Sekna Khanafer | Country Marketing Manager, East Region Middle East
March 11-12, 2019
With over 2,400 attendees, Cisco Connect 2019 was a successful 2 day event which delivered passionate keynotes, breakout sessions and hosted a buzzing customer hub area.
We educated, motivated and entertained our customers and partners. The keynote sessions had a captive audience and delivered messages that truly resonated with our customers and partners. We had the chance to hear from:
In the Customer Hub area, attendees had the chance to interact with 26 partners as well as our very own Cisco experts. Cisco’s area focused on the Secure Intelligent Platform for Digital Business and hosed our five key pillars. We also had a DevNet area for customers and partners to get hands on experience and it was very well received.
As part of our partnership with Expo 2020 Dubai, we ran demos around the Office of the Future concept which demonstrated 3 key elements: concentrate, collaborate and co-create.
Cisco Connect was also used as a platform to spread awareness about our customer advocacy program - The Gateway – an exclusive community to help our customers grow their personal brand, position themselves as an industry thought leader and showcase their success.
With 30 breakout sessions over two days, our attendees absolutely loved learning from our experts. On day 1, 985 attended breakout sessions; while 597 attended sessions on day 2.
Most of the event was live streamed on our Cisco Middle East Facebook channel, which means we expanded our reach to thousands of people who could not attend the event in person. Cisco Connect 2019 also introduced gamification elements to encourage attendees to interact with sponsors and Cisco experts.
Upon arrival, attendees were given a special Connect RFID tag which allowed them to earn points with every interaction. Points were redeemed to play fun carnival games such as basketball hoops, magnetic darts, ring toss or hook a duck.
Winners collected fun giveaways at the prize shack. This kept the atmosphere educational, yet fun and casual at the same time.
On the sidelines of Cisco Connect, industry experts from Expo 2020 Dubai, Etisalat, Du and DP World discussed how innovation and cybersecurity go hand in hand at Cisco’s ‘Where do we go from here’ industry panel.
Additionally, during Cisco Connect as part of its commitment to ensuring a safer Internet for all, Cisco has collaborated with noted tech columnist Tamara Clarke to launch children’s book – ‘The Super Surfer’. The book follows the journey of a 5-year old boy named Wally, with a love for surfing, both at the beach and online.
Cisco Connect 2019 Dubai took months of planning and it was a true Cisco team effort to give our customers and partners such an amazing experience. A big thank you to Emma, Tasos, Rabih, Rafi and Shadi for the pivotal role each of you played.
And a special thank you to the extended Channel, SE and Marketing teams for making it Cisco Connect 2019 unforgettable!
#CiscoConnectDubai
Emma Weston | Engagement Manager, Middle East
At Cisco Connect Dubai 2019 we wanted to enhance the overall event experience to deliver relevant content to the relevant customer pre-event, during and post-event with a more personalized communication strategy.
Tijana Marjanovic | Marketing Manager, Adriatic/Balkan Katarina Zlopasa | Marketing Intern, Adriatic/Balkan
March and April are very busy in Adriatic and Balkan region, with Cisco Connect annual events that are recognized as top conferences in countries. Our objectives, when we plan them, are:
Not only that we have new products, workshops, demos and case studies on implementation Cisco solutions, but we innovate with additional content and experience of our attendees. This year, we started with social media promotion of event, using videos from presenters to announce lectures. This approach generated more interest, where one best performing post reached 114K on Facebook with 128 engagements.
On the top of presentations and case studies in the agenda, we added workshops and labs sessions, included learning partners and partners. Partners and Cisco experts demonstrated latest Cisco solutions, customers appreciated possibility to see how it works, deep dive into topics and to ask questions.
External keynote speakers were fantastic addition and their topics corelated with our story, talking about importance of change, innovation, co-creation and partnerships.
We had pleasure to host communication professionals, leadership coaches and business consultants, TEDx speakers: Philippa Waller with “Game-Changers…Changing your game when it comes to powerful partnerships”, Dr Nikolaos Dimitriadis “Calibrate your brain for Innovative Thinking” and former swimming Olympic champion Gordan Kozulj “What does it take to become sports’ nation and how Croatia got there?’’
