View From The Seats: Inside Cisco Partner Summit 2012

Cisco last week took over a large chunk of San Diego for its 2012 Cisco Partner Summit, where many of its top executives rubbed elbows with some 4,500 partners from more than 90 countries around the globe. They packed in lots of news, tons of face time with Cisco solution providers and a bit of fun, too. Here’s a look at what went on.

(Photo credit: Bay Area Event Photography)

Cisco hit the Olympics theme pretty hard throughout the week since it is sponsoring the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, starting with an Olympic-style opening ceremony for the general session of the conference on Tuesday that featured partners from various regions carrying their countries' flags.

(Photo credit: Bay Area Event Photography)

Keith Goodwin, senior vice president of the worldwide partner organization at Cisco, welcomes solution providers to San Diego. The entrance represented a bit of deja vu for Goodwin, who hosted his first Partner Summit in the same city six years prior.

(Photo credit: Bay Area Event Photography)

Cisco Chairman and CEO John Chambers (right) put the spotlight on several Cisco technologies during a brief technology demonstration on the main stage, including Cisco’s Jabber unified communications client, virtual desktop via its Virtualization Experience Infrastructure and VCE's Vblock, which includes Ciscos UCS (Unified Computing System) blades and switches.

(Photo credit: Bay Area Event Photography)

C2C, an award-winning turntable team featuring four DJs, got things moving Wednesday before Cisco executives took the stage for the day's keynote sessions.

(Photo credit: Bay Area Event Photography)

Korean singer Choi Sung-Bong serenaded the audience with several tunes, including a rousing rendition of "My Way." Choi's rags-to-riches story gained him international fame after the orphan appeared on reality TV show "Korea's Got Talent" and became a YouTube sensation.

(Photo credit: Bay Area Event Photography)

In efforts to give back to the city of San Diego for hosting the event, Cisco donated an undisclosed amount of money to the local chapter of FIRST Robotics Competition, an organization that seeks to inspire kids to be science and technology leaders. Several members of a local team demonstrated their robot on stage, which could collect and shoot small basketballs.

(Photo credit: Bay Area Event Photography)

Cisco Wednesday hosted a party on the U.S.S. Midway aircraft carrier museum for its Americas channel partners, who got a close-up look at some of the aircraft on board as well as a chance to test their stomachs against flight simulators.

CRN’s Chad Berndtson and Gary Berzack, CTO and COO of eTribeca, pose in front of a plane on the U.S.S. Midway.

For more pictures of the party, visit the CRN Facebook page.

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