It sounds fancier than it was. Gus, Dave, Kai, and I went up to Cisco Systems Executive Briefing Center outside of Boston. We were getting the overview of their IPCC product from all the product managers and engineers working on the system. First off I will say I think the trip was worth it. I think there were some issues still unresolved by some of our team, that I think Cisco was able to handle.
We got up to Boston by noonish. Our account manager and his boss picked Gus and I up from the train and we drove the 40 minutes to the site. it is a nice new campus. We ate lunch, which was surprisingly good. Normally this sort of stuff is not what I consider good food. They had nice chicken dish with stuffing and potatoes. I was stuffed for hours after that. We meet a VP of sales or something who came down to make sure we were getting treated right. I am not sure what Gus said to whoever at Cisco but around August they started treating us really nice. Far better than I would expect from a company our size. Granted we do some advanced stuff for a company our size, but it is weird when the #3 guy or so at Cisco stops by your office for a meeting. I will say that Cisco is very responsive to questions or problems. Some of my / Gus’ comments have reached high levels. it showed with the presentation.
We got a really good overview of their IPCC product. I think Dave was pleased with what he saw. I was. I also got to see some nice warez from them. We checked out the color VOIP phone. Gus and I also test drove the video conference functionality of Call Manager 4.1. I even got to see the long rumored VOIP WiFi cordless phone. It was so cool. I want one for my house, but a practical deployment of it would be for the supervisors in the call center when we have 2 floors to cover. Check out the MOB for some of the really cool tech we saw. No pictures of the video conference system we used. Just trust me that it was way cool.
We had a long fact filled day. Then we rushed off to catch a late train. We made it to the station with 15 minutes to spare. I decided to upgrade to First Class. I figured I wanted good service one time, and I would pay for it out of my own pocket. I am on the train now. The seats are bigger. There are less people in the First Class car. I also got dinner and free drinks. The food is MUCH better than Biz class. I had a steak with potato’s, with chrem brule. I cannot spell it. I was not a fan of the desert anyway. I am sitting at a conference table for 4 by myself. It is roomy. I was hoping to take a nap, but I haven’t written a detailed blog entry for a while so I decided to take the time now. So was the upgrade worth the money? Probably not, but it is nice to get waited on and just relax sometimes. Amtrak for the money has the best upgrades. And that is saying allot since the Biz class on the Acela Express is nice as it is. Right now this is my favorite form of travel.