“You mean you can Facetime us from your camp site”, my daughter said incredulously. “From the middle of nowhere?” she continued. ”You lot are mad!” OK she was more annoyed that I was taking our WiFi-only iPad away with me as I took some time out of my day job in Cisco Data Center Services, to participate in 2 stages of the Deloitte Ride Across Britain. Prior to the ride, I blogged about this challenge here, discussing the scale of the event and our target to raise money for Paralympic athletes. A nine day, 969 mile cycle over some of the most challenging terrain in Britain, the ‘Deloitte Ride Across Britain’ was an immense physical and mental challenge. From Saturday 8th September until Sunday 16th September (just passed), over 700 riders took part in this epic journey from Land’s End to John O’Groats. For the second year in a row, Cisco provided key technical support to the riders, so that they were able to focus fully on this enormous and exciting journey.
Today, we’ll tell you how we raised funds for Paralympic athletes through what we call the “Virtual Ride Across Britain” – literally cycling on (stationary) bikes in each of the Cisco offices across the UK and Ireland!
I’m writing this blog in conjunction with 2 of my Cisco colleagues, Stephen Reidy and Nigel Townley.
Stephen Reidy
Last week in another Cisco blog, we introduced Cisco’s participation in the Deloitte Ride Across Britain (or ‘RAB’, as we call it) – a 9 day cycle event across the whole of Great Britain. A number of Cisco colleagues were taking part over one or multiple days to raise funds for ParalympicsGB, in order to help this tremendous charity support more inspirational athletes. Alongside this, we also run the “Virtual Ride Across Britain” or VRAB, to enable more employees to participate. For the Cisco staff that can’t get out on the road, we compete virtually on gym bikes at each of the UK offices – Bedfont, Galway, Glasgow (Trilogy), Greenpark, Langley, London City, Manchester, Ruscombe – with an objective to collectively ride the length of Britain, equivalent to the 963 miles that the road riders complete in the “actual” RAB.
Nigel Townley
Stephen Reidy is a sales account manager in Cisco, and championed our “Virtual Ride Across Britain” across all of Cisco’s UK and Ireland offices, and Nigel Townley is a director of engineering in our “Enhanced Customer Aligned Testing Services” (or eCATS) testing team and press-ganged – sorry encouraged -- tremendous participation in our Greenpark (Reading) office.
Doing good is not that easy, and sustaining good on a grand scale is almost impossible. But once again it is being done at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) annual meeting, Sept 22 to 24. I like to say it’s a place where highly influential people go behind closed doors to do good.
Established in 2005 by President Bill Clinton, CGI convenes global leaders to create and implement innovative solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges. CGI annual meetings have brought together more than 150 heads of state, 20 Nobel Prize laureates, hundreds of leading CEOs, heads of foundations and nongovernmental organizations, major philanthropists, and members of the media. To date CGI members have made more than 2100 commitments, which are already improving the lives of nearly 400 million people in more than 180 countries.
As part of our involvement in CGI, Cisco along with several nonprofit, NGO, and government partners, made a 4-year investment to support ICT-driven development strategies in five countries in sub-Saharan Africa — primarily through establishment of locally managed and self-sustaining community knowledge centers (CKCs).
This post was written by Michael Veysey, director of Veterans Programs at Cisco
Since September 11, 2001, men and women in the U.S. armed forces have fought in our nation’s longest wars. This all-volunteer force has endured sacrifices that most of us will never know or experience—all to protect our peace and freedom. So, hiring a qualified veteran into our ranks is our chance to say “thank you“ to our nation’s heroes.
Hiring veterans is not only a good thing to do, it also makes good business sense. Their knowledge, training, and experience, often under extreme conditions, demonstrate that they can thrive in a competitive and dynamic business environment.
When Steve Martino, Cisco’s vice president of information technology, drives along Route 101 in San Jose, Calif., he thinks about deadlines to meet, programs to initiate, and teams to lead through upcoming projects. But there is another set of thoughts which permeates his mind– those of the Habitat for Humanity projects he has led, which he can actually see from the highway.
“I enjoy being able to drive past a home or development that we worked on, see that result and say ‘I had something to do with that,’” Martino said. “Those people have a home and are happy in part because I invested time in it.”
-- tremendous participation in our Greenpark (Reading) office.
