Going to San Fran for Cisco Live, things to do
 

I'm going to be in San Fran for a week. I'll be busy every day. I won't have a rental car and I'll be, in the Financial District. The missus is going to go too, so what are some great things that we can see or places to eat that are walking distance. We'll be staying at the Club Quarters.

For you network folks, I'll be going to Cisco Live. I've been doing the network thing for 15 years and this is my first chance to go (someone has finally volunteered to pay for the trip, thanks work). I'm pretty stoked. As soon as Cisco and my company get their stuff straight, I'll be signing up for Mikester's presentation.

If you have time, go see Alcatraz.

Wife & I flew down there to pick up an '89 Targa. Other than collecting my first Porsche, Alcatraz was the highlight!

:)

I'm up in San Jose all week leaving first thing in the morning...

You can take the cable car to Fisherman's Wharf. You can also walk there. You can also walk to Coit Tower and the adjacent Filbert Street Steps. Also: Chinatown, North Beach, City Hall.

My girl (at the time) and I did this 'bout 15 years ago (cable car to FW), and then we ended up walking countless miles ALL around that day...just exploring. By the time we left a hippie jam band show at the Maritime Hall in the wee hours of the mornoing, we were pooped :D. I used to attend networking technical conferences on a semi-regular basis...when in CA, I'd blow off "one" day just to head south (PCH down to SD for example) from the OC, or if in SF, I'd head north....particularly if my SO was along. That was when I was first visiting CA....been many times since with Hermosa Bch (friend) and San Diego (sailing) being my ground zero. Love to visit CA....just way too many people for me to live there....YMMV.

ps: SF gets "freaky weird" when the sun goes down imo, but I do like to visit :D

pps: Hey Mikester....what's your topic?

Street cars in SF are pretty good, not the trolleys on the rice box, streetcars, though the trolleys are pretty all right too.

If the weather is nice, picnic at the botanical gardens is always good.

Are they playing baseball yet? The ferry over to Angel Island is a pretty nice place for a picnic lunch too.

Thanks all. I'm not sure how much time we'll have. I suppose I may try to schedule nothing for one day so we can take one day just to play.

Fortunately, I've got a while to get it figured out.

Secure WAN and Branch technologies.

Riveting stuff.

SmileWavy

You might also want to consider flying in/out a day earlier/later...assuming the conference is from Mon-Fri, many times the Fri is a virtual write-off as folks are eager to get back home. Maybe fly in on Sat and have all day Sun to play or on the back end. Sometimes the airfare/hotel rates are such that staying over a Sat night makes the total cost a wash (or even less), and I've had my co pick up the tab for that extra night also. Maybe consider renting a car for one day so you and the "better half" ;), can head north exploring.

Congrats! I've been known to shop at Nerds-R-Us before too :p

It is actually stuff I dig but people hear IPSec and VPN and immediately fall asleep.

So far though I have previewed my presentation to a few groups of folks I work with - at least a shorter version of it (my session is 1 1/2 hours long) and it has gotten very good reviews.

Now to make the 1 1/2 hour version get those good reviews.

MPLS? Are your presentations online?

WRT San Francisco, Pier 39/Fishermans wharf should be pretty easy from where you'll be....

IPSec is cool. I supported IPSec/VPN, PIX and 3000 series concentrators on the TAC many years back. I've configured VPN (primarily IPSec) at most of the jobs that I've had since. For a few years I worked at a service provider (voice and data over satellite for mostly oil and gas companies worldwide) where we used a lot of MPLS. That's another great technology.

Make your way down Market street to the Ferry Building which is at the Embarcadero and Market street there is always a lot going on there. From there you can walk(stroll) peddlecab to pier 39 & Fishermans Wharf. You will have beautiful views of the bay the bay bridge, and restaurants all long the Embarcadero.

Check www.ciscolive365.com after the event. Registration is free.

