 We're going to have some fun women. I don't know which one is which. I'm Maggie. Maggie. And Cheryl. And Cheryl, you're the Senior Marketing Consultant for Storage Solutions at Storagediva on Twitter. Hi, and I'm a product group for Ecologic and I do technical marketing for Ecologic. Very cool. So we kind of wanted to talk first of all about how you're enjoying the forum here and what your perspective is coming from Ecologic. Sure, I think it's really great. It's good to see the number of customers turn around and the sessions being so full, you know, very well accepted. So I think the energy level is really high and everybody's really excited what we're doing with Ecologic today and then where we're going next with it. I think it's fun. Where are you going next? I had to do that. This morning, in fact, she announced kind of our next couple of generations of products around file services for Ecologic and new firmware, so a lot of big things coming out. Very cool. And you have a different take at all on the conference itself? It's been great so far. I've been at Dell for about six years, so from before all of these storage acquisitions and it's really nice to see how much we've done in the enterprise and being able to interact with all these customers. It's been a great couple of days so far. Very cool. And you're saying till the rest of the conference, right? Till the end? Yeah, till Thursday. Yeah. Very good. I've actually noticed people keep talking. I haven't been invited to any parties. I've had to work, but they say that it's been a lot of fun on the back end as well. You know, work hard and play hard and they've done a fantastic job. As far as I can tell from everybody I'm speaking to, they have very much the same reaction. Absolutely. You know, if you come out with us tonight, now you're invited. Okay. Finally, I got an official invitation. I've been trying to play that one up all day. See now you met with the right people. Exactly. See, women have my back. Women's networking event right here. We just have a couple more here and there and there and that's it. Exactly. Yeah, and you know, I have noticed that there are, of course, more women than men around here. And that's actually one of the things I wanted to talk to you guys about is being a woman in technology. Now, at Dell, they seem to have a higher ratio of men to women than other tech companies, which is great. But you know, why, first of all, did you go into technology? I like solving problems. Okay. And from when I was a little kid, my parents kind of always exposed me to, you know, both traditionally girl toys and boy toys. I certainly like built Lego things that my Barbies rode on. So it wasn't about dressing up the Barbies, it was about building things. No, no. It was about the gear for the Barbies. Yeah, exactly. You know, over time, I just really liked solving problems and it seemed like the best place to do that was in technology. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, but the same thing. My parents were engineers and we were brought up in that environment. Oh, so it was easy for you. So we were two girls, two my dad, and it was always, you know, engineering talks when we were growing up in mathematics. And so, you know, got into computer science. So it was a pretty easy decision to make. There was no thinking about it. But you're right, you know, there's very few women even going, you know, when doing undergrad in a class of 40 people, there were like two in the front of the class taking notes and working hard. It was very, you know, interested and engaged. Yeah, exactly. Great stuff. But your marketing, and I've kind of noticed that there are a lot of women who start out in one technology field or another and wind up going into marketing and social media these days. Why is that? Yeah, I'm not sure. I mean, I definitely have the technical background. And like sort of that intersection of technology and marketing, that's interesting for me. But I've noticed that too. Like I've just become active on Twitter in the past couple months and it's really interesting the proportion in technology who are women on Twitter versus the proportion who are women in real life. It seems like there are many more on Twitter, right, or higher percentage on Twitter. So I've noticed that also. So it wasn't like a move because you felt in the technical aspect of the workforce. You didn't feel put down by men or anything like that. So you wanted to change a little bit. No, I never felt put down. I came out of a sales role and just wanted to try a different part of a company. Michael Delavone, a storage company, an hour from my house. I owe him a thank you note. I think, you know, it's the social aspect of women too. We're so in general, so outgoing and like to get feedback and talk to people. I think that entails in marketing. You need to do that quite a bit. So it's a good mix. You know, getting into having, you know, I always explain my role as being technical marketing and it seems to be very counter, you know, into two things not going together. But I think it totally does because, you know, even