At the closing of every tech merger, and a practice I believe extends to every successful M&A, comes the inevitable victory round.

Fortuitously for Dell, the closing of their purchase of EMC occurred just seven days before the commencement of the inaugural Dell EMC World, which took place in Austin, the nearest city to Dell’s Round Rock, Texas, HQ, and away from the usual Las Vegas location for EMC World, where CXIparty is always a highlight.

Resultantly, I expected to see Michael Dell prance and preen across the stage because of his newfound position atop the hill.

Note: this was my first ever Dell World attendance. I had not engaged with Dell this closely ever before, even when they were our only recommended hardware partner.

The Pre-Event Meet & Greet

There was an informal meet-and-greet session the day before.

And Michael Dell attended.

Dell staffers, bloggers, analysts, yours truly, and yes, the lamestream tech and general press attended.

It was very good to see Dell – the man – work the crowd, affably calling out to acquaintances, easily mingling.

Why is it that some company founders have this gift? It reminded me of Jerry Sanders III and Bill Gates; gazillionaires who didn’t let their billions stand before them in their engagement with you. Steve Ballmer was also like that…

The Keynotes
Sadly, there wasn’t a lot of preening and prancing from Michael Dell during the general keynote.

Turns out, that isn’t his style.

What he displayed however, was a deep knowledge of his newly-enlarged firm which he displayed during the extended Q&A session immediately following his private analysts and media keynote.

I found it to be refreshing, enlightening to me, based on my knowledge of his company, and direct.

No questions were deemed out of order, and he answered them in a very forthright manner. None of that “I can’t tell you” or “my handler won’t let me tell you” because of the materiality of the answer bullschthako.

I like that.

His primary satyrs, one heading up Dell EMC, their enterprise unit, and the other running Dell Inc, the client devices arm, all came across as Michael Dell did. Which is nice.

They all strove to let us understand the company, their mission, and most importantly, their desire to serve their customers.

I came rather impressed at the promise of the merged company.

© 2002 – 2016, John Obeto for Blackground Media Unlimited

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