Extraordinary People

It was said there are no extraordinary people.  

That there are only those who pray, 

And then there are those who do not.

It was said there are no extraordinary people. 

That one side owns morality, 

And the other does not. 

It was said there are no extraordinary people. 

That goodness belongs in only one fashion, 

And the other pure evil. 

It was said there are no extraordinary people.

But in life we all are extraordinary, 

Those who believe they are and those who do not. 

 Stay inspired my friends!

Movie Backdrops

“Just when you think that a person is just a backdrop for the rest of the universe, watch them and see that they laugh, they cry, they tell jokes...they're just friends waiting to be made.” - Dr. Jeffrey Borenstein

There are many people in the world you pass by each day. As you drive down the street or walk through the store. So many different people going about their daily life.

You see these people, you smile and exchange quick greetings.

Day after day these people fill your world. They are part of all that happens around you. You can become oblivious to their existence in the background of your life. And the fact remains you are a movie prop existing in the background of their lives as well.

It would be great if we could stop and take a look at others not as a background movie prop but as a potential friend. A friend who has a good thing to say to you. Or maybe someone to offer their support when in need.

With so many people in this world, having a friend around every corner is a pretty comforting thought.

Create new friends from the everyday background of your life.

Every one of them will count as a great new addition to your life. And stay inspired my friends!

Rules for Living

"Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and help them to become what they are capable of being." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

That is the simple message in which everyone is capable of applying to their life.

Stay inspired my friends.

Amongst the Madness

“It was madness. And, as Finan had said, sometimes madness works.”
― Bernard Cornwell

I have just returned from five days working a convention in Las Vegas, Nevada. Yes, the city also known as Sin City or Lost Wages. A day or night overload of ones senses. A constant ingest of sounds, lights and visual madness. It was also a chance to conduct EMCWorld 2015, showcasing some of the world's greatest data storage technology.

It was connecting with people.

When you put on a convention in a city such as Las Vegas, the risk of what grabs a person's attention is constantly at play. One has to decide the importance of a new virtual storage system discussion over the ringing and dinging of a slot machine. It is called a vVNX if you are interested in checking it out.

It was also connecting with people.

What I find most interesting about Las Vegas are the people. I am not speaking of the residents of Las Vegas outside of "The Strip" where all the bells and whistles are. I am pretty sure Las Vegas is like any other city outside of the 4-mile strip of madness and the residents are as well. But walk through the casinos, the buffet lines, the shoppes and the convention halls; this is the interesting piece of being in Las Vegas.

It was constant connections with people.

Over the course of four days, I participated in over thirty customer meetings, there were breakout sessions to attend and the impromptu hallway meetings. I met old friends and created new friendships. There was a lot of information sharing but there was a lot of information learning from listening to people. It was not simply the noise of a Las Vegas game of chance.

It was about connecting with people.

Sure, everyone had fun in a lot of different ways. After a long year of relative peace and quiet, Las Vegas lends itself to the short term visitor offering many forms of madness. But within the madness are the people and that is what works.

Stay inspired my friends.

EMC World 2014 - The 3rd Platform

“Happiness is not so much in having or sharing. We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” — Norman MacEwan

People ask me quite often these days, in the world of Information Technology, what exactly is the 3rd Platform. In our business, we like to show the above diagram and talk tracks describing it. Sometimes it comes off sounding like a lot of marketing and at other times it gets so deep into the technology that one can feel overwhelmed by all of it.

Relax, I'm not here to sell you a product or wow you with technical brilliance.

When you try to comprehend what the 3rd Platform means, bring your thoughts down to just you and your connections to other people. On average, most people indicate they have what they would call three close friends. If you add that to our Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and the many other social networks we probably have more than 4003 friends.

The data generated just by your interactions with these friends is enormous. In 2012, it was estimated that every household alone generated 52GB of data. That is two years ago and this data growth has only accelerated. Think of everything you do, you location services on your smart phone, use of your ATM card, watching cable television or a doctor's visit; all of these things are amassing more and more data.

Without going into the reasons (good or bad) on why all of this data is being collected, what the 3rd Platform does is to help companies handle this huge amount of data. Given the amount of data and infrastructure needed to support all of this data, if we did nothing it would be similar to needing tens of thousands of people as were used to build the pyramids.

