I was glad to see an email from the NetApp united team this afternoon confirming that I’ve been selected as a member of the prestigious NetApp United (#NetAppUnited) team for 2018 which is a great honour indeed. Thanks NetApp!
Contrary to popular belief – NetApp United is NOT a football team but global community of individuals united by the passion for great technology. Similar to the VMware vExpert and Dell EMC elect programmes, NetAppUnited is a community programme run by NetApp (@PeytStefanova is the organiser in chief) to recognise global NetApp technology experts and community influencers with a view to giving them a platform to share more of their thoughts, contents, influence and ultimately share more of their expertise publicly though various community channels. Similar to the other community programs from other vendors, NetApp united is all about giving back to the community which is a good cause and I was happy to support.
Being recognised a member of the NetApp United program entitles you to a number of exclusive benefits such as dedicated NetApp technology update sessions with product engineers, exclusive briefings about future and upcoming NetApp solutions and products, Access to a private slack channel for the community members to discuss all things technical and related to NetApp and other exclusive events at NetApp Insight events in US and EMEA. All of these perks are nice to have indeed as they enable us to share some of those information with the others out there as well as provide our own thoughts which would be beneficial for current or future NetApp customers out there.
As I work for a global NetApp partner, I am looking forward to using the access to information I have as a part of this program to better leverage our partnership with NetApp as well as to educate our joint customers on future NetApp strategy. As I am also an independent contributor (outside of work), I intend to share some of the information (outside of NDA stuff) with my general audiences to help you understand various NetApp solutions, strategy and my independent thoughts on them which I think is important. I have been working with NetApp for a long time, initially as a customer and then as a partner where I’ve always been a great fan of their core strategy which was always about Software, despite being a HW product manufacturer. They have some extremely awesome innovation already available in their portfolio and even better innovation in the making for future (Have a look at the recently concluded #SFD15 presentation from them about the Data Pipeline vision here) and I am looking forward to sharing some of these along with my thoughts with everyone.
The full list of all the NetApp United 2018 members can be found here. Congratulations to all those who got selected and Thank you NetApp & @PeytStefanova for the invitation and the recognition!
Cheers
Chan
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