The Making of "What is Quad?" and How I Made it To My Son's Soccer Game

One of the great things about my job at Cisco is I have all sorts of powerful tools that help me get my job done. So much so that It just seems natural to work the way I do. Video phones, flip cameras, video editing software, a robust internal network and now Cisco Quad (our Enterprise Collaboration Platform) are just part of my day. Sometimes it strikes me just how cool some of the things we can do are.

Take for example, the story behind the What is ECP? video and how I didn't miss my sons soccer game. Back when we first started working on Quad I had 2 days to pull together a short video showing members of the Quad team describing Quad in their own words. There was just one problem, I work in Boxborough Massachusetts, the interviewees work in San Jose California (3000 miles away) and I couldn't travel because I needed to be in town to coach my son's soccer game.

Before I tell you how I used Cisco collaboration tools to solve this work/family conflict have a look at the video.

Two Notes:

1. CLicking on this video will take you to another site. I can't seem get the embed code for the video.
2. Back when this video was recorded we hadn't picked the name Cisco Quad, so we referred to Quad by it's generic name Enterprise Collaboration Platform or ECP for short.

"What is ECP/Quad?" video (3:13)

At the very end of that video you can hear me say to Ashish "You know we're going to use that." No big deal right? Except I wasn't in the room! Rather than flying out there to conduct interviews we used a little ingenuity and a some everyday Cisco tools. Here's how we did it.

A teammate in San Jose, CA set up a flip camera, in a conference room, next to a 7985 video phone. I interviewed each of our movie stars over the course of a few hours. We could see each other via video call and talked just as if we were sitting across a table having a drink.

In order to make sure the interviewees were comfortable I promised them  I'd keep the raw video private and edit out any mumbles or mistakes.  That gave them license to speak freely and try things a bunch of times.  It also meant we ended up with hours (many GB) of raw video that we needed to move across the country.

That's where Cisco Quad came in. The video files (far too big for email) were shared through Cisco Quad and its embedded enterprise policy manager ensured that only my  teammate and I could see them.

A lot of trimming and a few  cross-dissolves later and I had the video you see above. Best of all, I was home in time for my son's soccer game. While technically they don't  keep score in 1st grade soccer, my son Alex assures me that we won that game 6-2.

Last Night's Travel

I wrote post 2 years ago for friends and family after participating in my first multi-continent TelePresence meeting. It's also re-posted on My Cisco Community Blog.

Last night I traveled 5700 miles, participated in a 6 hour face to face meeting, and then returned 5700 miles home. It was a TelePresence meeting and I was in Boxborough MA, San Jose CA,  Galway Ireland, and New York NY all at once!

There were 11 people on TelePresence and two on the phone. Clearly we saved a bunch of money on travel, and eliminated a big carbon footprint, but the part of the experience that surprised me most was how productive we were.

• No one was jet-lagged from flying,
• No one was coming down with a cold they caught from the nice person at the airport coffee stand, and
  
• No one had to explain to their wife (I'm talking about me here) why they were away for three days for a 6 hour meeting.

There is no way we could have held that meeting in one location and had everyone as relaxed and comfortable as we did last night.  We were stunningly productive! Best of all, when our 6 hour meeting finished I drove home (5700 miles or 10 minutes by TelePresence/Car) and arrived just in time to tuck my kids into bed.




Some technologies are just cool. Others are cool and vastly improve your quality of life.

This is a blog about...

...technology, presentation and communication techniques, and ways to make peoples work life more fun. At least that's my best guess at the time of this "Hello World" post.

Obligatory legal stuff:

I work for Cisco Systems, Inc. Opinions expressed on this blog and in any corresponding comments are my personal opinions and not those of Cisco.

For the past 11 years I've worked for Cisco Systems in some really interesting roles.  At present I spend most of my day product managing the development of  Enterprise Social Software from a desk 3000 miles away from my team. When your entire team is in one place, and you are separated from them by a 3 hour time zone difference, you are, to put it mildly at a disadvantage. Just try driving consensus with 20 people in a room together when you're sitting in another state talking through a phone and you'll see what I mean.
 
The upshot of this rather strange working setup is it's made me a student again. In order to get over my 3000 mile, 3 hour deficit I've become keenly interested in the most effective ways to communicate, influence and collaborate with people. So I've studied presentation techniques, learned how to create short videos that capture an audience and get a point across in very little time, and used (and helped build) some great tools for distance collaboration.

So this blog will be about those work related topics that are of interest to me and hopefully of use to you.

You'll also find me on Twitter, Linkedin, and Cisco Community Central.

And now on with the blog...