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First impressions of the new work environment

Today is the last day of my first week of emploment with Cisco. It has been an interesting week featuring trips to the Cisco office at Bedfont Lakes and also Northern Ireland to participate in an Executive Briefing for a visiting group from Belarus.

I have to confess that I am feeling a bit overwelmed at the moment with the sheer quantity of new information that I am having to absorbe. It was good to be able to travel with my good collegue John Connell for this first experience of the ‘Cisco Way’!

First impressions are good with no shortage of helpful people to assist a new start.

I have now made my travel arrangements for next week which will involved a full week of internation travel. Baku on Monday and Tuesday followed by Warsaw on Thursday and Friday.

To sum-up – exciting, unfamiliar, interesting, intimidating, supported.

I was able to see for the first time the NI parlament building – and it is a very imposing building to say the least. Here is a photo I took just before we left a school which we had visited to see the C2K managed service in action.


Also a close up taken during a brief stop of on the way back to Belfast City Airport.


Last time I visited Northern Ireland I wrote about it in my blog see here – It was good to see this grand building and to see the evidence of new development and regeneration which is now common all over Belfast as the government takes forward its agenda for the future.

A new start for Northern Ireland?

I am writing this on the 27th of March from my hotel room in Belfast. I am here for a meeting of the National Education Network Technical Strategy Group. The reason I wanted to make a post here that I have felt that the last 24 hours could prove to be very important for Northern Ireland. The news last evening feature Rev Dr Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams sitting at the same table discussing arrangements for power sharing and setting up a devolved powers. I can remember very well the many years of news report of violence and killing in NI and it is very good to see the current moves.

History can have a significant impact on peoples current view of the world and there is no doubt in my mind that it will be necessary for both parties to leave the past ‘in the past’ to some extent in order that they can move forward in a spirit of co-operation and forgiveness. I think there was one quote which referred to need to consider the ‘common good’ – this would be a good principle to adhere to as they move forward.

My prayer is that this really is the start of a new era of peace and reconciliation and that feelings of love rather than hate dominates from this time forth.