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.