Bryan Cranston and Cisco Live 2017

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Julie getting ready for the Keynote

I actually did not go that long..although it always seems to feel like that in Vegas.  I don't know how many of these I have been to now but it seems like such an important part of my year that I would be somewhat lost without it.  I love the live broadcasting we get to do from the show floor. I miss doing many of the deep-dives we used to do as part of TechWiseTV but now I feel like I am much more a part of the event.  It's a reunion of sorts as well as this is one of the few times I get to meet so many great geeks.  

The Bryan Cranston interview at the very end was certainly a highlight.   The closing keynote turned out to be a kind of fireside chat that he did with Chuck Robbins on stage.  Chuck did really well...it was informal, entertaining and did not feel scripted....which I love...but that was my angle!  I had to rush over from the studio and come up from backstage to try and pay attention to the content because now I feared that I would have nothing fresh to ask him about. Chuck asked great questions and I was scratching things off my list as ideas almost as fast as I added them.  You watch and see how I did:

As I had hoped, Bryan turned out to be an extremely down to earth guy...or in fairness perhaps...his role that day as a famous actor acting like a down to earth guy on a corporate gig...was spot on.  Either way, you can tell that he cares very much about his craft and appreciates the gifts he has been given. It felt like he was working hard to make me comfortable in my role....which I appreciate...and then worry that I was giving off a 'I need help vibe.'  Either way....I remain a big fan. I did not finish his book until a few days after this interview...but I recommend it.  He has a great writing voice and shares some great stories from his humble beginnings. 

The crew was largely the same this year...and we always feel like we fought a war by the time we finish.  The breakneck pace of doing a non-stop stream on facebook, youtube and cisco.com among a few others really kept us busy.  

Too Much Talent?

I really thought we had too many on-camera hosts this year...there were five of us including Steve Multer (the only outsider of the group....who has been working with Cisco longer than I have however), James Bedford, Shari Slate and for the first time, Lauren Malhoit.  Working with Lauren was bitter sweet.  She is our new host on TechWiseTV with me and as such I knew she could handle this quite well...but her role this year only came at the last moment as Cisco let Shraddha Chaplot go.  That was a huge bummer. Shraddha is great people and I really hope she lands on her feet and can show Cisco what they missed by letting her go. We needed every host at almost every minute due to the 'innovation talks' that were being done this year.   '

Innovation Talks

The Cisco Live team is always pushing for more and better...which I love...and this was a nice staging area not too far from the broadcast studio.  The ideas was that executives and such would be giving TedTalk style pitches that were limited to 30 minutes. These would start at the top of each hour.  The cool thing about this is that we would be doing live shows/updates between these times so we were handing off to that room from the live broadcast, (continuous show to the audience of course).  The challenge was that most presenters were ending their talk much earlier than 30 minutes...and we had to fill time almost every hour...which really added up.  I think the fatal error was that the room they were in felt very disconnected from the broadcast...there was nothing in there that indicated they were live with our thousands of viewers and so to them...their audience was small and maybe not that energetic...they would just end...no concept of the fact that the story was continuing.  It would have helped a lot if the live broadcast was playing in that room at a minimum...then they could see our set up and hand-off...plus their room would not be so quiet and boring between presenters. 

Filling Time with a Backstage Tour

As one example of trying to fill time...I was sitting in the back of our broadcast area and did get about 10 minutes notice...the issue was that James Bedford was on stage and they were still waiting for his guest to show up.  We needed to fill time and do it away from the stage so the crew could get the new guests mic'd up and ready to go.   Now you know what was happening...here is what it looked like as I made stuff up.

HyperFlex Celebration - LIVE

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We pulled off our first TechWiseTV LIVE AUDIENCE format for the HyperFlex launch complete with a live band, and 4 simultaneous media streams on YouTube, Facebook, Cisco.com homepage plus our own registered site. We hit a number of records with this both for ourselves and for Cisco. 

We set out to drive a fun experience for our audience and to tell a simple story around the success of HyperFlex. We had the opportunity to do this with customers sharing their stories, CTO of Citrix, our engineering teams, live demos and an energetic audience of at least 200 people.

Watch the show now: http://bit.ly/techwisetvLIVE

As with all TechWiseTV shows, our objective was to both entertain and educate with a tone that implied we were talking amongst our peers.  This show needed to resonate with a broader audience however and be compelling to the c-suite as well.  

To make it interactive, we built much of the show around actual customer stories that we could then use as a base for showcasing a ‘how’d they do that’ point in our lab set.  We would go out to the audience, engage, and then send a key point back up to the demo team.  

Our third trip out was to engage with Christian Reilly, CTO of Citrix.  As planned, he started answering his question from his seat but asked if he could just jump up on stage and use our whiteboard to explain further.   This allowed more surprises for the audience who never had to feel like they were settling in for a long corporate droning. 

We teased some third-party testing numbers up top and finally revealed at the end showing proven architectural value for how our definition of simplicity affects anyone’s bottom line.  The bulk of the show was built around some carefully crafted live whiteboard and animation. Our goal was to show simplicity through automation on a cluster install, the logical beauty of the Unified Computing System as well as the short and long term benefits of a purpose built, log-based file system. 