I do have some slides on securing MPLS type connections as well as folks assume that MPLS connections through a service provider are safe but simply put they are not 'safe' and the cost of encrypting is usually not very high if anything at all (unless we're talking about over a few gbps of traffic. Enabling encryption through the provider cloud should be standard operating procedure in my opinion but there are implications to doing so and that is something I will cover in my presentation.

Essentially it is about these bullets;

1) The unexpected
2) The landscape of encryption technologies for Securing WAN connectivity, what's changed, etc
3) The next generation branch office architecture
4) Network Security best practices

The majority of the topic is vendor agnostic though the branch architecture stuff does outline some capabilities that Cisco has brought to market that nobody has enabling some things that I think are pretty unique. My objective is to get guys who are responsible for this technology in their companies to adopt better practices around deploying security technologies. Secure WAN is merely an example to frame it around. My hope is that they will walk out with questions about what they are doing and more confident in what they can do.

Hopefully it'll go well. Its my first time speaking at Cisco Live and they only really give you one chance and if you screw up...well, you don't usually get another. I'm not new to presenting or anything - but this is the biggest deal kind of gig I have gotten. I hope I enjoy it!

Like I said - my initial reviews of condensed versions are very good but I've also had a bit of feedback that the parts about encryption are a little...um...too engineering deep but at the same time I firmly believe that is why folks come. That is why I go myself - for the deep dive. This will not be super deep overall but we will look for pearls occasionally.

Eeeewwww I'm all giddy :D built many a DMVPN....
Do you work for Cisco?

Eat at The Buena Vista..its by the wharf I think where the Hyde street cable car starts/ends. *****in old school restaurant/pub originator of the Irish Coffee great breakfast. The Fairmont Hotel has a cool Tiki Bar on the basement floor, if ya have time and money eat at the Prime Rib House too.
Of all those don't miss The Buena Vista.

I hope they have a better CAE than the last time it was in SF :rolleyes:

Be careful.

http://www.southparkstudios.com/down...er-sanfran.jpg

Spam reported to mods...

Yank Sing dim sum restaurant is in the financial district. I'd probably eat there every day. You could try walking to Chinatown and the Ferry building. Buses and streetcars could get you to tourist places like the fisherman's wharf area. It's not a destination that would be high on my list, though.

I could recommend a bunch of stuff, depending on what you like to do, but I have no idea what you like...

I'd make sure to stay a couple extra days on both ends of the trip. I'd also rent a car and see other parts of the city. The view from Twin Peaks is incredible. Lots of good museums, restaurants, scenery...

JR

I make an exception for the mechanical museum on one of the piers. It's next to the Pompano submarine. Tons of coin operated things - pinballs, fortune tellers, nickelodeons and so on. Free admission but the machines take quarters (duh). The only real cost is dealing with the panhandlers/tour groups/TGI Fridays/clipboard-zombies native to big tourist areas. I usually walk back quickly to Jackson Square(?) and the Rogue Taphouse...

I used to go to that when it was out by the Cliff House. It's somewhat interesting but the rest of fisherman's wharf is just a bunch of stores that sell crap I don't need. Much better places to go in the city...

JR

Limited time-frame. No car. Wife.
Get on your walking shoes, a pocket full of sweets, bus maps, and grab the warm 'thick skinned' coat.

-Pier 39/FishermansWharf/Giardelli is touristy but fun, with a view of the GG bridge.
Buena Vista Irish coffee is at the very end of the line.
-Union Square has high end shopping and the cable car to the north.
-'Top of the Mark' Hopkins Hotel for deserts, jazz, views at night. Taxi there.
-Avoid the Tenderloin anytime.

I was going to stay at that hotel, but it seems like they jacked the rates up for the time that I'm going to be there or something.

Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner. I went for lunch today, yeah, I could eat there everyday too.

I've also hit up Thai, sushi and Chinese, and all have been very good. We've stuck with stuff that we can walk to. We've walked through Chinatown a few times. We've walked to the top of Nob Hill. We haven't made it to Fisherman's Wharf yet. We did rent a car (V6 mustang) and drive over to Mill Valley and Muir Woods. Muir Woods was really nice other than the crowds. The trees and area is beautiful. When I wasn't hampered by traffic, the road down to Muir Woods and down to Mill Valley was fantastic. Yowza, if I lived there I would never go home, I would just drive around all day.

