IT Management Melbourne, Dedication, Desire and Delegates

The build up preceding Cisco Live in Melbourne is like the coming of the wet season in the tropics, you know it’s coming as the intensity increases amongst the teams until the downpour on day 1 when everything comes together. All the effort spent by the respective teams in long days and late nights, where the only acceptable outcome is success is always a buzz to be a part of.

Every year Cisco IT increases their involvement in this event and this year was no exception, from GIS engineers deploying and supporting the whole of the Live IT infrastructure, to multiple IT engineers doing Tech Talks, participating in ask the expert sessions to John Manville with Ben Kelly and Mark Sullivan in a standing room only Innovation Theatre. The booth was beautifully designed to showcase our Smart Connected Spaces and our ability to work from anywhere.

The highlight for me was ITM, where for the first time we had our own dedicated, 2.5 day program with over 100 full fee paying delegates. It’s not hard to see the attraction when you have rock star speakers like Kevin Bandy, John Stewart and Susie Wee headlining the program alongside our own IT royalty of John Manville, Lance Perry, V C Gopalratnam and Jay Joiner. Can you imagine my trepidation when looking down the agenda of presenters for the day, John Stewart, Kevin Bloch, John Manville then me, no pressure right? But based on the volume of questions both during the session and then afterwards I got people thinking about their own workplaces and culture.

Breaks between sessions were filled with customer conversations generally filled with praise and awe at the calibre of talent and content on offer, this for me provided a personal reality check… we are truly lucky to have the unprecedented access we do to our senior staff, the thought leadership, the clarity of message and the regular communication, Cisco and Cisco IT in particular is amongst a rare breed in the global corporate arena not to be taken for granted.

Cisco Live is such a great opportunity to connect with our customers in a casual environment, to learn from them while they learn from us, I can’t wait to do it all again next year.