So the 3rd Platform creates a need for simpler, more versatile and more powerful options to store, manage and use the data. This includes newer, more cost and flexible storage systems. It includes software that provides an easy method to manage, move, and measure all of this data. And we are talking lots of data.

It is estimated that every minute...

- YouTube users upload 48 hours of new video
- Instagram users share 3,600 new photos
- Brands and organizations on Facebook receive 34,722 "likes"
- Over 100,000 tweets are sent

So what you are doing in your life is adding data to this 3rd Platform data surge. And I don't mean to scare you away from generating data. I believe every connection we can make with another person, every good thing we can do, in every method available to us is a good thing. The 3rd Platform is not a bad thing, it is just a thing. What matters is how we respond as humans within the crush of all that new data.

Connect to life using your tablet, smartphone, biometric watches, laptops, televisions, cars and everything else.

Just don't forget to look up from your device and connect with other people, eye-to-eye, handshake to handshake, and voice to ear.

And stay inspired my friends.

Five People

"It is because the human spirit knows, deep down, that all lives intersect. That death doesn't just take someone, it misses someone else, and in the small distance between being taken and being missed, lives are changed." - The Five People You Meet In Heaven

Every thing you do in life has an impact on others around you. The little things you do to offer hope or kindness add up in the lives of other people. You do matter, you do make a difference.

Some time back I wrote about a book that Mitch Albom wrote. The story dealt with the seemingly ordinary life of a man named Eddie. The name of his story is titled, The Five People You Meet in Heaven. In fact, a TV movie was created that nicely visualized the story of how each of our lives is intertwined with others. The movie appeared on originally aired on television and was very faithful to the book.

I recommend you read the book or rent the movie and watch it. And even though the book and movie came out ten years ago, it is good to remind ourselves once in a while. It can change the way you view your life. It reveals that there is a light inside each of us. This light shines out from you in ways we never fully realize.

Allow yourself the ability to impact others. Let your interactions with those around you to be positive ones when possible. Your life matters to others, it has impact on them and does so in the little things you do.

Stay inspired my friends!

Fan of Everyone

"It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see." -Henry David Thoreau

Here I am on the road once again, traveling for business. I always enjoying the people watching at the airport and in the locations I travel to. The diversity of people seen and meet really tends to enrichen my own life. As with wide variety, there will be those that annoy those around them. But there will also be those that liven up their surroundings just by being there.

I tend to be the type of person that sits back and observes. I view it as listening to my surroundings. To feel out how life is interacting with people can be quite entertaining. There is the young woman in the dress walking through the Sky Club lounge. What caught my eye was not her, but watching the men and women watching her. The turn of a head, a scowl from the wife, and all of the varied looks people gave. Did the woman notice, did she feel the eyes upon her? For all that, did she care or want the attention?

What it comes down for me is trying to figure out the stories of these people. Granted it isn't for me to know their personnel stories, but to develop a story from their actions. I'd love to know the personal stories because most would have an interesting one to tell. But since I can not do that, I develop stories in my mind.

I sit then at the airport waiting for my flight and watch the Diamond level travellers wondering how they do it. I'm a Gold level flyer nearing in on Platinum but not sure how one can possibly reach that 125,000 mile level.

So I imagine their stories, the kind of work they perform, the time spent away from home and wonder could I handle it. There is the pastor traveling every Sunday from Atlanta to Los Angeles, pastoring two churches. He is impacting the lives of hundreds of people while traveling on a modern day donkey. Think about that for a moment and then read on.

What of the consultant as she travels cross country providing her expertise to international companies. Do her kids grow more quickly with each passing week?

Are their stories any different than our own? I dare to say that our stories are different only in varied shades and colors. But they are the same in how each of us are working towards a life of success that contains great relationships, love of family and friends and an expectation that our dreams will be fulfilled.

So what I try to see in the stories of these people are the good things they try to accomplish. I see the same struggles that each of us are going through. I see great possibility and hope for everyone to achieve greatness.

And I see it in you even though I don't know you. I see all things are possible in your life regardless of your own story. Maybe I'll even see you walking by one day and imagine your own story. Do not be alarmed by the thought. Be gladdened in knowing all of my stories of people have great endings.

That means there is at least one person out there who believes in you. One person that is cheering for you and for great things in your life. Now that makes two people that believe in you; me and you. The most important one being you.

I'll keep watching and please don't think of me as a stalker. Think of me as your greatest fan. Then cheer yourself on to greater things, to greater success and a greater life.