Enterprise Connect, Day 3 Wrap-Up

Another busy day of Enterprise Connecting comes to a close in scenic Orlando. With Cisco’s announcements and Rowan’s keynote yesterday, my Wednesday was a bit quieter than Tuesday. (Not quiet, mind you — just quieter…)

Collaboration Platforms with Jonathan Rosenberg
My first session this morning was at what felt like a very early 9 a.m. Led by David Finnernan, the panel addressed the topic of Are Mobile-First Collaboration Platforms the Salvation of Mobile UC? Finnernan described the class of apps as tools for people who do their jobs in a different way (than the old way).

Cisco’s VP and CTO of Collaboration Jonathan Rosenberg represented Cisco on the panel. One of his key points was that creating mobile-first platforms is less about specializing apps for mobile devices as it is about creating applications that work anywhere, saying “Mobile-first isn’t smartphone only, it’s work anywhere.” He talked about how, in a regular day, people typically do most of their work on a desktop. The mobile-first aspect is more about the technical development than the actual use.

Jonathan stressed the importance of designing and creating platforms for mobile from the ground up versus modifying desktop applications to work for mobile. Does he feel strongly about this? “If it wasn’t built from the ground up, you probably want to look elsewhere.” (Admittedly, this didn’t go over all that well with everyone else on the panel.)

Keynotes
A couple of the other major companies in attendance had keynote spots this morning. They had some interesting announcements, demos, and customer examples to share. And a few good-humored (?) swipes at Cisco along the way. Call me biased, but it really felt like they didn’t generate the same energy – or attendance — as Cisco did on Tuesday. But don’t take my word for it. Catch a replay of Rowan Trollope’s keynote in our Collaboration Community. (The others are available on the No Jitter Enterprise Connect website.)

Cisco Chat
We brought out two of our Spark for Developers and Tropo gurus to participate in a CiscoChat about the Spark Innovation Fund announced Tuesday. Jason Goecke and Jose De Castro answered questions and shared insights with No Jitter’s Michelle Burbick and others in the Twittersphere. There was some good discourse about the program, who will evaluate the applications, and where people can find examples of current integrations and applications. One question was whether the program focuses on sales impact for Cisco or business impact for customers. The answer? As with everything Spark, the primary focus is on customers first and meeting customer needs. (Will that lead to sales impact? Sure, certainly, of course. But the first priority is customer needs.)

Spark Video
There’s no car chase, but there is exploding communications hardware in our latest video about Cisco Spark. No marketing people were harmed in the making of this video.

Wednesday Wonderings

• On Floridian Cows… Is it strange that I find it strange that there are herds of cows in two of the fields adjacent to the hotel? Maybe there are even more, but I can see two fields from my room window – along with hotels rising out of the flats in the distance.
• On Wireless Access… How many times does the hotel want to make me enter my name and room number to get wireless access? A better question might be: How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood. In other words: I don’t know.
• On Technology Grammar… One of my most popular tweets of the week was on the same topic as a comment in my Day 1 blog post. Apparently I’m not the only one who gets cranky about premise vs. premises.

If you missed the previous wrap-ups, here are Day 1 and Day 2.

Want to keep up with my perspective on collaboration — and occasional random musings? Catch me in the Twittersphere as @ciscokima.