Cisco Live 2015 – Time to get ready!

It is just about time to get ready for Cisco Live US this year and, harking back to 2012, we are again in San Diego, CA for the June 7-11th event. I just wanted to take a few moments and share some information that I have put together. Oh, if you have not registered yet – you can click here to register. The price to register through 2/9/15 is $1995, after 2/9 the price will increase to $2195 (2/10-4/3), and then $2395 (4/4-6/5> and finally on-site is $2595. Register now to save some money!

Technology Tracks

The technology tracks for the event this year are:

Certification (from CCNA to CCIE/CCDE and Architect)
Cloud
Collaboration
Data Center
Mobility
Network Infrastructure and Systems
Security
Service Provider
Software Defined Networking (SDN) – The session are organized in the following paths:
- SDN Overview
- Network Programming
- Deployment and Virtualization
- Architecture and Use Cases

Within each of these tracks there are classes tailored to everybody’s level of experience and learning. You can easily identify the level by looking at the first number of the session-id in the scheduler. Introductory session are indicated by a 1xxx numbering while intermediate are designated by a 2xxx numbering. The 3xxx are advanced sessions and usually turn the nerd-knob up to 11!

Hotels

Similarly to last year, I have put together a map of all the hotels around the Cisco Live conference center. The one thing that I have done different this year is add layers to the map based on the hotel per-night price. The hotel prices this year swing widely and I know many people have limited budgets as to what they can afford. Instead of just listing their location, I have also listed them in price ranges $150–200, $200–250, $250–300, and $300+. You should be able to select or deselect a layer so that you know where the hotel is that you are looking for. A full list of all the official Cisco Live 2015 hotels can be found HERE.

The schedule for Shuttle buses has not been posted as of today. I will update this post when that information becomes available in Spring 2015 (as per Cisco).

Getting There

The airport code for the San Diego International Airport is SAN. Interesting fact about the San Diego Airport, as per Wikipedia, is that is is the busiest single-runway commercial airport in the US, and the second busiest single-use runway in the world after London Gatwick (Wikipedia). The top five airlines served by SAN are Southwest, United, Delta, Alaska, and American.
Doing some quick research and comparing uber fares to Taxi fares, you can expect to pay around $20 for a Taxi Ride or uberPlus ride (fares checked January 2015), or about $35 for an uberBlack fare. There are other shuttle options (I have used SuperShuttle in the past and that looks to be about $20 round-trip) for transportation, but seems that most people now use uber versus the shared bus service.

2012 Memories

Cisco Live 2012 was also held in San Diego, CA and the Customer Appreciation Event (CAE) was held at Petco Park as well. In 2012 we had around 17,00 attendees at the event, I am curious to see what the attendance is like this year after San Francisco had over 25,000 people in attendance. I am thinking it may be less than San Francisco since we are not in Cisco’s backyard this year.
Below is a quick montage of the 2012 Cisco Live that was also held in San Diego, CA.