Was it really 10,000 attendees? And does it matter?
Like the previous post, I’m just rambling about the things that stuck out at Networkers. Short list: Attendance vs. party hats, party hats, the not-CCA, millennial to overcome baby boomers by 2011, the coldest winter I ever spent was a summer I spent in San Francisco… I’ll start and end with my two favorites of the day.
The Networkers hat this year looks like a Devo hat. Red, concentric cylinders. And I promise to get a phone with a camera by next year, so I can post what the hats look like… next year. 😉
I heard someone, I think John Chambers, say Tuesday that there were 10,000 onsite attendees and 3000 virtual. Then someone else told me that the count as of last Sunday was 7000. Then I asked a worker bee a the front gate of the party tonight how many hats they had… and the answer was 4500. For those that haven’t been, the Networker’s hat is one of fun little things you get at the show, people tend to keep them around their cubicles at work, the hats are almost always goofy, and generally fun. You have to go to the “Customer Appreciation Event” to get the hat – not all go – but there were only 600 hats left on the tables when I left early at 8:30PM Pacific. Hmmm…
Mark Twain is attributed to have said something like “the coldest winter I ever spent was a summer I spent in San Francisco”. The party tonight was on Treasure Island, an island in the San Francisco Bay, about midway between San Fran and Oakland. A bit chilly – when I got there around 7:30, it was chilly – maybe 55-60 degrees, and a bit windy of course. The site is part of a former Navy base. Games with prizes, a few rides, food spread out all over. The theme was something like “party like its 1989”, again with the 20 year anniversary theme. Martha Quinn, one of the original MTV VJ’s. Several old voices/bands from the past, with B52’s and Devo scheduled (I bagged it before then).
I finally got some time to learn more about what I’ll call the non-CCA – the Cisco Certified Architect. Can’t call it CCA, because some other company owns the rights to the name. Can’t call it CCDA (add “design”), for the same reason. So, at this point, Cisco’s not abbreviating it. (Link: https://www.cisco.com/web/learning/le3/cisco_certified_architect/index.html). It’s worth some space in the blog on another day. Short version: it’s meant for lead network architects. Its design oriented, so it requires CCDE as pre-reck, but doesn’t require CCIE. However, I asked, and while a CCIE isn’t required, they say that without CCIE-level skills, you’re not going to pass. Cisco is still working out details, but the general idea is that you’re given the equivalent of a request for proposal (RFP); you go away for several weeks and build the proposal; Cisco reviews the proposal and then sends you a list of questions; you answer those (again, from the comfort of home); and then you attend a review board session, as if you were making a live presentation of your proposal. The review board plays the role of technical and business folks. That part of the test is live in person. And on scale, think dozens of people with this cert by 3 years from now, but not hundreds.
Finally, my favorite tidbit today: Millennials (defined as those born after 1980) will outnumber baby boomers (born from 1945 – 1964ish) by the year 2011. Padma Warrior, CTO, made that observation. The implication is that the millennials are comfortable, and even thrive, with all the collaborations technologies Cisco is pushing.
That’s it. If there’s anything else interesting Friday on the last day, I’ll post it before the week’s out.
