Robert blogged earlier that we were heading over to Hitachi Data Systems at the invitation of Jeremiah Owyang, who I met recently at Syndicate and Robert somehow encountered a couple of nights ago on the streets of San Francisco. We met also with the impressive, but unassuming Hu Yoshida who turned out to be one of those guys you just have to like. He's the CTO and he says it should stand for Chief Traveling Officer because he spends most of his time hopping all over the place talking and listening to customers.
They invited us in to pick our brains as they work out a blog strategy. We accepted the invitation because we were curious. Besides, most companies i talk with have fewer than 30 employees, so it was an honor of sorts to meet with a subsidiary of 3000 employees, that is part of a global organization of 300,000 employees. Most of the companies I talk with are very Web 2.0. These guys are the world leader in data center technology.
My assessment? These guys get it big time. The two blogs I linked to above are just their first baby steps. Jeremiah and Hu showed us they have the right stuff for blogging and for evangelizing it at Hitachi Data Systems. They are both transparent, authentic and demonstrated a fair amount of knowledge and passion. I didn't come to that conclusion by them making speeches or dreaded PowerPoint presentations. They simply revealed their thinking by the questions they asked which focused heavily n getting closer to customers and by using blogs to generate customer comments that would influence Hitachi developers.
This meeting has me juiced. The last time I spoke with a large enterprise representative--six months ago, she was concerned about negative comments, and if blogging was not just a passing fad, and why couldn't she just put a press release on a blog and what's the ROI anyway?
Hitachi was the second time in recent weeks where I've been impressed with how some large corporations are grasping the power of blogging as a conversational tool to get closer to customers. Back at Syndicate, Scott Anderson , HP's director of enterprise brand communications gave a strong opening keynote address. HP was not that sharp when we were writing Naked Conversations, and when we get around to a revised edition, we will have to retract what we said then, because they have come so far in a few short months.
This is important to Robert and me for reasons that are in part selfish. Robert and I began Naked Conversations just over a year ago, when the enterprise was viewing blogging with disdain, salted with annoyance. Now, just two weeks before our Naked baby gets born, there's lots of evidence that we are timing publication into a sweet spot for corporate business thinkers.
