Eric Stewart: Running Off At The Mouth

It’s been two years since I’ve blogged here (even my other identity hasn’t blogged since October 2020), and it’s been June 2019 since I’ve seen my Cisco Live friends.  A lot has gone on since then:

• I lost my boss to cancer during Cisco Live 2019
• I’ve had two pets die
• … COVID-19

My own kind of (somewhat contextually peculiar) introversion has lead to not only not wanting to be around people to reduce any chance of catching something that could kill me (in spite of having all three shots in the arm), but it’s even reduced the energy I’ve had to do anything aside from work and play games.  I even have trouble talking about playing games. Thing is … life is slowly going back in the direction it was.

My wife and I actually took a vacation that took us away from the house – first since COVID 19 became a thing in early 2020.  Our vacations involve visiting a particular Florida amusement park (no not the rat one), and it was … weird, but wonderful.  We’re already thinking of the next one.

Not quite as important as vacationing with my wife, but still kind of up there, is Geek Summer Camp – Cisco Live.  I miss my friends (THREE YEARS!), and am kind of afraid of who might not show up just because COVID hasn’t exactly gone away.  But I’m quite excited for the possibility of it being in person again.  I have a little bit of information about it, but given everything that’s happened, let me list a few things about Las Vegas and travel:

• Don’t piss off the TSA, or hold up the line for the rest of us.  Get to the airport at least an hour before your flight and be prepared for the usual requirements, such as:
  • Limitations regarding fluids you can carry (it shouldn’t be too hard to find certain things in Vegas if you want to just travel without them, like, say bottled water)
  • The fact you’ll be removing all your metallic objects (don’t carry your keys in your pockets – put them in your carry-on, and try to go without a belt)
  • You’ll have to take your shoes off (wear something you can easily slip off and on)
• Mask debates aside, I plan on taking a few to the conference and will 100% be wearing one from the moment I step into the airport in Tampa and step out of the airport in Las Vegas.  COVID-19 aside, you’re going to be sailing through the air in a flying metal death tube with a bunch of people who you don’t know, don’t know where they’ve been, and don’t know what they might have.  Vegas being what it is, it would suck to come down with some kind of bug (even just a cold) because you were breathing the same recycled air without something between these disease ridden strangers and your air holes.
• Once you’re in Vegas …
  
  So it can be kind of important to make sure you drink water and stay out of the sun as much as possible. Indeed, I also tend to utilize a nasal gel to reduce the chances of nose bleeds.

Now, in the context of Cisco Live, they’ll help you with some of this, so let’s start talking about Cisco Live in general (promise, I’ll get to the exclusive stuff soon).

Book your hotel through the conference site.  If you’re unlucky enough to not be in the hotel the conference is actually at, at least there will be buses to take you from your hotel to the conference, so that will keep you cool if you have to travel.  The hotels themselves tend to be geared into keeping you indoors as much as possible (though this is mainly because they want to separate you from your money, so they have a weird symbiotic relationship with the desert outside).  Many hotels will have covered walkways between them, or a short bridge over the roads.  There’s also a monorail/tram thing that can take you to a few of the hotels.

If it’s your first time, don’t feel obligated to fill every open slot in your calendar for the week with a session.  You’re going to be drinking from a fire hose, and you could probably use downtime here and there.  There’s also more to the conference than the sessions, and it’s a lot easier to find time to mosey through World Of Solutions if you find it open and most folks are at a session themselves.

About World Of Solutions: Swag is a thing, but be aware you’re agreeing to give them the phone number and email address you used to sign up to the conference, and they WILL call you at some point and expect you to talk to them and will want your organization to spend money with them.  Don’t sell your soul for a pen, and as for the blinky plastic swords … well, you’re going to have to figure out how to get the thing home.

Whatever you schedule for Thursday morning, make sure it’s something you are fine with missing or can get through without becoming overloaded.  Wednesday night you’re likely to be up kind of late, and might even get a little drunk.  You may very possibly be hung over Thursday morning, so … just be prepared for that.

Follow @CiscoLive on Twitter, at least during the conference … though you might want to turn notifications off, there’s likely to be a lot of traffic.  I’m sure there are other social media avenues to ingest Cisco Live information, but Twitter is the only one I can really pay much attention to.

Also, if you care at all, I plan on doing random updates/broadcasts from my phone on my Twitch channel during the conference.

Now … what’s that information?

I thought it was that the information portion of the website was going to launch.  It turns out, Thursday (2/24) registration opened quietly … including hotels.  So … get to it!

UPDATES: Mandalay Bay would already appear to be booked up as far as conference rooms go.  $WORK has four folks going this year and when the last one registered, there were only three hotels left!  However, it’s not unusual for more rooms to become available as the CiscoLive folks work with the hotels, so perhaps later there will be additional Mandalay Bay rooms.

According to the information on the website, the Cisco Live Celebration (formerly known as the Customer Appreciation Event) will be Dave Matthews Band and Brittany Howard – probably at the T-Mobile Arena (but don’t know for sure yet).  Can’t find anything about the closing keynote speaker yet.