CISCO Eve
Since it was CISCO speaking, being favorites of most of the K.F.U.P.M. students, it was a very useful and conclusively a very successful event organised by the IET-KFUPM Young Members Section. Although it’s very difficult to get in touch with the CISCO professionals for any talk but we managed to catch them and convince them for this event. Henceforth, being the President of IET – KFUPM Student Branch I would like to, in addition to give a summary about the event, take this opportunity to describe the whole organization of this event till its successful completion.
As mentioned before, the event was organized by the IET – KFUPM Student Branch. At first we got in touch with one of the System Analysts of CISCO through one of our members of IET Branch. Then, we requested him for this event and he was more than happy to make this event a reality. Hence, he forwarded this request to his director. The director took his time and made some clarifications before agreeing to our request. Hence we moved on to the speakers.
The speakers assigned were:
Mr. Bader Al-Otaibi, Systems Analyst, CISCO (Dammam)
Mr. Shadi, Accounting Analyst, CISCO (Riyadh)
Mr. Bader is a System Engineer by academics while Mr. Shadi has an Accounting Background. We requested each of them to keep a presentation on from their respective fields.
Anyhow, after getting these confirmations, we at IET – KFUPM started working on the other official tasks and of them was the task of preparing an advertisement poster and its printing. Hence the poster was designed by one of our designers and the event was successfully held on 25th November 2007 at 19:00 in building 14 – room 108.
Therefore the presentations were given by Mr. Bader and Mr. Shadi. First, it was Mr. Bader who presented his topic, “The 21st Century University” and then this was followed by Mr. Shadi’s presentation on “Time Management at CISCO” or we can say “The daily life at CISCO”. Both the presentations were amazing as evaluated from the feedback of the audiences.
Mr. Bader , as mentioned earlier, talked on the concept of how the universities must be run in the 21st century. The thing worth to be mentioned is “The Paperless University Concept”. As can be seen in the figure below is an animation of “The Paperless University Concept”.
Mr. Bader talked about how different sections of a university can be integrated into one single unit without papers. Different sections include the different academic buildings including the various colleges, the various departments, student dormitories, student and faculty cafeterias’, faculty housing, university medical facilities, university stadium and all other university facilities.
The basic aim out there to make a paperless university is to have the whole campus on wireless network. In other words, we can say that the prerequisite to have a paperless university is to have the whole university well-equipped with the wireless network facilities. This means that all the buildings in the university can interact with each other through internet wirelessly.
Henceforth, he gave the audience a detailed description how this can become a reality. He helped the explanation with live examples and comparisons from the present day university structure. For instance, he said that what if you would like to drop a course, the procedure in today’s life is quite complicated and tiring. We need to first fill up a form then run to the chairman of the department and get his approval and then the approval of the college and then then then………it goes on and on. But in paperless university, its being aimed that in such a situation the student can give his/her request through the net, as is being followed in our King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, and then the request will be forwarded to the department chairman and then to the department college and to all the concerned officials without the student needing to run for all this.
In addition, the students will not take any lecture notes else the concept of paperless university fails. The students will be provided with electronic devices such as laptops that will be used extensively for academic studies. Also, the students will follow the instructor through his/her laptop. The slides or the class material, obviously, will be given to the student beforehand.
Moreover, the exams will also be conducted through the student’s electronic devices. The instructor will provide them with the exams online but he will be monitoring them through some special type of software’s like “SynchronEyes”.
In totality, the point is that whenever a student enters in the classroom, he/she has to become a part of that classrooms network of which the administrator is the instructor present there. This ensures the instructor that the student is under his/her control and also ensures the student with his/her attendance. Now once the student is in the network, the student will be under the full supervision of the instructor. Hence, all mentioned above is very much possible. Mr. Bader also mentioned that there are presently some universities which have this paperless university concept.
If we talk about medical center in our university, it’s paperless now. So that is what paperless is all about. Not like before, when we had to carry our whole file history with papers and important medical test documents leaking from here and there.
