Cisco: Lick It Up
by John Paczkowski
Posted on July 31, 2007 at 12:01 AM PT
KISS finally took the stage with many lights, flames, pyrotechnics and, yes, blood oozing from Gene Simmons’s mouth. Many partyers had their faces painted to look like different members of the band. And these are the people who design and operate the biggest, most sophisticated and mission-critical networks in the world. A company’s lifeblood is entrusted to someone decked out and painted up to look like KISS drummer Peter Criss. As one customer from Minnesota remarked to me while we were both waiting for an opportunity to use the portable facilities, ‘It’s hard to believe that some of the smartest people in the world are here.’”
–Network World Managing Editor Jim Duffy on the conclusion of Networkers at Cisco Live 2007
Cisco CEO John Chambers may be a silver-tongued orator, but he’s no Gene Simmons. Following Kiss’s “headlining” appearance at last week’s Networkers at Cisco Live extravaganza in Anaheim, Calif., the band’s freakishly long-tongued frontman joined bandmate Paul Stanley to offer his thoughts on “the connected life” in a Cisco video blog.
I’m not sure which is more astonishing–Simmons heralding in the video below the advent of “the connected life” and Stanley complaining that today’s handheld screens are too small and difficult to read, or the fact that Cisco hired a fire-breathing, blood-spitting, ’70s glam rock band to close out a company event.
