Two of the sessions focus on presenting research. In the first, Stephan Tornquist from MarketingSherpa and John Miller from Marketo will discuss trends for 2008. In the second, Andrew Nilssen and Alan D. Greenberg, both senior analysts and partners at Wainhouse Research as well as Nancy Costopulos, CMO of the American Marketing Association, will present survey results about the changing nature of online events.
The 2008 Marketing eSummit is a virtual event – in addition to the participating in the webinars, attendees have the ability to interact in real-time to discuss what they’ve seen and talk to presenters between sessions. The full program for the event is available here and registration for the event is here.
Marc Blakeney, Sr. Marketing Manager, Consulting Services & Event Center, WebEx
]]>"A scientific means for discovering the expeditious ways of employing the world’s resources in a way which will render a higher standard of living for all mankind… a means of accumulating facts, information and statistics related to world resources…a way of discovering trends in the use and misuse of resources…a network for relating these trends and developing a logical sequence of events to show how a future state might evolve.”]]> Climate change is not a fashion issue: it is a boardroom issue. Increasingly we see environmental responsibility taken seriously. Businesses, consumers and service providers of all sizes are driving behavioral change to protect the environment. Tightening environmental regulations accelerate this trend.
So it is not surprising that our industry is now turning to a system of green product testing and analysis. In fact, on April 29, 2008, Miercom, a leading network product test center and consultancy, introduced its “Certified Green” product testing and evaluation program. Aimed at establishing complete ‘green’ analysis of networking products, Miercom’s Certified Green program is based on detailed lab test results and qualitative product assessments in addition to a holistic view of product impact. The program provides meaningful, independent guidance to IT organizations looking to improve their own ‘green’ IT and business practices.
As noted in a recent InformationWeek article, Cisco’s Catalyst® 3750-E, 3560-E, 3750, 3560 and 2960 Series Switches were the first products designated as Certified Green:
See here and here.
Miercom’s Cisco Catalyst testing focused on power efficiency, including power usage and management, heat dissipation, cooling requirements, and overall energy efficiency.
Focusing on power efficiency and ‘green’ product practices is a top priority for Cisco. We are proud that our Catalyst switches are the first to be certified under this important new program.
But we also recognize this is only the beginning. Meeting more stringent standards for energy usage is only one part of the equation. It will take new kinds of architecture for technology to play a role in reducing the harmful effects of climate change. In an earlier blog, I shared how a Unified Communications “architecture of inclusion” could play a role:
These new kinds of technology architecture support the four-pillar approach to addressing climate change Cisco adopted over 6 years ago:
1. Providing employees with approaches to reduce/conserve energy consumption (telecommuting, web conferencing, Telepresence, carpooling, etc.)
2. Sustainable business practices (energy/resource efficient workplaces, more efficient product packaging, etc.)
3. Designing each successive generation of products to use less energy (lower energy usage when not in duty cycle, cold standby, etc.)
4. Customer-centric solutions that reduce duplicative, energy-inefficient systems (connected real-estate/cities, etc.).
As we just celebrated Mother’s Day, I salute all mothers around the world, including Mother Earth. In closing, I cite the writing of Washington Irving, an American man of letters who began his career two centuries ago. A prolific essayist, he is best known for The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. He also has some wise words for why we must protect Mother Earth:
“A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials, heavy and sudden, fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends who rejoice with us in our sunshine desert us; when troubles thicken around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts.”]]>
On May 7 we celebrate the launch of the Sports Museum of America (SMA), www.sportsmuseum.com, the first museum dedicated to just about every sport played in America. The SMA has partnered with more than 50 sport organizations’ Halls of Fame, national governing bodies and other top athletic associations to showcase exhibits, memorabilia, stories and heroes that resonate with all of us.
Partnering with the museum’s founders and all-star roster of directors (from too many different sports to list here), Cisco is providing a range of visual networking and emerging technologies to build a human network within the museum and online – as the web version never closes -- converging technology and history to enhance the attendee experience.
]]> Even if you grew up playing soccer in Spain, cricket in Pakistan, or gymnastics in the Ukraine, the SMA invokes the personal passion of watching your team win a close contest or the heated exertion of an argument over a judge’s disputed call. In seeing the physical artifacts and video assets of the SMA, there are countless “do you remember?” moments.Thus sports fit visual networking like a hand in a well-worn mitt. There is compelling visceral appeal in seeing and hearing our heroes at play, at competition.