in the technical side, there is a lot to market. So that's just my take on it. Yeah. You know, I think one of the, women in technology is a very hot topic at the moment, which is why I was thrilled to be able to sit down with you guys. And I think one of the main consensus is... Consensus. Consensus. Thank you. No, I don't feel so dumb. Is that you have to catch them early. You know, it's not about girls that are not interested in technology subjects or even science and engineering and all of that. It's not that we're not interested in it as a young person, but that we're just not exposed to the fact that we have that ability. Because like you were saying, you know, we're very outgoing. We have these conversations. We're good at engaging people. We're good at, you know, being interested in people. I think women just tend to be more interested in people than men are, you know, generally speaking. I'm totally stereotyping here. But, you know, is that... Are we being shifted as kids moving in a different direction than technology feels? And I think that seems to have been the case. And I think it's changing right now. Are you guys involved in any, you know, organizations or anything like that? Then, yeah, probably not, right? I'm not either, but... No, I'm not. And I, you know, no offense, but shame on all three of us. Yeah, exactly. Because I agree that it's definitely really young. I mean, you can almost see the difference in like a fifth grade classroom and a seventh grade classroom. Kind of that engagement. And I think a lot of times with younger girls, if there's like a math problem or something, they feel like they need to get the answer and then raise their hand and provide it. Whereas the guys kind of jump up in the front of the room around, you know, 12, 13 years old and they're like, ooh, I know. And then they think it through in front of everybody. Right. You know, and over time, I think that turns into women feeling like that they're not as good at it. And it's just, it's a different way of presenting, right? It's a different thought process. But yeah, I think mentorship at a young age would be a great thing. Definitely. We should all... We should make a patch that we're going to do that. Yeah, exactly. I mean at different organizations. I'm kind of the do-it-myself kind of person. So I haven't really found one that I really like exactly what's going on. Yeah. What's happening. The idea itself is great on all the organizations. But I guess I'm kind of do it my own way. I think a lot of times with these organizations, we approach it very differently too. So for example, I'm part of, I'm doing part-time MBA. Okay. And I'm part of the women's group at Babson College. That's where I'm doing my MBA from. But everybody in the group is in the technology field. So it's the part of the team is all doing the same stuff. So we should actually be going out and fetching more people rather than just broadening the scope that we already have, right? Sure. And similarly, there are some other groups within Dell too. Or the women conferences that we go to. Everybody is in the technology. So we need to go out and do more. So I think we need to make a pact. I have tried to do it with some of the younger women at work. And by this point, they've kind of already been through seventh grade most of them. So it's not quite catching them that young. But I definitely can't even see a difference in who raises their hand and who volunteers for things. And who thinks that like Cheryl Sandberg at Facebook her talk about who thinks they deserve a seat at the table. Yeah. And so I've definitely tried to make sure that the younger women that I work with feel included and understand the guys don't know the answers either. And they don't always think that way, I think. And one of the other things is that girls at that age tend to want to impress the boys. They're aware of guys at that point. Whereas guys, they're aware, but they're, you know... They bloom later. Thank you. So it's also being scared to speak up, being scared to ask questions and get that information like you were talking about before. You mentioned Cheryl Sandberg's talk. And I've actually, I haven't loaded on my computer and I've been meaning to watch it. It's fabulous. But talk a little bit about what she said there. It's fabulous. She has basically, so this was the TED talk that she did and she did a talk somewhere else that there's a tramp script of, but it's a similar idea. Basically three things about women in the workplace and how to continue moving toward equality. You know, she talks about getting a seat at the table. So both, you know, virtually the seat at the table. But us physically, if you walk in a room, don't be the person who sits on the sidelines. Go sit at the table, which I've used a couple of times since then. And sometimes you get some weird stares, but you deserve sitting there as much as anybody else does. So that's one. And she talks with respect to having children don't leave before you leave. So just because you've decided you're going to have a family doesn't mean that you have to stop looking for