My Trip To The Cisco House At The Olympic Park

I was lucky enough to receive an invite from Cisco to come down and visit the “Cisco House” which overlooks the Olympic park. (Cisco being the official network infrastructure support to the London 2012 Olympic Games), as you can imagine it was an offer I couldn’t really turn down! (even if it did mean using some holiday allowance so I could make the trip! (Below is a view from the balcony of the cisco house…)

The Cisco house showcases the latest technology and also a look at future technologies. They give you a wide variety of case studies to look at, along with various interactive sections. It’s not just cisco show casing their technology, this house showcases Cisco’s partners like Citrix, Intel, EMC etc..

Up-on arrival you first notice just how central the cisco house is to the Olympic park, (and how high up it is).

Below are a few pictures of the refreshments area, various TV screens and Cisco touchscreen IP phones are scattered all over.

You are then taken on a journey, which starts out by taking you in to Cisco’s very own “underground carriage”, where you put on your 3D glasses, and sit back and watch a presentation by none other than Steven Fry. (Albeit a Virtual Stephen Fry)

He then proceeds to talk about the various cisco case studies, how cisco and its partners are using the latest advancements in technology to go about putting to use technology to its full effect.

Data is also talked about, and the rapid increase in the sheer amount of data being processed, stored and used, as well as covering “the cloud”.

But where is all this data coming from!? All this data coming from “things” as Stephen fry put it, “things” relates to everything which is connected in some way or another to the web. Be it your laptop, phone, IP Camera etc.

You are then moved from the “tube carriage” through a small tunnel (showing the progression of cisco, and it’s major landmarks), before entering a 360 degree “room of the future”. (both of the below pictures are courtesy of cisco.com)

Here a few of the main partners talk about the future (cloud technology, 3D printing), and cover just what is and could be possible in the future and what is currently being worked on at the moment.

One of the most fascinating area’s was the “3D printing” and a case study in point where by a small child was under-going an operation on his wind pipe and they used a 3D Printer to “print” a valve required for the operation. Absolutely mind blowing when you think about it, which begs the question just how far and what can 3D printing do in the future? Imagine being able to 3D print a human heart?

Once the presentation is over, you are then invited to go round the various interactive features at the cisco house.

One of the interactive feature is to stand in front of a screen (using your body as the controller) and “virtually” try on different clothes and see how they look on you, which is quite a nice little feature and I believe they are using this in a couple of shops up and down the country. Everything is touch screen and/or uses your body’s movement as the controller. You can see in the below trying on a purple dress

There are so many case studies available and I’ve saved a few so I can have a read through at a later date, but overall a very impressive display from Cisco and one I’m glad I was part of.

Finally I’ll leave you with a couple of picture’s from outside, including a self portrait shot which is taken and then emailed to you… Unfortunately it gives you a second or two before actually taking the photo and as you’ll see I hadn’t quite worked out where the camera was…..