"We must always change, renew, rejuvenate ourselves; otherwise we harden."
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
In October 1996, I moved from a very comfortable and sunny Southern California bachelor lifestyle to cold and dreary San Jose to work with Cisco. In the nearly 12 years there, I have personally worked on remote access servers (the ISDN and 56k modem varieties, if you recall those, dear reader), router encryption modules, packet voice gateways of a practically infinite variety, IP telephony for the enterprise, home gateways (routers), broadband over powerlines, grid computing, spam, data loss prevention, autonomic networking, intelligent power grid systems, and networked virtual environments (avatar mediated communication). I long ago lost track of how many products and technologies I helped create over those many years.
One consistent thread during all of those years was that we were Inventing and Creating. Sometimes they were completely new businesses or technologies, sometimes they were simple (albeit lucrative) adjacencies to existing businesses. There was an entire portion of the technology map that said 'here lie dragons' that we charged headfirst into to be first to market with each new innovation.
It is time to Invent and Create again, however this time outside of the comfortable embrace of a large corporate sovereign. Today is my last day at Cisco. I am both starting a new company (more on this soon) as well as working with two other startups on helping them with their technology strategy and go-to-market.
Cisco is an excellent company, the best I have ever worked for. John Chambers and his executive staff are some of the most brilliant people I have come into contact with, bar none. As is the case at good universities and working with top researchers from MIT, Stanford, and the Santa Fe Insitute, working at Cisco is an addiction for mental adrenaline junkies. You are always pushing yourself to do better, think faster, be smarter than the Mensa co-workers of yours. It will be a form of withdrawl to wean myself from the daily interactions with that group of such amazing people as well as the access that the 'Cisco' business card could grant me to some of the best 'outside' thinkers on the planet. I hope I am able to stay in touch with them.
Moving forward, look for more detailed updates on the new businesses and how I manage to balance work and actually being physically present for my wife and daughters.
All the best for your new 'projects'. Hope our path will cross again.
Posted by: Oliver | June 27, 2008 at 09:20 AM
I wish you the best
Posted by: francois | June 27, 2008 at 09:30 AM
Christian: Very exciting news! It was great to briefly work with you & the great team there at Cisco on last year's conference with my old company, BPCC. I know you will have great success in your new venture and look forward to hearing more as you move forward.
Best wishes,
Rick Sauter
Posted by: Rick Sauter | June 27, 2008 at 10:09 AM
Christian: I'm very interested to hear about the new company. Note to self: call broker, dump Cisco.
Posted by: Eric Tully | June 27, 2008 at 10:27 AM
Good luck, I really look forward to seeing what you are up to. I guess us corporate (and ex-corporate) metaverse evangelists will bump into one another.
Take care there, now you can drop that SL Cisco surname ;-)
Posted by: epredator | June 27, 2008 at 10:46 AM
A move is always exciting! Good luck and I can't wait to hear about your new project.
Posted by: Nate Randall | June 27, 2008 at 11:04 AM
Good luck Christian and I'm excited to see what you come up with when you come back up for air.
Posted by: Steve Ridder | June 27, 2008 at 12:12 PM
We are all going to miss you Christian and Cisco won't seem the same. Who will get me into trouble in foreign nations and introduce me to new restaurants and obscure historical references? Enjoy the next stage of your career!
Posted by: Greg Pelton | June 27, 2008 at 01:59 PM
I wish that I had changed my employment more often during my career. Even though it was at times a bit unnerving to leave the comfortable nest,it always ended up to my benefit. I'm sure it will be the same for you. We birds need to learn to soar, of course being #1 in your field always helps.
Posted by: Bob G | June 28, 2008 at 01:41 AM
C: It was great working with you this past year and half. Wishing you the best in your stage of your career.
Posted by: Guy Banana Schilling | June 30, 2008 at 12:49 AM
Christian, will totally miss working with you, in particular your vision and advises; thanks a lot for your help and support and trust.
buona fortuna for the challenges to come - a change is always good, and I'm sure you'll get enough adrenaline and stamina out of it!!
Posted by: Stefano Crosta | June 30, 2008 at 04:07 AM
Christian, best wishes with your new initiatives. I enjoyed being a part of Cisco's 'early days' in SL, which you spearheaded.
Posted by: JimmyJet | June 30, 2008 at 12:15 PM
Just catching up here after some travel :)
Very exciting news! I look forward to hearing about how this next adventure will play out.
H
Posted by: Henrik | June 30, 2008 at 01:06 PM
Finally back from Cisco live and YOU will be missed is all I can say...enjoyed our short time working together and looking forward to seeing your new ventures take flight!
Posted by: Dannette | June 30, 2008 at 04:34 PM
I'm glad that large firm is behind you : )
hhehe -- it will always remain in your resume, and now you are free to do your own thing!
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