opportunities and promotions. And she even makes a case that you should do that before you go have a kid and that that's a great time to really think about career path. And then she talks about, you know, the men really needing to be equal partners at home, that that's very important or I shouldn't say men, whoever the partner is at home needs to kind of play an equal part. So yeah, I found that really, really inspirational. And on tough days, I watched that Ted talk. Oh yeah? Yes. I should go look at that. Yeah, I've heard great things about it. And like I said, I loaded it up a couple weeks ago and I just haven't had the chance because I've been traveling so much. Right, right. She's also, her name's Cheryl. My name's Cheryl. We spell it with an S. It's like a big deal. There are a lot of C-sharrows out there. There aren't a lot of S-sharrows. But that was very impactful to me. That's funny. Do either of you have kids? No. No, okay. We've talked about it. Yeah, we've talked about it. My husband is in the same graduate program that Maggie is in. So I think a couple advanced degrees have to kind of get up on the wall before anything else happens. So that's certainly, you know, a conversation piece with women and whether they can advance in their roles in their career when kids come along. And I have no experience there either. So just kind of, do you guys see that on a daily basis in the corporate world? I mean, I think it's, you know, people have to, I don't think we need to make special room. You know, people a lot of times talk to me about work-life balance. You know, I think it's something that happens automatically. And you don't need to have special arrangements if you have passion for work and you have passion for your family. It all works out together. And so I think a lot of women are skeptical about it. But one of the things that I think, you know, in a very male-dominated industry of being in a technical role, people expect you to move on with your life. So I don't see personally being as something that's going to be a hurdle and oh my gosh, you know, I'm going to lose my career. My sister, who's also in a technology role, just had babies and, you know, I talk to twins. And she's not, you know, I keep teasing her and she's not nervous about going back to work. And in fact, she has made a few trips to her office with the babies just to introduce them and still talking about work. So I think, you know, she's just inspirational to me that, you know, even after you have twins, you just, you know, you just keep going. You just keep going. Yeah. I think it's a mentality thing as well. You know, women, there are some women who just want to stop working when they have kids and focus on that. And that's amazing, you know, that they choose to do that. But if you do want to continue in your career and keep working, then I think you have, I almost wonder, and, you know, if you should kind of have some separation there, if it helps in the workplace and getting an advancement. If you don't really talk about it a whole lot, which is bad to say, right? But I wonder about that point. And I, again, I don't have any experience in that area. And I think as Cheryl mentioned, your spouses, your partners are becoming as involved in everything. You know, but I mean, I come from an Indian culture background where women, you know, they were bearing the kids. So when, you know, a long time ago, you know, they were responsible for taking care of the kids and the men just went and worked. And I think all of that is changing. I'm sure it's not been as much in the U.S. But... Now, Maggie, did your mother work when you were growing up? No, she didn't. And what about your mother? Yes, two full-time jobs. Yeah. Yeah. That's one for Maggie's mom said. Because my mom did work also when I was growing up. I think that that sometimes can be impactful as to whether a woman kind of chooses that path of career and family. Oh, I'm sure, yeah. And in fact, a lot of times it makes you make a different decision otherwise too. You know, I felt, you know, it's one aspect that I wish my mom continued because selfishly, I loved the fact that she was home all the time when I was growing up. But now, you know, the daughters are out. We both are here. She's back home. And really everything that she lived for, you know, past many years, she has nothing. And it's kind of sad, you know, it's really hard to go back and work if you haven't. It takes a lot of courage and determination and support from your spouse to go back and to work, you know, if you've been out for so long. So I think, you know, it's one of those things that's always inspired me and my sister. We're like, you know, we're going to keep going with our lives and see how it works out. The other thing I would just say about family, so I moved from a field-based sales role into a marketing role in a building, into an office. You know, I went to an office several days a week. And... Cubicle? Yes. Cubicle. Yes. Cubicle. Yes. In fact, on my very first day of work, my cubicle is right next to Maggie. Awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Although