Philippa Waller delivered additional workshop by invite, as part of our Women of Impact session, during Cisco Connect.
Morning sport and health consultation during event, useful exercises for long office hours explained and riding ecological bicycles to print photos (Epson) added health and sustainability topic into conversation.
We promoted Gateway program on our events, attracting new Cisco advocates and discussing potential case studies they are willing to create.
Survey conducted during events proved that most interesting technologies for our customers and partners are Security, SD-WAN and Data Center.
Business challenges they are facing are: automation, cybersecurity, digital transformation and workforce deficiency.
# attendees : 1,740 SQL value: $5,4 Mio Social media campaign reach: 1,8 Mio Overall conference rate: 4.8 (of 5) New Gateway advocates: 153
19th – 21 June 2019
Nombuso Mkhize | Africa Engagement Manager
Themed: SAY HELLO TO THE FUTURE. Imagine the future with intuitive IT.
IT that informs, connects, predicts and enables. This was a successful event as for the first time Cisco Connect was extended to the rest of Sub Saharan Africa and hosted by General Manager of SSA Mr. Clayton Naidoo. It was a proud moment for Cisco with the support of trusted business and technology sponsors including event sponsor Dimension Data, partners and customers who are at the core of Cisco’s business strategy.
Over the 2.5-day period over 1000 delegates enjoyed well over 50 break away sessions related to the priority tracks of our business:
As the expansion of Cisco is in Sub Saharan is a priority, this was demonstrated by the attendance of Cisco leadership from EMEAR and Global including Francine Katsoudas, Gerri Elliott, Osama Al-Zoubi, Ivan Duggan, TK Keanini and David Meads.
It was a successful and memorable event that profiled Cisco’s commitment to the future technology industry in Sub Saharan Africa.
Africa, the time is now! #CiscoConnectSSA
Olga Galashevskaya | Marketing Manager Russia & CIS
On March 26–27, 2019, Cisco Connect, the largest ICT forum in Russia and CIS, was held at the Expocentre in Moscow. The 19th Cisco Connect Conference was one of the largest events ever held by Cisco in Russia. Over two days, the conference was attended by more than 5,500 people from Russia and CIS countries who discussed the key trends in the digital transformation of the Russian economy and modern technological solutions and services that help companies extract maximum profit from their IT systems.
3,700 unique attendees, +39% Y/Y.
Around 1000 online participants via Cisco WebEX, +68% Y/Y
The motto of the event - “Together on the digital wave”
The program of the event included more than 120 reports, presentations and master classes, united in the framework of 10 streams. The Forum’s partners were 55 companies, and 20 media partners from Moscow and Saint-Petersburg. At Cisco World of Solutions all guests could get acquainted with the most advanced digitalization solutions in the world. Also, forum participants could go through workshops on various architectures posted on the dCloud portal.
A panel discussion with customers about the key trends of digitalization in Russia were held at keynote.
Keynote was attended by 2200 participants.
For the first time at Cisco Connect the round table “Women in IT” on the balance of personal life and career was held together with partner Softline. The speakers: Natalia Sindeeva, General Director of the TV channel “Rain. Optimistic Channel”, Natalia Mishina, Director for work with partners, Cisco, and Irina Krivenkova, Director for Services Management, Softline.
On March 26, a press conference was held devoted to such an important area of digital transformation as digitalization of education. During the press conference, agreements were signed in the field of digitalization of the Russian educational industry and the implementation of the Cisco Networking Academy program, with the participation of Andrey Kuzmich, Cisco Technical Director in Russia and the CIS; Lyubov Dukhanina, Chairman of the Russian Society "Knowledge" and Valery Falkov, the President of Tyumen State University.
Under these 3-year agreements, the parties will develop educational programs and implement various initiatives aimed at educational processes digitalization and qualified specialists training for a high-tech economy.
The event was attended by 42 journalists from Moscow and St. Petersburg from business, IT and news media which resulted in 250 publications. 5 press releases have been prepared and there were 6 interviews with Cisco representatives.