To paraphrase baseball legend Lou Gehrig, I feel like the luckiest man in the world to attend the SMA opening, to be present at the beginning. As Gehrig softly and wisely said to over 50,000 dedicated and choked up fans as retired from the New York Yankees over seven decades ago:
“I have been in ballparks for seventeen years and have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans. Look at these grand men. Which of you wouldn’t consider it the highlight of his career just to associate with them for even one day?”
There are millions of perfect moments in sports. All fans want to get closer to these perfect moments, to touch a piece of history, to relive a moment of life through the experience of an athlete. And now through the innovation of Telepresence, fans will have real time visual communications with sports figures on an unparalleled scale, allowing heroes into the room many more times than travel schedules permit.
Fans will experience how new digital kiosk technology and interactive video enhances their experience in the Stadium of the Future. As Grant Hill noted in a recent blog on the promise of interactive video: “If I were a fan, I always felt it would be neat to sit at a game but also watch it on a screen and hear, whether it’s a local television broadcast, national broadcast, or NBA TV, whoever talking about my team, talking about that game. Being able to rewind or scroll, watch a play that happened earlier in the game. All those different types of things I think the fans will get in the near future.”
Whether it’s re-living the heads-up play of Bill Russell in the raucous old Boston Garden or an over the shoulder catch by Willie Mays (“say hey!”) or bending it like Pele, like Beckham, the fans will know it and experience it at the SMA.
Although many would like technology to increase the span of our lives, digital video technology is doing something important as well: linking us to our youth, to those eternal moments we shared with parents and grandparents, sisters and brothers, friends and family. In his departing comments, Gehrig reminded us “When you have a father and a mother who work all their lives so you can have an education and build your body -- it’s a blessing.” For in our youth, sports bring us both the thrill of competition and the power of collaboration and teamwork.
In closing, I would recommend you experience the SMA -- in person or online – with a parent or a child. In the immortal words of Babe Ruth, the Bambino himself:
“You've gotta start from way down [at] the bottom, when you're six or seven years of age. You can't wait until you're fifteen or sixteen. You gotta let it grow up with you.”
You can visit the Sports Museum in person starting tomorrow May 7 at 26 Broadway in New York, New York...or online at Sports Museum of America.
]]>Take a simple step.
For the last few years, coincidentally, I’ve found myself flying somewhere on Earth Day (this year it was the day before). But whether I get on a plane on Earth Day or the day after (this year it was the day before) doesn’t matter much. What does matter is what I do all year. I may end up having a very-low-carbon-emission Earth Day this year, but if I go back to high-carbon-emission habits tomorrow, I haven’t really accomplished much.
Becoming greener and reducing your carbon footprint can be simple. Hold a meeting on-line (try it free). Work from home one day per week (or month if your boss doesn’t like the idea as much).
Check out what a few Cisco and WebEx execs are doing in their own lives to be just a little bit greener:
And if you are interested in how to get started, or in hearing how other companies are taking some simple steps, join us tomorrow for the Green Business Summit.
So whether it’s personal passion or pure profit that propels you to produce a bit less carbon, take one step today. And make it last all year.
I promise not to ask you to take another step…at least not until tomorrow.
Jeff Weinberger, Chair, WebEx Green Initiative, WebEx
]]>I read an article recently in The San Jose Mercury News that featured a Bay Area couple who spend $1200/month on fuel for their daily 385-mile (combined) commutes. While one can debate the merits–and the sanity–of this particular example, higher gas costs are looming larger in many household and small business budgets. Remote collaboration tools that make sense for large businesses are becoming money- and time-saving tools for small businesses and individuals, too. Now there’s a second “green” argument: this one’s about wallet contents rather than carbon footprints.
Imagine if the couple above worked from home just two days a month. Using a remote computer access solution like Cisco WebEx’s PCNow, they’d have secure remote desktop access to their work computers from their home computers, whether they were PCs or Macs, plus remote file and folder access from their mobile phones. Even better, a solution like this would let them easily share their local computer screens with remote colleagues for one-to-one collaboration, training, or support.
The couple would reduce their commute by over 750 miles a month, save more than $100 on gas, and reduce their stress and fatigue by avoiding over twelve hours spent listening to talk shows while avoiding other drivers who also should be collaborating remotely. All for about $25 a month for two PCNow subscriptions.
Of course, most workers don’t have the excessive commute of our lucky couple, but the price of gas isn’t likely to drop anytime soon, either. Plus, as they say in the credit card commercial, “Regaining productive time, saving money and remaining sane? Priceless.”
by David Bockian, Cisco WebEx strategic marketing
As 40,000 professionals from 125 countries converged at in Las Vegas for CTIA Wireless 2008, it was clear that the benefits of the Internet revolution are being extended well beyond the wired world. More than 1,100 technology vendors at the show demonstrated how they are pushing its boundaries with new business models and technical innovation to drive this revolution into the wireless world.
