I’ve been at Dell a whole two weeks. I spent those first two weeks in Austin, and the entire time was jammed full of meeting people, figuring out the Dell corporate systems, and figuring out who I should be meeting.

I was thrown right into work – think hit the ground running times 10. There is a lot going on in the storage space at Dell. For example, last week we announced that the Compellent acquisition had been completed, and introduced the Dell Storage Forum 2011 details.

That’s the big visible stuff. I’m also working on getting social media activities into the normal workflow of my team. I work in the product group, with the marketers that tell the world about Dell’s storage products. We work closely with other groups such as the Dell TechCenter and the corporate social media team to communicate to our customers. Right now I’m trying to figure all of that out…but I can tell you there are lots of smart folks working on storage in Austin, Nashua, and now EdenPrarie MN. I hope to bring you some video footage of these folks very soon!

So what’s it like at Dell? FAST. OMG it’s so fast here. I think I’m lucky that I’ve been using social media! Because of my social media connections I already knew some of the people on my team, people at the Dell TechCenter, and folks at Compellent. I just want to say how much I love the guys at the TechCenter….they have offered me a safe techie zone and made me feel very welcome. They rock!!!

People are also very anxious to connect and collaborate. I have to keep reminding people that I am on day n (15 on Monday!), but everyone seems to want to work together. I’m guessing it is the fast pace – you can’t go fast if you are unwilling to reach out and collaborate.

And the corporate social media infrastructure is amazing. It is probably one of the main things that drew me to Dell – you have seen the Command Center haven’t you?? They have a full-fledged education system for those participating in social media at Dell. Their listening center is amazing…. they use Radian 6 to listen, but they rely on the business units to improve the profiles they are using to listen to Dell’s customers. I’m very excited about participating here!

A few things have changed with me. I changed the title of this blog. I’ll be talking about social media still, and probably education – but more from a marketing view. The blog will begin to take on much more of a storage flavor going foward…one of the main reasons I took this job is that I’m now able to return to my technical roots AND do social media at the same time. I think I’ll have lots to share about social media process, especially how to incorporate social into the workflow, as I get settled in.

I promise to give more video insight into the amazing storage and social media teams here at Dell very soon. As much as I can, I’ll share some of the lessons I learn from integrating social into the work flow. And look forward to more technical information about Dell’s storage offerings!