Collaboration Notes from Cisco Live: Tuesday Wrap-Up

Today was another busy day in a city by a bay. With the Cisco Live gears fully engaged, there were more sessions, more classes, and more of everything going on. Our product teams did presentations and trainings throughout the day. And the Collaboration booth was hopping, even without the lure of tradeshow-trick-or-treat swag. We had a constant stream of people checking out the latest collaboration goods and digging into details with product managers. I kept expecting a lull in activity. It never happened.

Read on for: Handisco, Peter Diamandis Keynote, Cisco Champions, Today’s Video, Auto-Reply for the Digital Age,  and What’s Up for Wednesday

Handisco
In the leadup to the morning keynote, incoming CMO Karen Walker introduced the Cisco Live audience to two members of French company Handisco. They demonstrated a connected walking stick that uses GPS, proximity captors, and other IoE tech to help visually impaired people navigate more effectively. It’s a remarkable story for a list of reasons, including Handisco evolved from a team of students from University of Lorraine involved in an innovation competition sponsored by Cisco France. For more, check out the full Cisco case study.

https://youtu.be/X8719XdBB9o

Peter Diamandis
Disruption was a key element in what John Chambers shared on Monday, but Peter Diamandis brought different context: disruption creates abundance.

As Diamandis puts it, technology is the force that takes what used to be scarce and makes it abundant. He talks about exponential improvement. An example: The $150,000 truck-sized box required to store 5MB in 1956 seems ludicrious next to a $99 fingernail-sized card that holds 128GB. The improvement? 30 million-fold. Exponential.

Four implications of exponential thinking and evolution:

The world’s biggest problems are the world’s biggest business opportunities. More people are enabled and focused on solving problems.

Technology takes what was once scarce and makes it abundant. We will meet the basic needs of every man, woman, and child.

A new bread of “exponential organizations” are materializing — smaller, faster, and more nimble.

8 billion hyper-connected people combined with exponential technology will lead to a 100x rate of change over the next 10 years.

Cisco Champions
I’m fortunate to be the Collaboration lead for the Cisco Champions influencer program. CCs are passionate technologists who share their technical expertise, especially via social media (blogs, Twitter, communities, podcasts, etc.). When you get critical mass of CCs in the same convention center, the acronym quotient of conversations skyrockets, technical debates and discussions get serious (in a good way), and the laughter gets loud. These are good folks to follow on Twitter year round using the #CiscoChampion tag. The next round of nominations open toward the end of the calendar year.

Today’s Video: Collaboration in Toyland
Yesterday I brought you a cat video. Today it’s the first epsiode of the product development competition between Sam and Wiley. Wiley has a flashback about setting up office space for his new team, but Sam isn’t worried — she knows about the consolidated communications infrastructure.

https://youtu.be/bwQmxNn3l94

Check it out and let me know what you think.

Auto-Reply for the Digital Age
With anywhere, any time collaboration on any device, it’s time to change your canned “out of office” reply when you’re traveling for work. Here’s mine this week:

Thank you for your message. There’s no such thing as out of the office in the digital age! However, I’m at Cisco Live this week, so my schedule is wacky and I may not respond to your message as quickly as usual. If something is on fire, catch me on Twitter.

What’s Up for Wednesday?

10:30a Industry Keynote with Cisco SVP and CIO Rebecca Jacoby moderating a panel with execs from NetApp, Intel, and EMC.

1:00p “Intercloud – Leveraging the Power of the Intelligent Network” (Ballroom 20BC)

3:30p “Cisco Collaboration: Work Human” with Collaboration’s SVP & GM Rowan Trollope and VP & CTO Jonathan Rosenberg (Ballroom 20BC)

World of Solutions Collaboration Sessions
– 12:30 Cloud Collaboration (WoS Theater West)
– 2:00 Enhanced Collaboration for Enterprise (WoS East)
–  5:00 Cisco Spark (WoS East)

Customer Appreciation Event
See the real Steven Tyler, Joe Perry, and Aerosmith turn it up to 11 to mark Collaboration System Release 11. (Yeah, I went there.) What I really want to know is whether my friend Darren gave Steven a Maui Harley-Davidson shirt to bring to me.

Monday Wrap-Up
John Chambers Keynote, Chuck Robbins, World of Solutions,
New Products, and… a Cat Video!

Doing a nightly blog with a view of the USS Midway and USS Ronald Reagan carriers isn’t such a bad deal. Tune in tomorrow for the next chapter. In the meantime, follow me at @ciscokima.