Three of my favorite smart things aside from my smartphone are smart music, smart television shows, and smart technology. Luckily for me, I can get them all at the same place in just a couple of weeks at Cisco Live US.
From June 10 – 14, hundreds of information technology vendors are expected to visit Cisco’s “World of Solutions” exhibition hall, hosted this year at the San Diego Convention Center. Tens of thousands of customers and others will also attend the event, either in person or online. (Check out this infographic to see who went to last year’s event).
The point of Cisco Live is to get IT leaders and other players in the marketplace together to talk about tech, but that doesn’t mean they can’t have a little fun too. Every year, Cisco finds a way to throw a great party to close out the week.
For this year’s Customer Appreciation Event (CAE), Cisco left it up to the attendees to choose the entertainment. The people voted and Cisco listened, booking American indy-rock veterans and innovators Weezer, whose self-titled debut album went triple platinum after its release in 1994. The four-piece “geek chic” outfit has since released nine studio albums and sold more than 10 million records. Opening for Weezer is Zepparella, an all-female Led Zeppellin tribute band. Special guest DJ Eclectic Method will close out the night. The “Grand Slam” CAE will take place on the last night of Cisco Live at PETCO Park, home of the San Diego Padres baseball team.
I decided to see who else has headlined Cisco Live. A quick search on YouTube pulls up some highlights from past CAEs, including an 80’s-themed concert in San Francisco in 2009 featuring Devo, The B-52s, Tears for Fears, The Bangles, and Tone Loc.
Even before the CAE, attendees will get a chance to hear from a different class of entertainer. This year’s keynote address will be delivered by special-effects experts and TV celebrities Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman, costars of the Emmy-nominated Mythbusters. Very fitting that two of television’s most famous and prolific technology “experimenters” should grace the stage for one of the world’s biggest technology companies.
This all got me thinking about the entertainment industry and the mountains of contracts signed to make sure the movie execs, TV execs, record labels (and don’t forget the artists!) all get their fair share of profits. Think of all the paperwork that goes into copyright, intellectual property, and merchandising contracts, let alone the money that goes to lawyers if those contracts are incompetently (or criminally) prepared, or simply ill-managed. Each one of these millions of documents requires at least one, and in some cases, several signatures. Why do I care? Because I happen to know a few solutions, and they all rely on one, simple, easily accessible technology: fax.
Despite the fact that fax has been around for about 150 years, you still rarely hear a conversation about contracts and signatures without hearing something about fax. This is because fax remains the preferred method of secure information exchange for the majority of the world. If you need an auditable, secure way to transmit a document requiring a signature – fax is your best bet, and the courts agree.
The OpenText Fax and Document Distribution Group (FDDG) offers a wide array of fax-based document delivery solutions ranging from simple fax appliances for companies with a smaller fax need, to enterprise-grade server solutions capable of supporting just about any level of fax traffic. RightFax, FDDG’s flagship enterprise offering, has been the leading fax server for 25 years and boasts more than 100,000 installations worldwide. As a central part of a unified communications (UC) strategy, customers including large banking institutions, regional health networks, and government agencies use RightFax to send and receive millions of documents every day.
But I digress: Weezer rocks, the Mythbusters are amazingly talented entertainers and inventors, and who wouldn’t want to see an all-girl Led Zeppelin cover band? Whether you’re in it for business or pleasure, San Diego is the place to be in June.
If you’re going to be at CiscoLive, stop by booth #2671. To schedule an appointment to speak with me, sign up here.