Shortly after reaching my connecting airport from St. Augustine, I stared at Gate E7. Knowing this would be the longest flight of my life. Atlanta to Amsterdam: 8 hours in the air, “what’s Dutch for ‘I hate flying,” I wondered. Then, I crossed a whole ocean (uneventfully sleeping for most of it) and landed at AMS, ready to experience Amsterdam and a brand-new version of Cisco Live with Forward Networks.
And if the fact that I’m writing a blog about it hasn’t already tipped you off, it was quite a week: surprising, exhausting, and it got a little weird. But since I’m an engineer and I like things organized, I boiled down my experiences down to five. Here we go!
1. But really, where are the trash cans?
All right, it was REALLY difficult to find trash cans. Not only on the World of Solutions expo floor but also anywhere in Amsterdam.
I can respect and understand in this day and age why a city like Amsterdam may not want trash cans just sprawled around the city. What is difficult for me to understand is how little to no trash is strewn across the streets. People respect the city and, in turn, do not treat it like their own garbage cans. You take this to insert big named city here, mainly in the United States and trash is literally everywhere.
That said, Amsterdam is big on sustainability, with no plastic anywhere for the eye to see. Everything is either in PET containers or glass. On the show floor, they did have plastic-style cups for coffee, but they wanted them deposited in a specific bin or left in a specific area so they could be reused. Here is a short but interesting read as to the impact this will have on Amsterdam and the environment,
As an American, this is a welcomed thing to see. Sustainability is often a second thought, and this is commendable and they are looking out for the future, and for this, I applaud them!
2. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s demo time!
A friend recently told me, “Every time I open LinkedIn, I see your ugly mug,” referring to my regular cadence of Demo Tuesday livestreams. And just when I think people have seen me demonstrate Forward Enterprise enough, I was asked to give a demo every 15 minutes (!) in the Forward Networks demo theater during Cisco Live. It’s a good thing that a friend of mine wasn’t there; he’d have probably heckled me.
This might not seem like a huge deal to other people, but it wasn’t that long ago that I was the quiet one sitting in the back of the room, silently listening to other people giving presentations. Now, my passion for technology is coming through loud and clear! The coolest thing about my role and why it is perfect for me at this stage (no pun intended) is that I’ve touched so many networks and network problems; I can empathize with my audience; they can trust me when I explain how many problems Forward can solve for them. My journey from Enterprise to Sales to Consulting and now to Technical Marketing gives me a unique position to share experience and point to where a network digital twin would have saved me from losing most of my hair!
3. AI, the new hotness.
[Warning] bold statement: Forward Networks has the valley’s most down-to-earth AND insanely smart co-founders. You are not an employee number or a cog in the machine to them. You are known by your name, and they take the time to know you. This is a new experience from where I have been in my career. I am not saying that everywhere, I was just a number or a cog in the wheel, but the level of interaction that you have with the four co-founders at Forward Networks is awesome.
“But Mike, I thought you said this was about AI?” you ask. Well, it connects to them being insanely smart. They see where the industry is going and have recently implemented a groundbreaking new feature called AI Assist.
We announced it right before Cisco Live Europe and utilized the timing of the conference as its big debut. AI Assist lets you use natural language to have AI write your NQE queries without you having to know how to write the NQE query. This is an absolute game changer to how organizations can start to extract data out of their networks by just using natural language.
Another feature that came along with AI Assist is called Summary Assist. The best way I can describe Summary Assist is, have you ever looked at someone’s code and thought, “What are they trying to do with this?” or you tried to look at any comments in the code, and there are none, and you spend hours trying to decode their code? Summary Assist will analyze NQE queries and give you what the NQE query is doing in natural language. Again, it is a complete game changer when extending someone’s code and using Summary Assist to decode someone’s code so that you can add to it.
Curious about what NQE is, check out this video I made: What is NQE?. Want to see more about AI Assist? Checkout these videos I also made: AI Assist | Feature Announcement or Demo Tuesday: AI Assist
4. Help, I’ve been trolled
Tuesday night was the World of Solutions (WoS) welcome reception. If you have never been to a Cisco Live before, this is where the attendees go into the WoS and get to crack a Heineken, scarf some free food, visit the booths, and maybe hear a pitch. We had a good clip of people walking by, but Charlie Elliott (our creative marketing person) wanted to get MORE people to stop by. After finishing my first demo, she crept up to me and oddly asked me to “look sad.” To date, and it’s been just about a year, I generally don’t question anything she has asked me to do (perhaps I should start after this).
While standing in our demo theater and trying to look sad, I watch her grab a mini whiteboard and start writing. She then stood atop a stool and held up her sign, and people started instantly laughing and walking over. So I went into demo mode, giving my presentation while she held up the sign, and Steve Multer walked by and exclaimed, “In all my years, I’ve never seen someone try that!” Here is where the trolled part comes in. She turned around to show me, and this is what the sign said…
I am of the mantra of whatever works I am game to do. I think she knows this all too well.
5. Hardware Geek Out
Closing out my list made me geek out so badly that it left my teammates who witnessed it completely baffled. If you don’t know who Peter Jones is, he is a Distinguished Engineer for Cisco Networking Hardware, Chairman of the Ethernet Alliance, and most importantly (and for this part of the story) was a key member of the development of the UADP ASIC for the Nexus 9K. He swung by the Forward Networks booth to say hello to those of us he had met in years prior. Then he proceeded to pull two ASICs from his backpack and regaled a small group of us with their backstory. This was the point at which I lost composure. Peter finished his story and left the ASICs on the table.
Worried he forgot them, I handed them to him, and he said, “No, those are yours now.” You would have thought he gave me the keys to a new car. The amount I geeked-out/nerded-out/freaked-out was unreal! Thank you, Peter, you made this old geek excited again!
All in all, Cisco Live Europe was a GREAT event! I am looking forward to seeing everyone again for Cisco Live Las Vegas in June (and back to Amsterdam in 2025!) Special thanks to co-founders Nikhil Handigol, Peyman Kazemian, Chiara Regale, Natale Ruello, Fabrizio Maccioni, Elyor Khakimov, Steve Allie, Stewart Steven, Iain Thompson, Dawn Slusher and Charlie Elliott