You are here: Home / Blog / Rant / Rant:Cisco Networkers Virtual – its bad, very bad.

Rant:Cisco Networkers Virtual – Its Bad, Very Bad.

15th September 2009 by 10 Comments

So I went to Networkers 2009 in Barcelona and had my usual love/hate time with the whole convention thing. I caught up with some bloggers and met a few new people, learned a bit of stuff, saw some new stuff etc etc.

But for me, the most valuable part of Networkers, the thing that really stays with me after its all over is the presentations from all the sessions.

Presos

I make a point of reading most of the presentations. Even the ones I don’t care much about such as telepresence or IP Telephony. That way, I have some insight in the technologies and a view on how to ‘get started’ if I need to work on those technologies.

In you goody bag, Cisco gives you a CD/DVD with the presentations that were submitted before the conference. Since some of the presenters change at the last minute, this disk is not completely up to date.

Networkers Virtual then

Enter the marketing department who have ‘invented’ Networkers Virtual’ where you can go to download the presentations.

Sounds easy right ?

Get a freaking load of this screenshot of the interface:

Get a load of this view of the home page. WTF? (Click for full size)

What is this all a-freaking-bout ? You aren’t getting the real horror here since those little people at the bottom are constantly moving around, and different pieces of the interface keep flicking over and changing.

It’s truly awful.

So lets head into the On Demand Hall

Yep, the ON DEMAND HALL. That’s EXACTLY where I would go to look for session data. I mean, that is so obvious isn’t it ?

Cisco Networkers Virtual - Try and find the downloads in this mess. (Click for full size)

And the download page:

At last, the Download Page ? Uh Oh, where the Download Button ? (Click for full size)

That’s right, you have to CLICK to add it to a BRIEFCASE, then you can go to your briefcase to to download it !! And your Briefcase is now called an “event bag”.

Obvious. Very freaking obvious. If the screen worked:

The briefcase / event bag (!!) thingie obscured by leftover stuff. Oh, brilliant. How clever are the marketing people.

Of course you can’t just “download files”, Oh No, you have to “Download the Event Bag”. hahahahhahahaha, oh stop me, oh please, go on, insult my intelligence some more.

Virtual Presence – my arse

This isn’t virtual presence. This is barf up of all kinds of crap web technology dreamed up by some marketing freak hyped on cocaine and trying to spend as much money as possible with his buddies so he can work for them next. When the salesman said I could add in all these extra toys, they said “Yes please, can we have double helping of all of that!!”.

I tried to login before Networkers to use the tools, but…. yeah, what a mess. The only thing that was useful was the session scheduling. The rest was just time masturbation trying to work out if there was ANYTHING useful.

I mean, jeesh, I can see that a LOT of money has been pissed away on this but it’s not usable by anyone of intelligence.

Just make a website

Frankly, just make a web site. Make it simple and direct. Don’t try and suck up to an audience of smart people. This is just patronising and stupid.

Put the money into something useful like a really good bag, or a beach towel. The best thing I ever got from Networkers was a top quality beach towel.

Actually, no, it was the bag. A really good bag that I still use to for travelling five years later. Not that’s impressive.

PS: Networkers this year ?

Probably not. I think I’ll treat myself to a shiny MacBook Pro. It’s about the same price as the whole trip cost, and it will last longer.

Filed Under: Rant Tagged With: ,
About Greg Ferro

Greg Ferro is a Network Engineer/Architect, mostly focussed on Data Centre, Security Infrastructure, and recently Virtualization. He has over 20 years in IT, in wide range of employers working as a freelance consultant including Finance, Service Providers and Online Companies. He is CCIE#6920 and has a few ideas about the world, but not enough to really count.

He is a host on the Packet Pushers Podcast, blogger at EtherealMind.com and on Twitter @etherealmind and Google Plus

  • http://shivlu.blogspot.com shivlu jain

    I am planning to join this year but with experience shared by you chaged mind.

    • http://etherealmind.com Greg Ferro

      I am not reviewing NETWORKERS, just the web site attached to it. Although Networkers isthe same tired format, it overall worth it. Not great, but good knowledge, opportunities to learn something new.

      I’m just not a big fan of travel these days.

  • Disgusted

    The problem is that the morons in Cisco’s marketing department don’t care about you, me or anyone else but their boss (who is, after all, the individual giving them their bonus) … and the pointy-haired individual managing the low-level ***-kissers obviously has no clue about usability, customer experience or anything else related to real life usage of a web site (probably because he never had to use it himself), so he looks at a working well-designed web site and goes “that’s so outdated, where’s the web 2.0 stuff”, so you just give him the shit he wants to make him happy.

  • Tim

    I wanted to check it out as a prview to possible purchase. I felt the same as you so articulately described. Just a POS. I couldn’t easily find any of the presentations to download. To me, the value of this is as Virtual Toilet Paper.

    • http://etherealmind.com Greg Ferro

      Yes. I still have not managed to download a single file either . The site navigation is all wrong.

  • Ted Tang

    I could not agree with you more. I hate flash as a user interface. The whole site is bloated. Just create a page with all the sessions with a description, and a link to download the PDF.

    • http://etherealmind.com Greg Ferro

      I was insulted by how stupid it is. I mean, Internet savvy and smart people don’t hang out in some flash based platform

      it’s a FAIL

  • John G

    Aside from the Flash web interface (which I agree is horrible setup), how is the actual presentation content? I didn’t have the free time to go to Netwokers this year and was thinking about dropping the $400 to purchase access to the site for the content. I did this in back in 2006 and it was worth the coin back then – it included the live recorded sessions as well as the PPT/PDF presentations. Just wanted to know if I would be wasting my money this year.

    Thanks!
    John

    • http://etherealmind.com Greg Ferro

      To be really honest, no, I never managed to download the files. I truly could not find my way aournd the interface to download the files.

      The CD that I received in the goodie bag is an absolute treasure trove. It would be worth the $400 and I will consider doing this next year. But the website would need to be changed to be ABLE to download all the files.

      Lets face it, you don’t want to select each presentation one by one. You just want a button that says “download every presentation in PDF format” and you are done.

      All that other marketing crap, is just that, crap.

  • Rob

    I agree the site is terrible, I went to this years (2010) event in Barcelona however they now do not provide a CD (green drive I think) so you have no choice but to try and navigate to download the slide (you can get some through the scheduler builder mind).