In 2005 Accenture ranked Leadbeater as one of the top management thinkers in the world and his credits include advising former U.K. premier Tony Blair, writing books such as Living on Thin Air, providing consultancy to Vodafone, Microsoft and others and helping devise Bridget Jones’s diary.    

At Networkers he encouraged delegates to think outside the box about thinking outside the box.  

“We’ve been told that creativity comes from special people in special places—labs, science parks and so on—and if you want more creativity, you take more special people and put them into more special places,” he said. “I think that’s wrong. Most innovation is not about being creative.” 

What really drives innovation, Leadbeater believes, is seven Cs: crisis, curiosity, combination, conversation, co-evolution, challenge and commitment.  

As this year’s Networkers draws to a close, it is fair to say that at least six of those seven Cs have been here in abundance. Let’s hope there are no crises on the way to the airport.

And if you want to know what it takes to make a greener datacenter there is now a series of five videos on Cisco’s U.K. Web pages that have been shot specifically for Cisco Networkers 2008.  

The videos feature contributions from BT, Capgemini, the small-to-medium business (SMB) hosting company Ultraspeed and Professor Enrique Dans of the Instituto de Empresa business school. They cover: 

1. The case for switching to greener datacenter architectures this year.
2. How you can improve the environmental performance of your existing datacenter.
3. How to optimize the environmental performance of new datacenters.
4. How SMBs can maintain environmental standards in data storage.
5. The role of virtualization in improving the environmental performance of datacenters.

So just in case your memories of Tuesday are already somewhat hazy, here is a quick summary of some of the main points…. 

·         Chris Dedicoat, Cisco president of European Markets, expanded on his keynote speech in a press conference in the company of Fernando Gil de Bernabe, managing director of strategy for the Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group. “I believe Europe is at a crossroads,” he said. 

·         Yachtswoman Dame Ellen MacArthur shared her experiences of sailing solo around the world in the Vendée Globe race (aged 25), breaking the record for a non-stop circumnavigation of the globe and setting the current fastest time for a single-handed monohull east-west passage. 

·         Cisco unveiled the Cisco ACE 4710 Appliance, a powerful application delivery and optimization system for data centers which is aimed at small and medium enterprise deployments, supporting up to 2 Gbps of application traffic and 50 virtual devices per appliance.  

·         Cisco also launched WAAS Mobile, which extends the capabilities of the award-winning Cisco WAAS product family by providing application acceleration of any TCP-based application operating in a WAN environment to mobile and remote workers.  

·         Another extension to the Application Network Services portfolio was the announcement of a new Cisco Data Center Assurance Program for Applications, which tests and validates industry-leading enterprise software applications over Cisco application delivery networks.  

And all that is just the tip of the iceberg. But no time for more reminiscences right now; let’s reach for the black coffee and soldier on with day two.

·         Best data center project of the year: AXA Technology Services, for the AXA data center transformation global scale project.·         Best managed service of the year: DVZ Datenverarbeitungszentrum Mecklenburg-Vorpommern GmbH for its DVZ IP telephony service.

·         Best mobility and wireless project of the year: Santa Monica SpA for its Misano Moto GrP ‘Circuit of the Future—Now’ scheme.·         Best service provider IP next-generation infrastructure of the year: Orange Slovensko AS for its Orange fiber to the home project.

·         Best Unified Communications project of the year: Reti SpA for its use of Cisco Unified Communications in building automation. ·         Most society-impacting network of the year: the Croatian Academic and Research Network (CARNet) for its e-Islands Connected Schools initiative.  Many congratulations to all the winners.

Well, almost; in fact he stepped into a mock-up of a hotel room on the stage, as part of a demo showing how Cisco technologies are changing the world around us.  

Screens flickered to life around him as the room came alive with a host of personalized features, from targeted advertising to a TV channel selection exported directly from the set-top box at home. 

While the demo was lot of fun, Dedicoat’s message to this European audience was serious. Europe has to wake up now, he said, to the need for this kind of innovation if it is to overcome the productivity gap that separates it from other markets such as the United States.  

He went on to talk about Cisco itself is fostering innovation, with 4200 patents, 22,000 engineers and 125 acquisitions to its credit. Perhaps more importantly, he said, Cisco has a track record in turning good ideas into commercial successes, a critical ingredient in successful innovation.  

Meanwhile, those wanting to foster innovation themselves at Networkers this year should not find it difficult.  

A total of 5300 delegates are attending (over 600 had to be turned away) and there are 165 tutorials and 80 registered Cisco experts, along with the first-ever demonstration of TelePresence at a Networkers event. Definitely something worth leaving the hotel for.  

In line with growing corporate awareness of the need for sustainability, the environment is high on the agenda in almost every facet of the event.  For a start, the location itself was chosen in part for its green credentials. Barcelona is committed to sustainable development through a plan called Agenda 21, and the event venue has a range of environmentally friendly features, from natural cooling to recycled building materials. 

There are also efforts to minimize the environmental impact of Networkers 2008 with easily located recycling bins, minimal use of disposable materials for sessions and catering, services provided by environmentally-friendly suppliers and reusable materials in stand construction. Much of the merchandise for the event is also environmentally friendly and paper use has been reduced where possible, for example by providing online tools for registration and scheduling.

All delegates are being asked to do their bit, for example by traveling on foot or by public transport. 

Last but not least, Cisco is promoting sustainable IT through a green stand in the World of Solutions area, a green IT white paper and a series of videos that have been shot specifically for the event. We will be posting these imminently; check back to this blog for more details.