Pushing Conversations

Last week there was talk about the lack of recent in-depth conversation occuring in blogs.  This was attributed to at least partially to twitter dumbing down the conversation into bite size increments and that overall the larger stories may not be getting explored in depth.  I certianly found myself in that cycle.  For me sometimes it is easier to have a quick conversation and reset my thermastat by releasing steam on twitter than it is to create a post for the blog.  The downside to that has been lack of in-depth public conversation because twitter more a “live” communications mechanism.  So this last week I focused on blogging and engaging in conversation and “wow” - what a series of conversations I was able to be involved with.  Here is a sample of the public conversations that occured.

Topic 1:  LogLogic

LogLogic announed last week about slashing price on SIEM (well actually SEM) I posted my thoughts about their move here.  Who knew the response I’d get.  Here’s a sample of how the conversation exploded via blogs over the last week. 

The Response (so far):

LogLogic was nice enough to email and call me to help me understand their thinking, they also crafted 3 blog posts on the subject (Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3). 

Paul Melson enhanced the conversation (“Twitter Killed the Blog Star” and “SIEM Market Conversation Continues” and now Q1Labs jumps into the fray with their perspective.  There were plenty of private conversations from other vendors, analysts, end-users that occured off-line - I’m hoping more of those will see the light of day soon!

 Count: 1 post (6 Blog Responses + comments)

Topic 2: Tetragon

Then the real fun started.  Gartner released their Magic Quadrant for SIEM and I had a little fun with it and then I had an absolute blast with my Tetragon post.

The Response (so far):

Chris Blask on the new AlienVault Blog responded to my First MQ post with his insightful perspective.

Rich Mogull and Mike Rothman of Securosis had some fun with my Tetragon post and did a great job adding even more perspective to how and why these “tetragon’s” get so much attention. 

Anton Chuvakin made reference to the posts here.

Q1Labs talks about the MQ any my post here.

Count: 2 Posts (4 Blog Responses + Comments and more coming)

I’d like to thank everyone that participated in the conversations (public and private), everyone who publicized the conversation via blog, re-tweeting or email.  Analysts, Vendors and End-Users everyone was involved over the last week!

As numerous and insightful as the public blog and twitter conversations were, the private DM, Skype, Email and Phone call were also insightful and at times absolutely hilarious.  I wish I could share some of them, but I’m hoping some those conversation will take the form of a blog post or 12 soon.  There are a lot of great ideas waiting to push these conversations even further.  All in all it was an amazing experience to jump in, start a conversation or two and see where passionate people take it. 

Now that I know more people are paying attention and willing to join the conversation I think I’ll do this more often :) 

-Rocky