My Week at CiscoLive! Melbourne 2014

Wow, what an amazing week in Melbourne!! With more than 4,600 attendees in person and 36,000 session views online, Cisco Live was the largest event we’ve ever held in the Australia-New Zealand region. It was my fifth Cisco Live overall and third in Melbourne, and what amazes me every year is the sheer passion and enthusiasm of everyone present. Those attending are really there to learn and wanted to hear what we had to say.

A common theme throughout the event was the Internet of Everything (IoE) and no-one outlined the impact better than Cisco’s Chief Globalization Officer, Wim Elfrink, who said, “The Internet of Everything is changing everything”. Wim spoke about the expected $19 trillion economic opportunity over the coming decade in areas as diverse as traffic congestion, energy consumption and healthcare. My favorite and most retweeted quote from the keynote was “Don’t commute to compute” – a reference to the changing way we’re all working.

For the first time at #CLMEL, it was Cisco IT who ran the IT Management (ITM) program with twelve dedicated sessions covering topics from “Intelligent Cyber Security” to “Tomorrow’s Workplace” and my personal highlight “Beyond BYOD”. Rick Huntley’s session on “The Future of IT” was by far the most popular ITM session of the week. Attendance at all sessions exceeded expectations and initial feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. It was great to have local and international presenters on hand to give attendees a global view with a local flavor.

My favorite part of the week (apart from the Customer Appreciation Event) was the one-on-one customer engagements. This year, I was lucky enough to meet with a number of customers to discuss Cisco IT’s journey to BYOD. What I love about these engagements is that we’re completely transparent on what worked for us and what didn’t – which allows others to learn from our mistakes.

Cisco IT was also back on the World of Solutions show floor where we met with 388 customers from 127 organizations. Our four major themes for the stand were BYOD, Security, Data Centre, & IT as a Service. Visitors were very focused on security this year with ISE & BYOD being the most requested discussion topics.

I’m already looking forward to next year and I guarantee we’ll be back bigger and better than ever before.

See you there!!