Cisco Canada - Pan Am Games Update

Today is the official opening of the 2015 Pan Am Games here in Toronto, and it's totally taken over the city. Cisco is a major partner, driving most of the technology both behind and in front of the scenes. It's a great opportunity to showcase their collaboration, networking, wireless and data security capabilities, much like the games are a huge global showcase for the city.

Yesterday, I was part of the local media and analyst contingent invited to Cisco Canada's new HQ. The main focus was to update us on all the cool things they're doing around the games, but also to invite us back to their almost-ready new offices. Back in February, I was part of the hardhat tour that showed us their vision for intelligent buildings, and now we're seeeing the near-finished product.

Cisco excels at large-scale challenges, and this is as big as it gets in Canada. Much of what we saw and heard will be baked into the 2016 Olympics in Rio, and that was another reason why yesterday's event was populated mostly by visiting media from Latin America. It was a lively group, and thankfully, they had a translator to follow Cisco's messaging.

Plenty of buzz all over town, and everyone loves to follow the torch relay leading up to tonight's opening ceremonies. They had a couple of torches on display yesterday for photo opps, but the main event was about how Cisco is keeping all that data flowing faster than any of us can possibly run. I'm sure they'll hold up their end of the bargain, but we're not quite at the point where it can solve all the traffic congestion. That's another topic, and for now, let's stay in a good mood and enjoy the games!

And - don't forget to tweet - #TO2015 for the games, and #CiscoTO2015 for their feed. Overall, here's a cool social media tracker from Cisco Canada for all the tweets - have fun.

 Cisco Canada President, Bernadette Wightman
Cisco Canada CTO, Jeff Seifert giving us a real-time check-in of the Velodrome located in Milton, about an hour outside Toronto
 Cisco Innovation Center demo
 What the space looked like back in February

 Lucky me - I happened to see the torch bearer passing through my neighborhood earlier this week
Ok, so look closely - yes, that's a big spider outside the window. We're 29 stories up - how did it get there, and how is it surviving? Maybe a new Olympic event?