The Platform Opinions and Insights from Cisco

LIVE Webcast: Cisco and BPCC Host New Media Summit

Cisco and Best Practices in Corporate Communications host the first annual New Media Summit

Who:  Cisco ®  and Best Practices in Corporate Communications (BPCC)

What:  Web 2.0 has changed how businesses not only communicate with their customers, partners, and shareholders but also how a company communicates and collaborates with its employees. Communications is fast becoming a competitive advantage for companies to compete on a global basis.

The corporate communications team at Cisco and the organization Best Practices in Corporate Communications invites you to join a global summit for communications professionals, journalists and bloggers to talk about the impact of new media in business communications. 

Join us for a day of interactive discussions, best practice sharing, and expert speakers to learn how you can drive innovation and success using social networking and collaborative tools in your organization. 

When: Tuesday, June 5, 2007, from 9:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m. PT

Where:  You will be able to attend live via webcast.
Agenda after the jump.

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Posted by John Earnhardt at 12:01PM PST

Cisco and “D: All Things Digital”

For great coverage on “D: All Things Digital,” please check out Barron’s Eric Savitz blog, where he gives the down-low on John Chambers’ talk there today, including, “Broadband ought to be at least 100 meg to every home.”  More coverage here.

For more, more coverage of D, also check out GigaOm, Dan Farber of ZDNet and Sean Garrett of 463 Communications...and, of course, WSJ.com’s “D Notebook” which includes this entry on Cisco CEO John Chambers, “The Proud Plumber.”  And, last but not least, the VIDEO of Chambers on D’s site.

Posted by John Earnhardt at 05:43PM PST

Baby Poop is a Good Thing

It’s 1:55AM this morning and I’ve just finished wiping my four-month old boy Jack’s poo from my hands…he had what we call a “blow out.”  My mood is not the best.  I’m tired…and, as I may have just mentioned, I just had a prodigious poo to deal with. 

I’m changing Jack’s outfit and having trouble with the zipper.  I’m concentrating on getting his wiggling feet into the footie parts of his “Snuggle Saurus” pajamas…every time I get close, he manages to get a foot out.  I may have mentioned I’m tired and at this point my patience is starting to wear a bit thin.  As I was focused on the business end of things, I then decided to look at Jack’s face and see if he was upset or what the trouble was with getting his feet in the pj’s.  He had the biggest grin on his face and when I looked at him he giggled.  He was totally messing with me.  He then “let” me put his feet in the pj’s and zip him up.  He just wanted a little nighttime attention and it taught me a lesson:  I was getting frustrated for nothing.  Baby poop and lack of sleep are both good things because it means there is a baby involved.  It put things in perspective for me.

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Posted by John Earnhardt at 11:57AM PST

That’s a Wrap

Our time at the Cannes Film Festival is coming to a close.  Over the last week we’ve talked to all sorts of actors, directors and others trying to make a name for themselves in the entertainment business.  Outside of the personalities (whew), one of the more fascinating aspects of these conversations has been the widely differing opinions on whether technology is changing film making.

Opinions are fairly polarized on the subject, with the folks bullish on the digital opportunities being slightly in the minority - this despite some of the biggest buzz at Cannes this year coming from the U2 3D movie and the general growth of 3D technology.

In general, the vast entertainment machine seems to be quite happy making movies and enjoying the South of France as it always has.  It will be interesting to see how perceptions change in the near future.

In a happy coincidence, I happened to be walking outside the Palais on my way back to the apartment when I got caught up in a crowd at a side entrance to the theatre.  Fifteen minutes later, the cast of Ocean’s Thirteen (Yes, Anita, including George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Andy Garcia and Elliot Gould) came rolling out.  It was a true paparazzi moment and one I was only too happy to participate in.

After the stars sped off in their cars, I looked around the 100+ people capturing the scene on their cameras and saw that probably none of them were actually shooting film - all of them were using digital cameras and camcorders.  If that isn’t a sign of what’s to come, I don’t know what is.