Now, one may ask what about the important documents that are signed by department heads for consent of different issues. Well this is the age of digital signatures. For example, FedEx is an express delivery firm. They deliver the parcel for the sender to the receiver and confirm the delivery to the sender by taking the digital signature of the receiver and send the copy of that digital signature to the sender. Hence, this confirms the delivery to the sender. All this shows and proves that it is possible even to have our official matters running without papers.
This brought us to the conclusion of Mr. Bader’s presentation about this great concept. Anyhow, we all enjoyed and were thrilled with this new and great concept yet there were doubts lurking in some of our minds. On taking feedbacks during the question answer session of Mr. Bader, it was concluded that 65% approve this concept of paperless university where as the rest of us were not in favor. The reason behind this is just that the traditional style of education using blackboard is still much more efficient in terms of making student understand different concepts of their studies as compared to the present day slide lectures wherein the students tend to go lazy and sleep and some even if they are in their senses and concentrating aren’t able to grasp or understand all topics easily.
After Mr. Bader’s presentation, I being the master of the ceremony called upon Mr. Shadi for his presentation on “The daily life at CISCO”. He then took over the podium and spoke about CISCO and its life.
He mentioned the bits and pieces of how the time is spent in CISCO. Firstly, not to forget to mention the types of people found at CISCO. There are usually two sectors of people – one is Systems Analyst and the other is the Accounts Manager. These are two general post on which the life is set at CISCO. Account Managers have 60% of managing work and 40% of technical work and it’s vice versa for the Systems Analyst.
Both feel that they are better-off the other but at the end both are equally good, useful and needed by the firm. Anyways, the point worth to mention is that none of these fields require a certain background by the applicant because CISCO first trains you to become what you want to become. It doesn’t make a difference if you come from an engineering background or management background.
The systems analyst usually stays on-site and does his job which is mostly technical. They have requests from different clients all over the Kingdom. Hence, they even keep on traveling which gives them an advantage of traveling free of charge and go and see places that they have never seen. On the other hand, the account managers have an office wherein they dwell and perform their duties.
Then came the daily schedule of the CISCO employees. They tend to wake up early morning around 0630 and get themselves ready for their work and then have their breakfast with their family and leave home around 0735 towards their office. They are to reach their office by 0800 sharp. Then they start their daily chores and end up taking a break from 12 noon till 1300. Then they continue with their meetings and sum up their day by 1700. So this is how, in short, they spend their day at CISCO.
Above mentioned schedule is nothing new to us. Almost, all the companies follow this schedule. The thing worth to be mentioned or discussed here is that, whether or not the CISCO employees enjoy their work or they are just doing it as a routine work without any excitement.
Well as mentioned by Mr. Shadi and he was even supported by Mr. Bader that everyday when they wake up in the morning they feel like as if there is something new and exciting coming today and this makes them happy and excited to reach to their work places. Hence, they enjoy their day with this great attitude to face new things and learn something new everyday. Also, at the end of the day they evaluate themselves to find where do they stand in comparison to others and how much did they attain and acquire from today’s work.
Mr. Shadi kept on going with his encouragement towards working at CISCO and giving his real life examples about his work life and family life and comparing and connecting them and proving that how both compliment each other.
The aim here was not only to show the insight of the company to the students but also to encourage students and to make it easy for the students to adopt the work life easily and not to get discouraged by finding out the work load they are going to face in their future work lives. Above all, the students shouldn’t even feel that eight hours is too tough for them. Hence, this issue and concern was cleared by Mr. Shadi and made easy for the audience to not to consider these eight hours of work as burden but to take it as fun and enjoyment.
The audience enjoyed and hence we had the final question answer session and the students enjoyed to their utmost abilities. The presenters too were amazed to see such students and took a great impression about us i.e. K.F.U.P.M. students from here when they left.
After all this, we honored our speakers with a certificate and a token of appreciation provided to us by the IET.
Hence we concluded our CISCO eve and it was a great success and fun with those new concepts and then how can we enjoy our work life and not consider or feel it as a burden on ourselves. Mr. Bader and Mr. Shadi both entertained us to their utmost abilities.
At the end, I wouldn’t like to forget to thank all the organizers who helped me out to make this event a possibility and a success.
Written by:
Imran Shafique Ansari (Former President, IET KFUPM)