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Cisco's Chambers Drones On At Analysts' Conference

I've seen John Chambers speak at a half-dozen or so industry events, including this week's C-Scape Global Forum (a fancy name for an analysts' conference) in San Jose, and I'd have to say that Tuesday's appearance was the first time I would call his performance "boring."

Don't get me wrong: Chambers was his usual loquacious self, in full command of a broad range of figures and presenting a compelling vision of where the IT business is going and why Cisco is going to lead. He also put Cisco's new telepresence technology to good use, staging a three-way conversation with MIT economist Erik Brynjolfsson, Procter & Gamble CIO Filippo Passerini, and Erik Huggers, head of "Future Media" at the BBC, each speaking from their respective home bases, that had a lot more substance than most such presentations.

But then Chambers got up again and spoke solo. And went on. And on. Maybe it was because I've seen him give essentially this same talk before, and had interviewed him in person only the day before, but I found his monologue overlong and repetitive, and many of the slides he showed vague and … repetitive.

The second phase of the Internet … Cisco's track record in spotting market transitions … collaboration and Web 2.0 technologies changing the way we work … moving from a box mentality to a total architecture across all these technologies … not one or two major projects a year but 20 ... and so on and so forth.

It's actually a fairly compelling argument, but I got the feeling Chambers was filling airtime. And I was not alone: a couple of the analysts I spoke to thought he could have moved aside a half-hour earlier to make way for Charlie Giancarlo, who provided more specifics, and a panel of senior-VP level Cisco executives, which ended with many in the audience (including this reporter) still trying to ask questions. (Not everyone came away with the same impression: this guy says Chambers should run for president in 2012.)

"I felt bad for him," said one analyst, referring to Chambers' droning performance. When's the last time you heard anyone say they felt sorry for John Chambers?

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