I just arrived at Cisco's Networkers user/partner conference. The San Jose company is expecting 10,000 attendees, making this event the largest single networking vendor conference... and second only to Interop which gathered 20,000 last May in Las Vegas. But times are changing. And after 17 years of loyal service, this is going to be the last for Networkers... at least as everyone in the Cisco economy knew the event.

"Cisco Live is going to be the new brand, and Networkers the sub-brand for the technical training. And this is kind of an interim year, because so many people know Networkers and we couldn't just change the name", explained Christina Olmsted of Cisco PR.

Still technical, but a lot more business focus

And not unlike Intel in the early 2000 with its Intel Developer Forum (IDF), Cisco wants "Cisco Live!" to be more of an "industry" event. And at 80/90% market share in the enterprise switching/routing market, Cisco *is* really the industry!

"Before Networkers was meant for technical managers who wanted to get technical training. Eventually we see Cisco Live! as being an industry conference. So this is our first step into moving the content and the format for more business manager. For example, we've added our super sessions which our executives are leading as well as customer case sessions", added Olmsted.

To me, Cisco Live sounds very similar to eBay's eBay Live conference... and I wonder if it's not going to be a trend in the tech conferences circuit as user/partner conferences get larger: Intel Live, Java Live, Microsoft Live, Salesforce Live, etc.