Posted by Scott Brown at 11:27AM PST

TelePresence on CBS Evening News

I may have mentioned our TelePresence technology from time to time.  It is very cool and very easy to use.  We say that 60% (or is is 80%?) of communication is non-verbal and TelePresence allows you to feel like you are in the same room talking with someone even if you are in San Jose, CA and they are in London (for instance).  (Yesterday during a demonstration of the technology one of the participants said that he felt like he could reach out and touch the other participants, quickly adding, “some I would like to touch more than others.”)

We think it is a cool, relevant technology that will become more and more pervasive in large businesses to cut back on travel and soon to “kiosk” type applications where you can use a TelePresence suite by the hour.  It is a large part of our green effort within Cisco and we believe that it can initially cut back on 10% of our travel…which is huge in savings for our shareholders and huge in saving in carbon emissions for the environment.

See CBS Evening News’ John Blackstone report on Cisco TelePresence.

Posted by John Earnhardt at 11:49AM PST

Video: Cisco CEO at Interop

The beauty of blogs and the web overall is that crosslinking and sharing of information is just so darn easy.  We get the information that we want PUSHED to us, rather than having to scan actual, physical, ink-stained papers.  We don’t get ink on our hands, therefore we don’t need to wash our hands as much.  We waste less water, we put less soap into the environment.  RSS and feeders, therefore save the environment!!!  Productivity, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness ensues.  Everyone wins.

With that in mind, I would like to draw your attention to some videos posted by ZDNet’s Between the Lines blog from Interop.  This is Dan Farber’s and Larry Dignan’s blog (also featuring David Berlind) and is a must read for those of us in the technology space.

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Posted by John Earnhardt at 03:52PM PST

Unified Communications: Open and Interoperable to Increase Customer Benefits

At Network + Interop this week, we are showing our full portfolio of open, network-based unified communications solutions and highlighting interoperability with a number of industry vendors, including Microsoft. 

Cisco believes that most customers will want a heterogeneous and unified workspace environment - one that includes Macintosh, Linux and PC users, IBM Lotus Notes and Microsoft Outlook users, wired and wireless users - and even users without desktop or mobile devices at all.  Cisco also believes that customers will want to unify a range of enterprise environments such as Oracle, SAP, IBM and Salesforce.com, and Microsoft ERP/CRM applications.

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Posted by Barry O' Sullivan at 11:00AM PST

The Internet is not a medium, it is a language

Yesterday was a busy day for us in Cannes.  First we held the Cisco panel in the American Pavilion (more below), then we watched the red carpet procession from an overlooking apartment (video below), and finished off the day with a screening of the new U2 3D movie.

If you have bad memories of "3D" movies with red and green glasses, U2 3D will convince you 3D is the only way to see movies within the first two minutes.  Even if you’re not a U2 fan, I recommend seeing this for it’s innovative technology.

Now, to the panel...

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Posted by Scott Brown at 04:30PM PST

Balance of Trade

The French have given us so much culturally: Brigitte Bardot, Roquefort cheese, Chanel, the bikini…

In exchange, we’ve given them The Simpsons Movie.  Some would argue that we’re even.  (Picture from outside the Carlton Hotel on Blvd de la Croissette, Cannes, fr.)

Later today Cisco will be hosting a panel at the American Pavilion on how technology is changing the art and business of entertainment.  More updates from that later today.

Posted by Scott Brown at 02:56PM PST

60 Years of Festivals Meets 60 Years of Independence

The Cannes Film Festival is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year.  Halfway around the world, India is celebrating 60 years of independence.  Put the two anniversaries together, and you have the reason behind India’s selection as the country of focus for the opening weekend of the film festival. 

Over the course of the next three days there will be special screenings of Indian produced films, as well as a various celebrations and panel discussions at the Indian Pavilion.  Cisco was a proud sponsor of the India: From A to Z celebration last night on the Majestic Hotel beach.

