Cisco Systems Press Conference in SecondLife: SL Exclusive!

Cisco Systems, was featured at a press conference today within SecondLife. This was the last part of the Cisco Systems event, as listed here¹:

9:00 a.m. SLT, Bandwidth Stage.; Live stream of CEO John Chambers' keynote at Interop, Las Vegas.
10:30 a.m. SLT, Live stream from Interop Mobility Booth in Las Vegas
12:00 noon, SLT, Virtual Press Conference with Cisco executives - SL Only Event. Mobility Pavilion on Cisco Systems Sim 1.

Alan Cohen kicked things off, thanking everyone for coming and asking us to watch the video. He then said, "Today is the beginning of a new move for Cisco in the business mobility space. What we have announced today focuses on how work and collaboration is changing and how mobility plays a critical role in enabling this part of what we have shared is the results of a world wide study called the Mobility Quotient. IQ - EQ, now, MQ."

Today, Cisco launched a broad array of solutions with partners, some of which you can read about in context here. Alan Cohen went on to say, "I think you will find Mobility is a key focus for Cisco, as J. Chambers talked about today."

He and Lynn Lucas then opened the SecondLife area to questions.

The first question asked was whether or not the new Mobile Quotient paradigm of technologies would be Linux friendly - to which the response was 'Yes'. So all the fellow penguins out there will be happy to know that Linux is continuing to be supported by Cisco. Also of note, the Symbian OS was not excluded in Alan's comments. Lynn went on further to say, "Cisco AnyConnect client supports Linux, Mac and Windows". Apple users get love too, so don't start banging on your keyboards.

When asked about the role of this new strategy with respect to global internet penetration, Alan responded positively:

...we think that the vast majority of new internet users will come from mobile devices. Large parts of the world will never use a PC. This could dramatically increase net usage.

Responding to a question on how content delivery would change, he said:

...content will have to work across many networks, and be transformed to support the multiple devices.

Clarification on transformation resulted in his explanation:

...it has to morph to play on thes different devices: sometimes broadband, sometimes narrowband, sometimes big screen, sometimes small screen.

So we have morphing data to fit different types of devices in the future. But what are the challenges? Alan Cohen said he saw the main challenge being sociology - perhaps because of how people work, and will change how they work (and play!). Rightly, he recognized that end users don't care too awful much about how something works, but that it does indeed work. Sound familiar?

This also lead into an interesting discussion about Network Neutrality, regional access and perhaps a smattering of some geopolitical divisions that others weren't necessary unaware of - a good conversation.

Overall, a really cool event - well done, well managed, and another look at an evolving presence by Banana Stein. On a personal note, people simply would not quit bugging me by phone, instant message and more while I was trying to keep up with all of this. There is a big part of me which detests all the asynchronous communications which don't allow for intelligent capture of information for use in later forms where it can be sifted, and the noise removed so that the signal remains. But we humans communicate in many different layers... and that may pose the strongest challenge to these new technologies. Extracting the right layers at the right times is what humans are good at - but under these conditions, how good will we be at it?

If Cisco follows this path, we may find out soon.

¹The prior events, as well as the event here, were also covered by Tao Takashi's machinima, which may be found here.