cloud, virtualization, backup, disaster recovery, object storage and big data. You can find Colm on Twitter @colmswiss or on LinkedIn here.

Q.  Tell us a bit about yourself.

I’ve been working in the IT industry for 23 years. I started working in end-user support for seven years; I then spent 15 years working in various sales capacities, both on technical and account management. I have worked in data centers as a systems administrator, calling on customers and solving their challenges around storage, enterprise backup, and disaster recovery, mostly on distributed system platforms. I also have exposure to mainframe computing and data backup-related design. I’ve worked across verticals including banking, telcos, retail, managed services providers and education.

Q. Tell us about how you got involved with Storage Switzerland and its interest in data storage. 

I’ve known George Crump, the president and founder of Storage Switzerland, for about ten years. We met at an integrator company where

Rose Ross talks to W Curtis Preston (aka Mr Backup – @wcpreston), @TruthinIT

By Rose Ross, @Rose_at_O, and Olivia Shannon, @Olivia_at_O

Countdown2StorageExpo blog editor Rose Ross’s (@Rose_at_O) interview with W Curtis Preston (aka Mr Backup) from TruthinIT is available here. People who know Curtis are used to seeing him interview the leading storage CEOs for TruthinIT – but at this year’s CeBIT in Germany, Rose got the chance to interview the interviewer. Curtis explained that TruthinIT is a publishing and media company that organises seminars, webinars and videos (even parody music videos). The audience

Number of Hard Disk Drive manufacturers nosedives, reports Storage Newsletter

By Rosalind Carr, @Rosalind_at_O 

Hard disk drive (HDD) Manufacturers experience considerable recent decline, with vast closures and acquisition.  In his Storage Newsletter article, Jean- Jacques Maleval provides us with a vast list of defunct HDD manufacturers aka the “HDD graveyard”.

According to Maleval,

4 steps to winning a speaking slot at SNW Europe (@snweurope) #snweurope

By Olivia Shannon, @Olivia_at_O

As our own Rose Ross (@Rose_at_O) blogged back in February, next Friday, April 26th is the call for papers deadline for the Storage Networking World Europe (SNW Europe), Datacenter Technologies and Virtualization World conferences.

As in previous years, the event organisers are seeking “quality submissions from IT end-users, consultants, industry analysts and system integrators/VARs, describing case studies or technology update sessions that focus on real-world deployments and/or methods and best practices to evaluate new, existing or future solutions. ” More information and suggested topics are available here.

If you’re busy putting together your submission, you might be interested in these tips for winning an SNW Europe speaking slot, taken from a previous Countdown2StorageExpo blog post based on a conversation with the conference programme director at the time, Paul Trowbridge:

Act quick – Cloud Expo 2013 East Call for Papers Deadline March 15, 2013

By @Olivia_at_O

Today is the call for papers deadline for Cloud Expo 2013 East in New York City. “If you have something substantive, challenging, and original to offer, you are encouraged to submit a proposal,” according to the guidelines here. Simply submit your 100-word abstract,  50-word speaker bio, and details of your previous speaking experience and published work.

Suggested topics include: