Today we have a special guest post by Andrew vonNagy, CCIE #28298 (Wireless), author of the blog Revolution Wi-Fi, Twitter @revolutionwifi and a Cisco customer. Huge thanks to Andrew for taking the time to share his Cisco Live experience!
Last week Cisco Live! 2011 took place in Las Vegas, NV. This year was my first time attending the conference, and I am a bit amazed at my experiences looking back on the event now that it is over. In addition to the deep technical content the conference is best known for, I found more valuable benefits are afforded to attendees willing to take a more active role in the technical community.
Arguably, the most valuable aspect of the conference is the opportunity for professional development through interaction with influential members of the industry, both internal and external to Cisco. Professional networking provides a foundation for growth and success by drawing on the energy of a collective group of friends and associates who share similar ambitions and have a drive to be successful, enabling the group to move forward as a whole. Building communities within the industry is when the magic starts to happen. Joining these communities can provide access to shared knowledge, creation of new and exciting opportunities, leveraging of broader connections throughout the community, and promotion of valuable content, products, or services created by trusted members within the community.
Many of these communities begin as virtual communities, built on social media platforms such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and the rapidly growing Google+. These platforms enable greater access to members within the community, but must be used appropriately to be effective. Individuals trying to join the community must provide value to the larger collective and interaction must be genuine. A quote from a widely successful writer and blogger comes to mind…
Networking is always important when it’s real, and it’s always a useless distraction when it’s fake. – Seth Godin
Industry events, such as the Cisco Live! conference, bring the virtual community together allowing attendees to build on existing relations formed online and expand on them by providing more personal interaction, helping to form more meaningful relationships.
Ever wondered who’s on a WebEx? Here’s a look at global activity that’s refreshed every few minutes.
Click in and take a look. You will see the host’s location and how many people are participating in the meeting. Some people are even in a one-person meeting, which I imagine means they are recording content to share with others or post on their website.
WebEx Makes the World a Little Smaller
What I find amazing is how many people are video conferencing from very remote locations -- really shows the power of the Internet and how it allows for collaboration no matter where you are!
If you use WebEx, you can see the power of the WebEx network. If you are hosting a WebEx event or have a recorded WebEx posted that’s public, let us know. Send us a tweet @WebExEvents and we’ll retweet your information to our network.
If you haven’t tried WebEx yet, you can get a free trial and download WebEx mobile free (you need an account if you want to host from a mobile; attending is free).
Welcome back to the second installment of my blog series. I’m sure you’re as ready as I am for a long, relaxing Fourth of July weekend- don’t you wish every weekend was three days? I’m enjoying them as much as I possibly can, because I hear you don’t get summer vacation when you graduate from college. After my little introduction last weekend, I wanted to actually get into what my blog series will be about. I will be looking at how different corporate newsrooms leverage social media to communicate their news to the public. We’re talking HP, Intel, IBM, Oracle…the list could go on, but I’ll save it for another blog post. Given the focus of my research is on the social aspect of corporate newsrooms, who better to look at than the social networking sites themselves? Although these sites may not have an official newsroom where you can go for announcements, they still manage to communicate their developments with the public. I looked at three main sites: Facebook, Twitter and Linked In.
92% of social network users have Facebook accounts, so creating a Fan page to promote business on this social media giant is a no brainer. As a result, Facebook uses their own Fan page as a corporate newsroom,posting updates and new features on their wall to keep their fans and users informed. Users can comment or “Like” these posts, which is an excellent source of first hand feedback for the company. On the Facebook Fan Page, each comment tends to have more than 10,000 “Likes” and thousands of comments. This is clearly an effective way of collecting feedback.
In this episode of Partner Update, we find out what Andrew does first-thing in the morning, learn about a free new mobile app that delivers the latest partner news from Cisco, get the scoop on what kind of network can best solve endpoint and application challenges, get tips on minding your Twitter manners, learn how Cisco partners can grow cloud revenues, and figure out what Triple V means. (And a lot more.)
Tune into this action-packed newscast to get the latest news and info you need to know (in less than five minutes).
So what’s in the news this week?
Keep reading for a transcript of the newscast with timestamps so you can view the parts of the video you want to see and important links where you can find more information. Read More »
Just when we feel we are drowning in information, along comes Big Data to save the day. Big Data refers to a dataset so large it is beyond the capability of a typical database to manage and make use of the information. But a set of advances in hardware and software now allows us to rapidly capture, organize, and make sense of vast oceans of data, enabling us to apply the results to make better business decisions.
Big Data can give us a strategic advantage. For example, investors could see global trends in trading across sectors in near-real time; they could respond much earlier to a downturn in prices in a given sector, avoiding the steep losses incurred by taking later action.
Big Data can also create a richer experience for customers. Bloomberg.com gathers more than 100 data points from every page an individual reader views, processing the data with 15 algorithms to personalize recommendations. Algorithms that understand natural language and rich media and can reason make Big Data technology even more useful in decision making. Novel visualization paradigms, 3D, and gesture interfaces make Big Data understandable and accessible to everyone.