I've since moved a couple of times because we're expanding in the building so quickly as they keep moving all of us around. Yeah. The expansion is great. The movie, My Cubes. It keeps it neat. It keeps it neat. So, but it's kind of interesting because, you know, we're around people, like I'm around a lot more women now than I was in my sales role. And you see women in the office who are pregnant and you hear about people that have different sorts of arrangements worked out and work-life things worked out and all that sort of stuff. So it's definitely been kind of nice to be in an office and to see some models that are working for people. Right. Because there was much less of that in field sales. Not that there were no women with children there, but certainly fewer than that are now in the office that we work in. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. We were talking about men, you know, how we feel in the workplace. And a lot of the women that I've talked to really don't feel like they've been, you know, not to use the word, but to use the word, discriminated against, by men, or that it's uncomfortable in the setting because it's so male-dominated. You guys didn't feel that way either? Is that the one I'm getting? I don't know if you want to take that. I feel like I have to stand up for myself and I don't know if that's because I'm a woman or just because of who I am as a person. Okay. But I definitely... Maybe a combination of both. Feel, yeah, maybe a combination of both. I mean, I don't feel like anybody's ever been, well, anybody at Dell, at least, has ever been, you know, directly mean or derogatory toward me as a woman. Right. Far from that. And Dell, I think, is actually a really great place to work as a woman. It seems so. It seems the culture is to encourage that threat. Absolutely. And over the past couple years we've had a lot more executives move up in the ranks as women or as CMO or as a woman now and we have a lot of other senior executives moving up as women, so that's been really great. But I mean, you know, there's something about walking into a room of 80 people that have the same job than being the only woman. Yeah. I mean, there's a feeling whether they're, whether they're, I don't think it's that the guys are sending something negative out, but it's, you know, it's notable, like you feel it when you walk in the room. So what can all the guys watching, because I guarantee you have a majority of guys watching the room? Right. Right. What can, you know, they do not that they need to change their attitudes unless they are being, you know, careless about it. Right, no, but most aren't. But is there something that helps us or helps just the women in general? Because I actually find that men are as fascinated by this topic as women are. Oh, interesting. Yeah. I get, I get most of the questions about women in technology from men. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. So I just, yeah, is there something that you find that they can do to help encourage that? You know, I would, I would just say that there are a lot of people like, all right, a 20-something is going to talk to and most of the people that I talk to are, you know, middle-aged to older men. It's like, can you deliver what I'm here for? Okay. And so I think just going in with that confidence that, you know, women have come ways, especially in the technology field and so we know our stuff and as much as I can be confident on my stuff that I want to deliver or want to talk about or what I know, I think having them, you know, confidence in us and not giving those strange looks, really, are you going to talk about this? And I get that a lot and really, I don't, once the talk's over, you know, everybody is really nice and, you know, nothing against people, but it's just having that confidence in them and I think it's going to be very important. Okay. Yeah, the guys that I work with that I have the best relationships with are kind of the ones where my being, a woman just hasn't been kind of a notable part of how we interact. Like, they don't treat me differently because I'm a woman, necessarily, but if something comes up, like, there's something high up I can't reach or, you know, like I need to put on lipstick before I get on a big stage and talk in front of a bunch of people, that's kind of just an acceptable part of what happens and, you know, just not letting it get in the way of the relationship that a colleague has, you know, to me, that's kind of the most important thing when I work with men. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So, just, let's kind of go away from women in technology and just talk, you know, storage and the conference itself, you guys said that you were having a great time here. What's in the industry, what's being part of Dell right now? It's in that, you know, in that stage of developing, you know, storage with its own IP and going out and saying, hey, you know, we're a storage company. I think that's the most exciting part of me being part of Dell right now in the storage, you know, industry. And I think storage in general is very exciting. That's where I started off my career right out of college all I knew was, it's, it's, you know, a bunch of disk that stores your data and I think I've come long ways from it and there are so many different... That's where everybody starts out by the way. By now. So, and there's so much more to storage than just that and I've learned a lot over the years and there's so much more to learn and to share that, you know, when I have conversations with friends, it's just interesting to educate them how much it's all about. So I think it's it's going to grow because as we heard in today's you know, the data is growing pretty rapidly, right? So storage is something that everybody's going to need. Yeah. Definitely. I'm excited about a lot of our innovation around life cycle management. So really abstracting sort of this three or four-year cycle that customers are used to having about purchasing storage and because we're trying to be something they're really tied to anymore, you know, and seeing that across our ecological line and our compelling line and our DX object storage line, like, that's been really exciting to me because I think that that's something that's been a long time coming. I think the industry has just trained our customers to just kind of get used to getting knocked around and, you know, forced into purchasing this way that they need to do for their company, you know, doing their job that helps them innovate for their customers, and I'm really excited what we're doing at Dell to kind of help them get closer to that. Yeah, it's exciting. Yeah. And what do you make of the fluid data that's so much the theme of the conference? Are there any thoughts that you have in terms of that? I mean, it's obvious what it is, you know, and it's going to move forward and it's going to be fluid. I mean, I'm excited about it and the customers that I've talked to, you know, when customers visit us in Nashua and when I've been out to visit customers as well, seems to be resonant, you know, that idea that we are going to do a lot of that life cycle management, you know, that IDM, the data life cycle management and putting it in the right place at the right time behind the scenes and automate that. Again, giving them more time back to do the stuff and hopefully we'll be able to really integrate that across all of these great product lines that are starting to converge now. So, I think that's really great and I think, you know, fluid is catchy and kind of fun and we've had all these great kind of events that involve beer and pools this week that we call fluid. Yeah. But I think the storage strategy behind it is really exciting time too. Yeah, I like the analogy that Derek and Thomas gave in the keynote today with the bottle and the water to explain it. It was really interesting, you know, he picked up his bottle and he said, you know, I have fluid water in the bottle and it takes the shape of anything that fits into it and I think that's really the key to what he was, you know, what we're all trying to, you know, tell the world about fluid data and the fluid theme. So, I think that's a very good analogy. Yeah. And Dell really is about offering the customer what they want. I've heard, somebody said this the other day, Dell is the Burger King. Have it your way. I don't know if that's... I mean, it is though. You know, part of my role is hosting customers when they visit us in the National Facility. We had some customers in last week and we had 12 or 13 members of our engineering team packed in the back of the room wanting to hear what the customers experience had been like and which of these things were going on and what was missing and what was missing. And I mean, it was a great kind of voice of the customer moment to get to participate in but that happens, you know, hundreds of times in a month, you know, across all of Dell. It is very focused on, you know, what is the experience as a customer you're having and how are we helping you, you know, execute your strategy for your customers better. That's pretty cool. Yeah, I've seen this theme and it's a cool watch from any company's perspective to be focused on the customer. I mean, obviously that's key. I know now, how can we get you out of that Apple laptop? Oh, yeah. So, good point. I do video production. What's it going to take? You know, the only thing I have to say is that Michael Dell actually, his first computer was an Apple too. So, that's my defense. Okay. We'll have to talk about this off camera. We can certainly talk. Okay. Well, thank you guys so much for coming out and joining me and chatting with me. Oh, thank you. This was fun. Yeah, this was fun. Really fun. Thanks for having us. We're looking forward to hanging out with you in the evening. Yes, some fluid events tonight. Oh, really? Twitter IDs again? Storage diva. I'm not on Twitter. Oh. We've got to get Maggie up on Twitter. Hey, what's my blog, anything? No, not really. Okay. We'll work on that tonight with you. Okay. We're going to get her on Twitter. All right. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thanks. Thank you too.