Eric Stewart: Running Off At The Mouth

While COVID-19 has resulted in the cancellation of the Chinese Formula 1 Grand Prix, Cisco Live Melbourne, and a number of other conferences, there’s still hope that Cisco Live Las Vegas (Sunday, May 31 – Thursday, June 4, 2020) will still happen.  Which is great, because this is a week I look forward to more than my birthday (even with the next one being 50) or Christmas.  The last one had a dark cloud over it for me, but I managed to reacquire my CCNA (through the combo exam and no study) and still had a good time with my conference buddies.

Even managed to get registered relatively early this year!  So much so, that I scored a room at Mandalay Bay, the main conference hotel (something a coworker who didn’t get his hotel arranged within a few hours of the conference hotel site being opened did not manage).  I won’t have to suffer (though it’s really not that bad) with bus rides (unless the Testing Center ends up over in the MGM Grand with management track).  The theme for this year is Possibilities – the doors to which are certainly opened by networking.

The tag for social media #CLUS is being replaced with #CiscoLive – I personally could have argued both ways.  It was kind of nice to have an indicator of which Cisco Live you were talking about (there’s usually like three a year around the world) but time being what it is, it should be fairly obvious which one we’re talking about.  And there are usually remote attendees to the conference, a large number of which probably aren’t even in the US, so it’s appropriate to be more inclusive with the hashtag.  I don’t usually pay attention much to the other Lives, but what little I have picked up on is that there’s usually one for Europe, one for Asia-Pacific, and then of course the one in the US … which is actually meant to be for all of North and South America.  And while you might be able to get away with “Cisco Live in the US with visitors from Canada!”, it’s not really all that accurate when you have visitors from all over the world, much less the rest of North and South America.  20% of the attendees tend to be “world-wide”.  Not sure if that covers outside of US or outside of the Americas – either would not surprise me.

Things being what they are right now, I wouldn’t be surprised if the onsite conference attendance was down, but the remote conference attendance was way up!

Scoop Item #1: The Cisco Live Celebration!

So I only have style and location details about this – and what I mean by that will become clear once I explain.  It’s a Music Festival this year at the Thomas & Mack Center, which is on the University of Nevada at Las Vegas campus.  There will of course be food and drink, and also music!  This year, there will be multiple stages with bands.  Which bands, I don’t have yet, but as soon as I do, I’ll pass the info on to you.

Scoop Item #2: Tweetups/Social Media Hub

So the Tweetups will be:

• Arrival: Sunday, May 31, 5:45pm – 7:15pm (photo planned for 6:10pm) at the Social Media Hub.
• Departure: Thursday, June 4, 4:30pm – 5:00pm at the Cisco Live letters.  No idea where they’re going to be yet.

The Social Media Hub is still being designed but is going to be just outside of the World of Solutions, in a spot they’ve been before (also looks like it’s not going to be too far from one of the registration areas).  I’m a bit too lazy to figure out how to make what I’ve seen an image to add to the blog post, and since it’s a cutaway from a larger map, I’m not sure I understand enough of what I’m looking at to make it seem like I know exactly where it’s going to be.

Next Update – Maybe April?

That’s all I have for now.  Hopefully I’ll have more information in April – perhaps about the Celebration bands or maybe some keynote speakers, but it will probably be early May before the closing keynote speaker is set.  Hope to see you there!