Wireless equipment providers focused on how ubiquitous bandwidth, delivered by high performance wireless networks laid the foundation for the mobile Internet superhighway. With the rollout of next-generation mobility services, carriers were hard at work giving existing and new subscribers every reason to remain connected on their networks, while providing them with convenient hopping points between precious licensed wireless and unlicensed wireless or wired networks.
Mobile application providers responded to the challenge by demonstrating rich broadband Internet like mobile multimedia, mobile advertising, m-commerce, mobile social networking and mobile communications applications -- but with added benefit of un-tethered everywhere and every time mobility experience. As more and more is demanded from the mobile device by these applications, innovations in mobile device and operating systems took center stage for many vendors in the mobile end-point business.
With the Internet revolution extending into the wireless world and as we become more accustomed to the Mobile Internet in our personal lives, we will soon expect similar experience in our work lives. One way that businesses can prepare for this is by mobilizing current investments in business communications and applications available in the office to where every business takes their employees. By mobilizing these applications, businesses can harness the productivity benefits of the Internet well beyond the office.
by Priten Gandecha, Cisco Unified Communications solutions marketing manager
First and foremost, organizations should involve HR in teaching people how to run effective meetings as well as provide feedback on the way an individual runs his or her meetings. Next, reign in the habit of inviting excessive numbers of attendees. Limiting attendance increases the effectiveness for participants. While it can be beneficial to invite a broad group, organizations should make it acceptable for team members to decline or sit out of meetings when appropriate.
On an individual level, structure the agenda to discuss critical strategic initiatives first and save general announcements for last.
This post has some additional pointers and links to resources on conducting an effective meeting.
Michael Caton, Collaboration Evangelist, WebEx
]]>As the adoption of Mac continues to grow among corporate users, Cisco WebEx has increased its support for the platform across its suite and just announced full support for Mac OS X Leopard and Safari 3 users across its entire collaboration suite. Several Mac-focused media outlets showed their excitement about the news. Check out MacWorld’s coverage.
We've seen Mac OS X use double recently, and while 4.2% could be described as modest share, the growth is strong. Sales of Apple PCs, particularly in the notebook segment, continue to be strong according to this MacWorld article citing NPD and IDC research.
Mozilla's share in the enterprise increased despite not having an official MSI package to simplify large scale deployment. Forrester surveyed the desktop and browser environments of 50,000 users at 2,300 large to very large organizations on a monthly basis throughout 2007.
Colin Smith, Dir., Public Relations, Cisco WebEx
]]>Information technology professionals and journalists interested in the role technology can play in reducing your organization’s carbon impact, please submit questions via ecopanelquestions@external.cisco.com.
It’s not going to be your father’s tradeshow event.
Rather than foreshadow the keynote let me herald the question: can the information and communication industry apply our technology and talents to address what is clearly one of the most significant problems of our day? Can we use the tools and the time given to us to help reverse global warming?
Addressing climate change is not an opt-in technology subject. It’s not an upgrade cycle you could or should delay. Solutions and insights are not proprietary to a specific company, country or part of the globe.
]]> And it bears a direct relationship to Unified Communications, which we see as the unification of all forms of communications. Because we must work together, to connect, communicate and collaborate together to solve our environmental problems -- in ways that span companies, countries, and cultures. Climate change tests the true underpinning of UC in a real way. Even how we speak, how we communicate about climate change will be different, as witnessed by the recently chartered George Mason University Center of Excellence in Climate Change Communications Research.As an industry, we like to think in terms of architectures. What about architecture of inclusion, one that supports openness and the rich context, and nuance of video communications as a part of collaboration? One that integrates video as effortlessly as voice, texting and IM? Can the unification of communications insert efficiency and effectiveness into business?
There is an inherent economy to inclusion. Lowering the barriers to helping people and technologies work together improves cycle time, lowers the cost of integration and re-work, and brings a multiplier of participants to any challenge. In the Flat World, globalization -- which is an inclusive architecture – requires people to communicate more effectively to achieve business goals.
The Internet changed communications and business, irrevocably by flattening the barriers first to communicate anyway on the globe, and, secondly, to allow businesses to reinvent themselves around a networked business model. Now, Web 2.0, in particular video, is reinventing how people communicate with each other.
Thus the communications industry, too, stands at the crossroad of climate change. And if we can enable the rich context that people communicate in person but instead over the network, maybe we are supporting the planet’s amazing aesthetic, noted, simply, by the late great Louis Armstrong:
“I see skies of blue, and clouds of white;
The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night,
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world.”
