I've attended both vendor and independent shows this year. I've also been involved in virtual content/shows too. I think that all of them have a place and offer value.

The networking market gets bigger all the time, and we have more customers who want more choice and our vendors have more technologies that ever before. For example, Cisco has _four_ chassis based switches products available today and more to come. How do we find enough time to talk about all the features and functions as well as make them meaningful to all of our customers.

We need to move past the idea that only "one thing" can be the winner. Networking markets are so large that many technologies can be successful and, from my view, this is what Cisco product strategy is today. Each product overlaps other products so that the customer need can be met, regardless of where they in their product lifecycle.

We need to embrace "all the things" and that includes trade shows in all their diverse forms.

Equally, I will be attending less shows next year at a personal level because travelling is hard and not very productive. I do plan to do more virtual events to make better use of my time.

My 0.02p

greg