CiscoLive Berlin 2017: Willkommen Zurück

Last year I wrote about my experiences at CiscoLive Berlin (or #CLEUR, as it is hashtagged on Twitter).

This year, as I'm sitting on the plane to meet up with patrick.hubbard, ding​, stevenwhunt​, and the rest of the gang, I thought I would take a few minutes before catching some fitful transatlantic naps and share some of the things I'm looking forward to seeing.

Sharing the PerfStack story

Without a doubt, the thing I'm MOST excited to share with the attendees is PerfStack and the way it allows network engineers to combine data from across the infrastructure and compare it with application insight. This isn't just your usual "MTTI / It's never the network" gag. This is about enabling every IT professional to become a true "full-stack" engineer, and even a data scientist, snapping together data from across the enterprise the way Master Builders snap together "interlocking plastic building pieces" in the Lego Movie.

Arduino

A close second to PerfStack is my excitement to see what the Arduino booth has in store this year. As I mentioned in my summary from 2016, this activity captured my imagination like nothing that I've seen at a convention in a long time. I'm hopeful they up their game, but even if they just do a repeat of last year's side-quest, I'll be happy to play along. It was the ultimate cross-vendor ice-breaker.

IoT

So much has happened in the world of IoT this year (which frequently finds its way onto the pages of Geek Speak), that I'm keen to see how Cisco, the speakers, and even the vendors on the floor are responding. To be certain, we can't keep doing the same old things. But HOW everyone is choosing to respond will be as interesting as anything else.

Clouds and Containers

Finally, the inexorable march continues from pure on-premises through the haze of hybrid IT, to the eventual nirvana of cloud-based everything. As much as this has been a "virtualization, server, and application" type story, network (and Cisco) have had their roles to play and will continue to drive the conversation. I haven't paid as much attention to this sector of the industry as I should, leaning heavily on the experience and insight of fellow Head Geeks kong.yang​ and sqlrockstar​, but it's time for me to start building my knowledge in this area.

That's what I'm looking forward to. Is there something YOU are particularly keen to hear about? Let me know in the comments and I'll try to do some of the legwork for you and report back next week!