Greetings from Barcelona – it’s nearly the end of January 2018, it’s sunny, and … it’s time for Cisco Live Europe 2018 #CLEUR

On-Time Arrival!

In difference to my trip to Barcelona last year for VMworld 2017 Europe, my trip to Barcelona this year was without fault, in fact, RyanAir played their trumpet muzak to announce an arrival 20 minutes early.

Now – if only I could say about my train ride from the hotel to the event conference centre … let’s just say that I got off one stop too early and decided to walk the rest – but with such lovely weather in Barcelona, who cares 🙂

Check-In

Monday morning was glorious.  Sun was shining, cool breeze.  What a way to arrive!  Cisco Live Europe 2018 was once again held in Fira Barcelona. And, as you’d expect from both Fira, and Cisco, the check-in process was very slick!

For some reason, something that stood out to me was the visible Wireless Access Points that Cisco had deployed throughout the complex.  It makes sense, right… that Cisco would want to deploy their own products, AND have them visible to conference attendees.  What really struck me though, was that given Fira had hosted an event up until the Thursday before – the entire setup, including rolling out a brand new wireless network infrastructure had happened in the space of just 4 days.  This is, to me, just staggering!

CLEUR in VR

So, I LOVE the concept of Virtual Reality (VR), and Cisco had equipped one of the travelators in Fira with a VR introduction to their conference.

It. Was. Awesome.

My poor wife … I want a VR setup at home now 😀

Fun Fact: My colleagues in IBM tell me that CCIE engineers got to experience “routing traffic” using a VR headset … “be the router” !  how awesome is that!

Getting Social

In “The Hub”, Cisco set up a very visible “Social Media” presence – where all of the awesome people manning the company’s Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn (and other) accounts were all front and centre – making being Social that much more interactive!

Volunteering

So this year, there is a huge amount of emphasis on volunteering – and for those of you who know me, I’m big on volunteering!  So I spent an hour with Cisco employees, Fira employees, and other delegates helping to prepare meal packages as part of their #RiseAgainstHunger campaign for @Rise2030.  I’m proud to say that in just under 1 hour, we prepared 1080 meals 🙂

Meetings and Sessions

It wasn’t all fun and games – Monday was a really important chance for me to attend some of the pre-event sessions on topics such as Umbrella, Advanced Malware Protection (AMP), and other services.

I also had an opportunity to talk to some of their engineers about Meltdown and Spectre – with some more in-depth conversations to come later in the week.

Evening Meeting with Cisco

Monday evening afforded me the wonderful opportunity to spend some time with my account managers – Alan Abell and Edvard Arnet.  These guys are instrumental to the success of my partnership with Cisco, so having some proper time to catch up and talk – away from the hive of activity that is Cisco Live – was important.  A wonderful evening!

And so ends Day 1

As Day 1 drew to a close, I could only reflect with interest the amount of information I’d already gained from my first day of Cisco Live – bring on the rest of the week!

Late Posting

Those looking at the dates, will notice that I’m posting nearly 2 days late … Monday/Tuesday have been awfully busy, with more than a few items to continue to work on after the conference day was done – so I’m a little delayed in posting these updates.  Stay tuned – an exciting update coming in Day 2’s post!