To add some fun, Cisco Connect attendees were invited to take part in a Quest. When surfing a digital wave, it is important to remember the undercurrents and vulnerabilities. Cisco engineers know everything about digital threats, so they created digital beacons — Cisco solutions that warn surfers and prevent them from entering the danger zone. Unfortunately, because of the storm, several lighthouses were carried by the current, so the Cisco team turns to the conference guests for help, who will have to find digital beacons and make the digital wave safe for surfing again! During 2 days in quest participated more 200 visitors.
Cisco Connect Russia 2019 agenda and materials can be found here
Pictures are published at Cisco Russia Facebook here
Marianna Raffaele | CM EMEAR Regional Events Gunay Oksar, Angelika Harrer, Petra Ahlert, Darya Yukimenka
Beginning of April, Cisco’s leadership in Industry 4.0 stood out once again at Hannover Messe 2019 – the world’s largest technology trade show – held in Germany. Thanks to our strong manufacturing narrative focused on how we can help our customers digitize their factory operations with a proven, robust and secure network, we reinforced our position as trusted partner for both our OT and IT customers.
Cisco shares our integrated solutions aiming to help manufacturers connect their operations on the factory floor, in a secure fashion, and – by adding the computing component – enables them to oversee their entire operations effectively and helps to reduce unnecessary costs, complexity and downtime.
A more detailed report on all the activities and results from the show is available on the Hannover Messe Employee Communities Site. And in case you weren’t able to join on-site, you can see some of the highlights from Hannover Messe in this video, as well as Partner and Customer engagement:
To explore more about Cisco at Hannover Messe 2019, see the following links and resources:
Moldova, April 10-12
Yulia Bogoslavets | Marketing Manager Ukraine & CIS
UCIS Partner Summit has become a traditional event for Partner top-level managers. The event took place on April 10-12 in Moldova and got together 137 attendees from 11 countries.
Partner Summit was a great possibility to network with Partner leaders and gain the valuable insights throughout the 2-day event.
The event combined inspiration, insights, product overviews and discussing to power Partners business with Cisco. At the summit 11 best Partners and 4 Disties were awarded by Cisco team. It was really inspiration part of the event.
Cisco South Africa was the event sponsor for the ITWeb Security Summit 2019 for the second year running. This event, now in its 14th year, brings together leading international and local industry experts, analysts and end-users to unpack the latest threats facing African CISOs, CIOs, security specialists and risk officers, demystify emerging cyber security strategies in AI, blockchain, IOT, DevSecOps and more, and explain how to increase an organisation's cyber resiliency.
The 2-day event held in Sandton Johannesburg from the 27 – 29 June had an attendance of over 650 delegates that specialize in Security. As the global leader in network security, Cisco have a comprehensive approach of integrating security into our intent based architecture from the network to the cloud to the endpoint. Thus, it was a well suited partnership with the largest technology publisher in South Africa.
Cisco had local and international security experts contribute to the tracks and key note addresses. Our speakers were;
Tijana Marjanovic | Marketing Manager, Adriatic/Balkan
Cooltsalon, a platform for ideas and creativity exchange in urban context, creating series of “1-week-only” exhibitions and magazine, approached Cisco team in Bulgaria, asking to use Cisco Webex collaboration technology for “Shared spaces” project in May 2019.
Working with local art galleries and co-working spaces around Europe, they wanted to give exposure to individual voices hidden behind the collective city life, building an epicentre of creativity, culture and intellectual debate.
On May 18th, 2019, Cooltzine organized one-day simultaneous exhibition, where several cities: Sofia, Belgrade and London, showcased the same works to different audiences. The works came from submissions to a collaboratively created zine (“Cooltzine”); each participating venue received the same exhibition assets for presentation and same zines for distribution, while contributors, hosts and attendees had the opportunity to tune into a live video meeting for discussion.
Cisco local teams from Bulgaria, Serbia and UK, provided Cisco Webex and video end points, to enable better experience for participants in three time zones.
Cisco Webex was used as a platform for communication and sharing, exploring concepts of participatory art (shared creativity) and inter-city networking (shared physical and digital space).
Supporting art projects, we show diversity of possibilities in usage of Cisco technology, bringing together people and inspiration.