Liz Centoni covered how the need for simplicity has lead Hyperconvergence to become such a hot market opportunity. Kastoubh Das (KD) revealed the four foundational pillars for Cisco HyperFlex and introduced the all new flash arrays, 40GB networking integration and the new HTML5 interface.

Big Thank you to...

First, Eugene Kim for his leadership of this launch. Robb Boyd for being the driving force behind the show. Our new and talented TechWiseTV co-host, Lauren Malhoit who made an outstanding debut and Chris Nichols, the storage specialized, white-boarding powerhouse.  Liz Centoni put in the right messaging foundation at the top of the show and Kaustubh Das (KD) came in with several technical beats that tied it all together. Big thanks to the faith and perseverance of Justyna Przygoda and Francoise Rees for working through the creative, the timing and logistics with customers. Vicky Arafa and Dan Pavlik from CiscoTV operating like a well-trained orchestra through all the cues and steps needed to pull it off.  Chris Winger’s streaming expertise on the social media outlets.  Sara Miller and Tawni Unite for their expertise in getting us on the new Eloquoa registration system, promo integration and of course the live Q&A. Gary Serda and Lisa Vera for coordination with customers and partners to fill the room and tell their stories. And to the social media team for driving engagements and amplification with our audience.

Tetration Analytics - Ep 200

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Amazing and ambitious technology debut featured in this show.  This first iteration of technology is a hardware based solution made up of a very full rack of UCS servers offering a DVR for the Data Center.  The first real time monitoring and playback of any flow anywhere in the data center.  I am hoping we continue to bring this technology down market...ideally making it some kind of 'software as a service' since it seems quite valuable for just about anyone trying to grapple with how fast things are moving these days.  

Digital Transformation

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This project was a one-off that was originally going to be an internal video explaining part of Cisco's digital transformation story to a broad base of employees.  It was all scripted quite fast as we developed visuals within just a few days. Not my preferred way to work but I was pleased with the balance of rushing it and maintaining a low budget.  Much credit to Dave Isaacs and team at ACG Multi-Media in Ohio for turning it around so fast. 

Episode 158 - Smarter Routers

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Episode 158 - Smarter Routers

 We recently had a chance to showcase the new ISR 4000 Series.  ISR remains the acronym for this family as it stands in for ‘Integrated Services Router.’  I am sure we made this argument before, but one way to characterize this one is to see just how much the innovation swings towards the ‘I’ and the ’S’ these days.  It makes sense. 

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Episode 157: Inside the Cisco TAC

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Initially, I was not too excited about doing a show on TAC, Cisco’s Technical Assistance Center.  This topic has been requested in various forms throughout the years and for whatever reason, we just never took the time to do it right.  Until now.  

Cool thing about TAC as a subject for us? It is TECH Reality.  This really can’t be a marketing show as they deal with deployments.  As much as I could now make an argument for why they should be a part of any pre-sale process - I get it. They truly live at that golden moment…when someone has a problem and they are either going to become a customer for life…or be lost forever.   (Watch the entire Show Right Now)

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Episode 156: Cisco ASA and FirePower Services

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Cisco ASA with FirePOWER Services is a new, adaptive, threat-focused next-generation firewall that delivers superior, multi-layered protection, improves visibility, and reduces security costs and complexity. It provides integrated threat defense for the entire attack continuum by combining proven ASA firewall skills with industry- leading Sourcefire next-generation IPS and advanced malware protection.

But haven’t  we heard this all before? 

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Everybody Writes

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Everybody Writes

Top marketing veteran Ann Handley gives expert guidance and insight into the process and strategy of content creation, production and publishing, with actionable how-to advice designed to get results.  Traditional marketing techniques are no longer enough. "Everybody Writes" is a field guide for those who know that great content is the key to thriving in this digital world.

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Episode 141 Released: Cisco Controller...Enterprise Module

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This is an audio only version of the show - it is a video of course...you can watch it here.

Separation of control and data planes is a great start for SDN, but to be truly effective, we need to include network functionality as well. The Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC) Enterprise Module extends ACI solutions beyond the data center to the WAN and access networks.  Cisco has been updating its data center and networking portfolio to become open, programmable and secure, and this extension of APIC delivers Software Defined Networking (SDN) capabilities that allow the network to become more agile and responsive to the dynamic demands of applications and users.

We covered all of this from Cisco Live Milan but lost some footage during the initial back up process. UGH!  We re-shot stuff as you can hear in the studio but thankfully did not lose our interviews and demos.  

This is an audio only version of the show.  You can SEE the show here.  

We cover an intro to the APIC Enterprise Module & Open Daylight and then dig in with Phil Cassini covering demonstrations with Security, QoS and VDI. Plus, a subject we will come back to in more detail later, iWAN or 'Intelligent WAN.'  Bill Reilly handled that one with us beautifully.  Hope you enjoy!
 

-Robb