As mentioned in a previous posting, Voce threw a storage mixer down at SNW in Phoenix last week.   The mixer — which followed Voce’s successful security shindig at San Fran’s RSA show last month - included a healthy mix of attendees, including editors from eWeek, Network World, Storage Magazine, and InfoWorld,  analysts from Yankee Group and IDC, Voce clients from NetApp and Fujitsu, and numerous other FOV’s (that’s “friends of Voce” to the layman).

The healthy beer, wine, or “other” buzz combined with the intimate ambiance and a Red Sox/Yankees game gave the event a relaxed vibe - a chance for attendees to escape the vendor hard sell for a few hours and chat about issues, rumors, technology, the state of journalism, and the 91-degree mid-April heat outside.

For those of you that couldn’t attend, here are a few of my favorite quotes from the evening (names have been removed to protect the innocent):

Re: SNW 2005:
“Most of the presos I saw today seemed to be a cut-and-paste from SNW 2004.  ‘The future of storage is ILM and virtualization’ - ok, I get it!”

Re: NetApp and its recent slew of announcements targeting EMC:
“Dan (Warmenhoven, NetApp CEO) has taken off the gloves, eh?”

Re: Blogs and their impact to journalism:
“Everyone now thinks they’re a journalist.  Do bloggers even know or care about the ‘three source’ rule? Probably not. I refuse to jump on the blogging bandwagon.”

Re: the tone of Symantec CEO John Thompson’s keynote:
“It was very cerebral. He fires me up in that ‘I’m a lot smarter than you are’ kind of way.  Oh, and he’s a lot richer than me too.”

Re: why he/she decided to attend Voce’s mixer, despite being invited to numerous other events:
“I’ve had eleven back-to-back briefings today and I knew you guys wouldn’t annoy me.  Now where can I get a drink?”

– Dave Black