The last few weeks just before Cisco Live are always filled with lots of anticipation and excitement at least for me!
I am eager to be at the event and on the World of Solutions exhibition floor at Cisco Live making sure that everything is in place and ready to go. I am always filled with anticipation to meet our customers and partners many for the first time. Putting a face and a live conversation next to many e-mails and many community discussions is thrilling!
I knew that a few of our Cisco Designated VIPs from Europe were going to be at Cisco Live so I was very much looking forward to seeing them again at the event and conversing over dinner! I have to say that they were all equally happy to see all of us at Cisco. They arrived at the dinner event smiling and happy to be with us. We had our meet and greet over a nice Italian champagne, got to know everyone who was invited to the dinner event and then we proceeded to our table which was set up in a room overlooking the Duomo in Giacomo Arrengario restaurant. The food was simply perfect and got my 5 out of 5 quality ratings. The presentation was impeccable and all tasted fresh and delicious.
During dinner I was able to talk with Deji Okanlawon our eloquent presenter and prolific writer, Peter Paluch who is also another frequent presenter on CSC as well as CLN, Carlo Pogiarelli an avid participant in the IP Telephony discussion forums, Greg Szabo who is a very active participant and who has lots of constructive feedback for us and lastly but not least Darren Starr who is very active on CLN.
All of us from the Cisco team managed to get lots of first hand constructive feedback from them that will enable us to implement on the community.
We ended our evening with two raffles with a GoPro camera being our big prize! This year Carlo was our big winner!
All in all these events and get-togethers with our VIPs are fun and most importantly invaluable. Once again I was impressed seeing their contagious enthusiasm and loyalty to Cisco products, solutions and services. Their contributions to the Cisco Support Community are invaluable and we all know that we would not have been where we are today if we didn't have our customers' and partners' dedication and avid participation in the discussion forums.
Now, we have to put into action all of the feedback and great suggestions we received!