Cisco Live has been very cool!

I met Mikester today. Great guy! We've even got a picture to post eventually. I need to get some pictures of some of the booth babes, but I keep forgetting. For you crazy network guys, I met a guy with 7 CCIEs, apparently he was the only one in the world, but I guess there are two now. :eek:

That was fun! I'm exhausted!

Bob, sorry I was just reading this thread again and realized I never answered your question.

Yes I do.

Twin Peaks park - 360 degree View......Visit it every year...


http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1401072249.jpg

I liked to pedal up there on clear days. Lived right at the bottom of the hill on 7th Ave. My brother has a picture, or series of pictures rather, of SF ablaze post 1906 earthquake that I believe was taken from there.


Twin Peaks or Mt Diablo are about a toss up to me.

In the Financial District is located an Awesome Steak Restaurant "5A5" .... check it out :

5A5 Steak Lounge - Financial District - San Francisco, CA, United States | Yelp

Shows over guys, I'm still recovering.

Steve! It was great to finally meet you. Hopefully we can meet up again in San Diego next year.

Hope you enjoyed my session.

Thanks, I'm back home, the event was last week. I mostly ate at various Asian restaurants.

Mike it was great to meet you as well. It's a shame we couldn't hang out more, but with the missus there with me, that was difficult. I had planned to come talk to you and congratulate you on the great presentation, but you got rushed by folks with questions after, and the missus and I had plans that evening.

I think Mike said that there were something like 25,000-30,000 folks in attendance. Everywhere I went downtown, I saw folks from the event. On my flight back to Houston on Friday there were 8 people that had gone counting me, and those were just the folks with some sort of visual reference that I noticed, there may have been more.

It's a pretty impressive event. Lots of folks, free wifi for 25,000 network geeks, and the speeds were screamin' fast. Free breakfast and lunch every day. There was a free party on Wed in ATT Stadium that included a free concert with Lenny Kravitz opening for the Imagine Dragons (had no idea who they were, and the song that they have that's been in the top 100 forever is blech). Everyone gets a free backpack, it's a decent backpack.

Registration (getting your ID and backpack)
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1401086416.jpg

some of the crowd
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1401086461.jpg

Mikester(right) and myself(left)
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1401086511.jpg

No wonder how all our customers networks worked flawless during this time, no network cowboys around to dick with the config :D


Looks like fun, reminds me years ago at Networld/Interop when I met a smokin hot girl who was actually the one who designed and built their networks for the event.

Don't see many women in your pictures :)

What you really met was a "5". It's just that you were amongst too many males for 3 days and all of a sudden any girl starts looking good.

I work with hospital billing software where we have to visit their billing offices for 2-3 days. The first day you are there, just about all the women there are 2-4, by the time you leave, one of them will turn into a 7 or 8... I attribute it to "billing goggles". :)

Well, there were some smokin' hot booth babes around in the vendor fair. There were also helpers all over the place, and several of them were cute. But what did surprise me was how many women were there as attendees. And I think I saw a handful that were reasonably attractive. I didn't get any photos because I was too much in shock to take a photo.

I had 15 of my own customers there and 2 were women. Which is just under 15%.

Not bad but also not accurate for the number of women actually at my customer doing stuff which is more like 40%.

While there may not be a lot of female network engineers, voice, call center and video are a whole other ball park.

It's in San Diego this year, I got the speaking gig again too - my session was approved today. Waiting for the official note but looks like I'm good to go with some minor revisions to my direction (that are in line with what I wanted to do anyway).

Sweet! Congrats. Unfortunately, I'm sure I won't be there this year. We have a lottery here on who gets to go, and I suspect since I went last year my name won't be in the running this year. That's a shame too, I've never been to San Diego.

chit!! how did i miss this?!!


Tadich Grill! order a martini and a Cioppino.

Maybe I'll send one of my female CCNP's to balance out the geekdom :)