By Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher

It's an early start for me Wednesday morning, as I head off from San Francisco to virtually San Jose, for a webcast discussion at Cisco Systems on virtualization technology [it's the older meaning of virtualization, not the server kind.]

For 2,000 Cisco employees, their day will start much earlier than mine, they chose to be present at the first virtual opening of the 34- year old NASDAQ market. That means be in your seats by 6.30am, my webcast discussion doesn't begin until 9.30 am :-)

It should be a fun discussion here is the lineup:

Participants:
• John Chambers, President & CEO, Cisco Systems, Inc.
• Bob Greifeld, President & CEO, NASDAQ
• Stratton Sclavos, CEO, VeriSign
• Giovanni Colella, CEO, RelayHealth
• Wendy Kopp, Founder, Teach for America
• Moderator: Jim Goldman, Silicon Valley Bureau Chief, CNBC

Active Media Participants:

• Quentin Hardy - Silicon Valley Bureau Chief, Forbes

• Tom Foremski - Silicon Valley Watcher (formerly a reporter at Financial Times who left to create a Technology Blog, Siliconvalleywatcher.com)

• Paul Kapustska – Editor, CMP (Information Week, Networking Magazine)

• Carrie Kirby – Reporter, San Francisco Chronicle

• Mark Boslet – Reporter – Dow Jones

• Helene Laube – Reporter, Financial Times Deutschland

• Aye Furato – Reporter, Nikkei

I'm flattered to be a part of a such an august gathering. I guess things have progressed quite far for "blogger journalists" if SiliconValleyWatcher is considered part of the local media establishment in Silicon Valley.

Usually, I'm invited to such events to offer a disruptive perspective and spice things up a little. Some see me as a representative of a disruptive technology in the living flesh(!). In this case, the disruptive technology is the blogging publishing platform. It's just one part of a panoply of disruptive media technologies.

And I'd rather be on the disruptive end of things than the receiving end :-)

Except that the disrupted media still have a business model, crumbling though it might be, while online media business models are still in development :-(

Happy 20th Anniversary

The NASDAQ opening is part of Cisco's 20th anniversary celebrations. If only I had invested a couple of $K in Cisco stock when I arrived here 20 years ago. . . Instead, I filed numerous press releases from Cisco (snail mail then) in the circular folder.

What can I say? Routers were very boring subjects to write about in 1985 and remained so for about another decade (or two).

Almost real

For the NASDAQ opening, Cisco has gone to great lengths to recreate the huge video wall of monitors that form the backdrop of the opening bell in New York. Cisco has tiled together 32 monitor screens, not quite the 96 NASDAQ has, but the effect should be virtually the same.

From Cisco:

Using a high-speed, dual-path and highly-secure private IP network, data is routed from NASDAQ's New York MarketSite to Cisco's Silicon Valley virtual MarketSite...

My suggestion would have been to "blue screen" the NASDAQ video wall and have a techie in New York press the "on" switch when John Chambers hits the opening bell/button at this end. That's virtualization and it would save a buck or two.

Cisco Innovation Study



Cisco is releasing parts of its Innovation 2005 Study.

Cisco, because of its size, is responsible for a huge amount of innovation in Silicon Valley. That's because there are more than a thousand startups that would love to be bought by Cisco, and VCs are funding that innovation.

But that might be changing. With all the consolidation among the big tech companies, there is less competition for buying those startups, and valuations are kept fairly reasonable.

And reasonable valuations don't encourage VC investments in the next crop of startups, which means less innovation. Or is my math wrong?

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Here are the online details:

Webcast: Those interested in attending this industry discussion via Webcast can register at: http://www.corporate-ir.net/ireye/ir_site.zhtml?ticker=28103&script=1010&item_id=1112472



Podcast: 24 hours after the event and can be accessed at: http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2005/hd_080505.html

Virtual Open:

http://www.corporate-ir.net/ireye/ir_site.zhtml?ticker=28103&script=1010&item_id=1111658

Virtual Close:

http://www.corporate-ir.net/ireye/ir_site.zhtml?ticker=28103&script=1010&item_id=1113135

Q&A with John Chambers on virtualization.

http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2005/hd_081005.html