Zit Seng’s Superwall

The beef noodle soup at Taipei International Airport during my transit this morning. It was quite delicious.
— Posted from my N95 Lifeblog.

Cisco Live 2008 was held at the Orange County Convention Centre in Orlando USA this year. The annual Networkers event has now become a part of Cisco Live. This year, the Cisco Live event counted over 11000 conference attendees, a total of some 700 sessions (400 unique sessions), and almost 200 exhibitors at the World of Solutions exposition. It was an awesome event that ran from 22nd to 26 June. The event theme is The Power of Collaboration, and this theme is quite evident throughout the conference.

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This year’s Cisco Live customer appreciation event was held at Universal Studios Florida and the Hard Rock Cafe. Cisco Live guests had exclusive access to Universal Studios rides and shows, and there was free flow of food and drinks at kiosks and food outlets throughout the park. There were quite a number of performances too: Blue Man Group, Bare Naked Ladies, etc. There was a whole lot of fun.

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Here’s the newly announced Nokia E66 and E71 business smartphones seen at Cisco Live 2008. Yeah, they’re all covered with fingerprint smudges after they’ve been fondled by too many people. I’ve no idea what the technical specifications are, but I suppose you could just look them up Nokia’s website. Nokia came here to share about their mobility solutions. They’re giving away T-shirts and books on VOIP too, and a daily drawing for a Xbox 360. My N95 8GB was also on display, as were a few other N-series smartphones.

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I like to eat all kinds of food. When I travel overseas, I have no compulsion to have to find Chinese food, or any familiar Singapore food. Oddly enough, this time in Orlando, I found myself eating a few meals of Chinese (the US version of “mixed rice”). Then, there was one evening when we were at a small mall where there really wasn’t anything much appetizing except for Subway. So we went for that.

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Today Cisco’s Chairman and CEO, John Chambers, delivered his keynote at Cisco Live 2008. The hall was packed, and it kind of felt like a concert with all the lighting effects, live display screens, etc. Of course I can’t say there is as much excitement or anticipation like when Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone or MacBook Air at equivalent Apple’s events. (Well, clearly it seems Cisco Live has more attendees than MacWorld conference attendees, not counting Expo-only visitors to MacWorld).

One of the highlights of the keynote was a collaboration demo of an upcoming WebEx product. It was funny when the demonstrator wanted to talk about how he could move phone calls to/from the iPhone, he referred to the iPhone as “Cisco’s iPhone”. John Chambers corrected him. It brings back memories of the squabble between Cisco and Apple over the iPhone trademark. I wonder if Cisco has more phone ideas up their sleeves. Maybe further developments on the Linksys iPhone?

Next: Subway So No Standard

The number of attendees at Cisco Live is tremendous. I hear they have over 11000 conference attendees. This photo shows the crowd waiting to enter the World of Solutions for the welcome reception. The crowd on the expo floor couldn’t be very different from our PC Show in Singapore. Not only is there free flow food, beer and wine, the exhibitors are too happy to pile you with heaps of freebies. (Of course it is not quite unexpected since I’ve been to other Networkers events.) It’s one of those times when you become selective about what freebies you want to receive. There can be too many. Particularly if you have to cart everything back halfway across the globe.

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Today, we checked in to Cisco Live at the Orange County Convention Centre. The place is enormous. In Singapore, Suntec is the convention centre. But Suntec is kid sized compared to this convention centre, and what I saw of Orange County Convention Centre was only the West Building. There is still the North and South. Simply big. I think, I probably should start up a photo album for the Networkers trip. I think there’ll probably be quite a lot of pretty photos to share.

The Cisco Live check in was simple and quick. Just like what I had seen with the other Networkers I’ve been to in Australia. Yeah, this is the first Networkers in the US that I’ve come. I guess everything here is just bigger a whole lot more.

Next: Free Food, Beer and Wine

This is the Indy Speedway ride at Disney’s Magic Kingdom at Orlando. Yes, traffic jam. After enduring daily traffic jams in Singapore, do I still want to experience traffic jams in the Magic Kingdom? No, I guess not. I gave the Indy Speedway a pass. (It’s not bumper to bumper traffic all the way, so you do in fact get to drive along at a decent, though in my opinion unsatisfying, speed.)

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Today is Day 2 in Orlando. As you can see, I’m kind of going to do a mini travel blog about this working trip to Orlando for the Cisco Live conference. I flew in to Orlando with a colleague. We did some shopping on Day 1. On Day 2, we went to SeaWorld, and in the evening did more shopping.

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