Everyone’s included.
]]>WebEx Connect Named CODiE Finalist for Best On-Demand Platform
We've received some exciting news from the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA) - the WebEx Connect Developer Network was selected as a finalist in the 2008 SIIA CODiE Awards in the Best On-Demand Platform category.
Full story http://blogs.webex.com
Esther Schindler at CIO.com wrote a nice article that gives pointers on how to run effective virtual meetings. As management consultant Steven M. Smith notes at the top of the article, many people in organizations don't know how to run effective in-person meetings. With so many organizations having geographically dispersed workforces, developing those skills and applying them to virtual meetings is critical to productivity. Pet peeves get deserved prominence throughout the article.
One of the first pet peeve examples, a meeting participant subjecting the entire team to hold music, ranks high up there in terms of being disruptive to productivity. Giving the meeting host the ability to mute the offending line really makes a difference. If one participant has dialed in from a phone with poor line quality or a cell phone, it can net the same result, the static or street noise can override other participants trying to weigh in.
Even for people that have good meeting skills, I recommend looking it over. The article is a quick read and positive reinforcement on the basics often lost to hectic workdays, e.g. including meeting agendas in invites, should pay dividends at least for the next month or two of meetings.
On the topic of editorial, I wanted to give my congratulations to Dan Farber and Larry Dignan at ZDNet. Dan Farber is taking over editorial operations for ZDNet's CNet's sister site, News.com. Larry Dignan is taking over for Dan as Editor in Chief of ZDNet. Having worked for Dan when he was Editor in Chief of PC Week (now eWEEK) I can say he is an excellent manager, editor, and writer. I also worked with Larry at PC Week and eWEEK, he too is a top notch manager, editor, and writer, best wishes to both.
]]>Cisco and Nokia share this vision, and have been collaborating to deliver richer, more consistent experiences for mobile users in the unified workspace, as well as the connected home, for the past five years.
Building upon the Mobile Business Solution that the two companies announced last year at Mobile World Congress, Cisco has turned Nokia dual-mode mobile handsets into wireless extensions of campus IP desk phones, providing users with the same rich calling experience “on the go” as they are accustomed to enjoying at their desks. What’s even more exciting, though, is that we’ve integrated presence, conferencing and voicemail capabilities with this rich telephony experience to help customers dramatically increase workforce productivity and drive business transformation using the Cisco Mobile Communicator client for Symbian handsets.
]]> Customers are already enabling all of these capabilities -- and more -- through Cisco’s Unified Workspace Licensing program, which includes third party phones like the Nokia E-series. Cisco, too, is reaping the benefits of these unified communications capabilities with our most mobile users, the Cisco sales force, who need and expect their mobile phones to do more than just make phone calls. Their ability to provide unparalleled customer service, drive revenues and stay connected with extended teams depends on it.What’s next? Well, if you were fortunate enough to attend Mobile World Congress, you saw John Chamber’s demo of a Unified Communications video session, which moved seamlessly from a desk phone to a mobile device, and ultimately to a home TelePresence screen. With the network as a platform to connect different workspaces, and strong partnerships between industry leaders such as Nokia and Cisco, customers won’t have to wait long to realize the full potential of “any device, any content, any network.” Now that’s one mobile Unified Communications idea I can’t wait to see in motion.
Post by Julie O'Brien, manager of solutions marketing for Cisco Unified Communications
]]>Travel time, even over relatively short distances such as a typical suburban to metro commute, can really add to a person’s stress level. In a previous job, I used to get a lot of requests to meet in-person for briefings either in the city or for breakfast or lunch at a local restaurant. Given the stress of the daily workload, even though I loved meeting with people face-to-face, I did everything I could to minimize the impact of these on my day. After a while I realized even scheduling meetings around off-peak drive times or changing the time I went into the office, couldn't make up for lost time. If you run into resistance or scheduling impasses when planning in-person meetings, go the audio or web conferencing route, it will save time for either you or other team members. Meeting online also benefits the environment by reducing a team's carbon footprint.
]]> Sharing calendars with every partner or customer doesn’t always make sense, so having a standard way to invite someone to a meeting via email can simplify the process and increase the likelihood that invite recipient adds a meeting to his or her calendar. iCal is the standard data format for sending and processing invites. Of course when a shared calendar integrates with a web conferencing application, that integration can save a couple steps for the meeting organizer and makes it easier to track meetings for internal billing purposes.Post by Michael Caton, Collaboration Evangelist, WebEx