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Mark: Jodey Hogeland is a global technology evangelist with Dell Technologies. Jodey, thank you for taking a minute or two to speak with me today.

Jodey: Hey, good to be here Mark.

Mark: These are trying times. I don't know what the right word is, I don't want to be too somber, but clearly these are very challenging times for everyone. I'm just fascinated taking advantage of talking to execs in the industry about how their life is, what's changed? Particularly given your role as an evangelist, how do you evangelize sitting at home?

Jodey: Yeah, it's a good conversation to have, Mark. And as a result of people being forced and confined to work within their home spaces, that presents a set of challenges that we all kind of have to deal with and work around. But I think at the same time, it does present us with a very unique opportunity for our families to actually understand what we do on a daily basis. So I've had conversations with CIOs and CTOs who say, you know, "My wife never really understood what I did," or, you know, "My husband had no idea the technical details that I had to go into on a daily basis on calls."

I think all of us have that commonality of recognizing, you know, streamlining working from home, looking at our internet configurations and setups, working directly in rooms with our families as they're doing school, and they're doing their jobs on a daily basis as well. There's a lot of commonality, and yet there's a lot of unique perspective as well, because every family is different.

Mark: Yeah, apparently, I talk loud, is what I'm told by the family. And I know just before you and I started this video, I mean, we both went and asked everyone to shut up because we're going to be on video and recording. But is there any upside to the way we've changed and we're doing things differently?

Jodey: When I look at it as a global technical evangelist, you know, one of the challenges that I've faced is the time-to-get-there factor, right? So, you know, realizing that for me to go to Asia Pacific or for me to go from where I live to Europe, that involves a significant amount of time and investment. However, in this modern situation, I can have those meetings in practical real time, just working around time zones and sleep schedules.

So it does, in effect, create a more streamlined continuity and dissemination of information because we can do that more in a real-time fashion, as opposed to waiting, you know, perhaps days, or in some cases, weeks to get in front of a customer or in front of a strategic partner and have a face-to-face conversation.

Mark: Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? Picking up on another word in your title and something you've mentioned, global. I mean, this is a global pandemic. It's a global problem, therefore, the way that we're all having to change is a global challenge to be overcome. And I guess all your customers are in the same boat as you. So to that degree, I think there is a level of humanity that's come into play here, we're all in this together.

And to some degree, that makes for better relationships. At least that's what I'm finding, because we are all in it together.

Jodey: I'll give you an example. I was on with a customer this past week where, first popping into the video conferencing meeting, as soon as we jumped in, I was the only one that had my video shared. And then I heard people that were part of the call, both, you know, internal Dell Technologies representatives, as well as multiple customers that were part of the same company, and all of them said, "Oh, I guess it's okay to do video," because they saw me literally in a t-shirt and a ballcap, and a very kind of down-to-earth format.

And so all of them began to enable their video feeds. And so, you know, it did create this sense of, "Hey, we're all in this together," and it kind of tore down these facades or these boundaries, and allowed us to all really communicate in just a basic human fashion.

Mark: It's so funny you say that, because I've experienced exactly the same thing. And it's almost like now that we're all behind these electronic facades, we can drop the other facades. I don't know what it is, but...

Jodey: That's exactly right.

Mark: Listen, in closing, Jodey, is this the new normal? Does everything goes back? What stays, what changes, do you think? I know we're early into this, but do you expect life will just go back to how it was?

Jodey: I think there'll be a couple of different perspectives in this. I think, in some cases, we will have become much more capable and fluent with remote technologies. So I think, you know, from an enablement perspective, and from an on- demand meeting perspective, we may see a lot of that be more greatly utilized in the future.

But I also do think that we'll fully get back to being able to meet in person on a global perspective as well. So I think we'll see kind of the best of both worlds come together as we pursue through this trying time.

Mark: All right. Well, Jodey, thank you very much. Thank you for including the smile in what is a tough time for us all. But thanks for your thoughts.

Jodey: All right. Thanks, Mark.