Posted by Scott Brown at 07:49PM PST

Intersection of Art and Science: the Future of Entertainment

I have to admit, it’s the trip of a lifetime:  for the next week I’ll be with the Cisco team at the Cannes Film Festival.

In its 60th year, the Cannes Film Festival has a long history of looking at the future of film and how the industry is evolving. And that brings me to why Cisco is at Cannes (only the second most frequently asked question behind "can I come with you?").

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Posted by Scott Brown at 02:22PM PST

"The Envelope, Please?" Cisco and mtvU Announce Digital Incubator Grants

Question: If you are a big networking company in Silicon Valley and your focus is more on VoIP, collaborative tools and security, etc. how do you create new media mash-ups, combining elements of social networking, mobile or "big" games, online interactivity, affinity-based websites and short-form broadband programming?

Answer: You partner with mtvU and give grants to college students to tap into their creativity and brilliance.  Together, you create the Digital Incubator program.

The Digital Incubator program, now in its second year, was developed jointly by mtvU and Cisco to discover talented college students to create new media and entertainment concepts.  Together, we provide the monetary, creative and technical resources for students to bring their digital media ideas into reality...as well as a national platform for the finished products to be showcased.  We want to encourage the next generation of talent to experiment with new forms of story telling made possible because of video and broadband coming together and mtvU reaches a college audience that is consuming media in new and exciting ways.  mtvU and Cisco are happy to announce our 2007 grant awards.

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Posted by John Earnhardt at 01:00PM PST

Plato: “Necessity is the Mother of Invention”

This Sunday is Mother’s Day.  It is the busiest day of the year for making phone calls and many callers will likely get an “all circuits are busy” message.  At this late date, if you haven’t sent your mom a card or gift or arranged for a special “THANK YOU, MOM” skywriter to appear in the airspace above your mom’s house, you might want to start thinking about some alternative methods for saying Happy Mother’s Day.

And, speaking from recent, personal experience, you NEED to say Happy Mother’s Day, because every other day of the year is Childrens’ day…with my three-months of experience this is true, but I’m sure it will get easier as he reaches toddlerhood and then his teenage years.  Right?

What are some other ways to reach your mom with a special note or gift?

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Posted by John Earnhardt at 03:38PM PST

Cisco Field Update: One Step Closer to “Play Ball!!”

Last year, we announced that one of the newest Major League Baseball stadiums would be named “Cisco Field” and it would be the home to the Athletics, currently of Oakland.  The new stadium will be in Fremont, CA…just down the road from Oakland and closer to the heart of Silicon Valley.  Today, the A’s announced that we are all one step closer to the reality of Cisco Field.

The press release issued today, states, “Oakland Athletics owner Lew Wolff, Cisco and ProLogis announced today that they have signed land agreements enabling the Cisco Field ballpark process to move forward.  The A’s now have completed the land transaction and control 226-acres of land in the City of Fremont where the new Cisco Field ballpark and the urban village will be built.  In addition, the A’s will continue to work with the City staff on the steps necessary to commence the public application process.”

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Posted by John Earnhardt at 04:32PM PST

Earnhardt to Leave Company His Father Founded

I grew up in North Carolina and with my last name the questions about “relation” came fast and furious.  Any time I wrote a check or used a credit card the question would come, “any relation to Dale?”

On February 18, 2001, Dale Earnhardt died in a crash at the Daytona 500 (by coincidence my dad’s birthday is February 18).  Although we were only distantly related, it felt like a loss of a family member.  After all, I had grown up with him in many ways…especially the questions.  He became to be known in our family as “cousin Dale” because it was the answer that questioners wanted to hear.

Today, we learn that Dale Earnhardt, Jr. is leaving the racing team and company that his father started.  It is too bad that the the two sides couldn’t work things out, but business is business I s’pose.

Which leads me to the point of this blog: Cisco and Microsoft.

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Posted by John Earnhardt at 11:20AM PST