It's nearly IBC time, which means that some 55,000-ish of us are about to pack up for the massive RAI Amsterdam exhibit hall(s!) for five days of mediaandentertainment convention bliss.

This also means it's that time when people start asking about what we'll be focused on, demonstrating, and announcing at IBC 2016. Let's start with focus. Ours is to help customers across the broadcast, studio and service provider ecosystem to scale with security, differentiate with innovation, and improve profitability.

As for announcements -we will have a range of news to launch new products and showcase momentum in security for video, the continuing shift to IP for broadcast production and our role in moving the ecosystem forward, our cloud platform for video services that transforms today's video operations, and video quality - including 4K and the virtualization of video network processes. So "stay tuned," as they say!

At our stand in Hall 1, Stand A71 in Amsterdam we will showcase our security for video solutions, highlight our cloud-based Infinite video solutions, and ourtransformativework to better serve the broadcast production and media and entertainment community with the Cisco Media Blueprint, that support media and video processing applications in a scalable and fully virtualized cloud environment.

One of my favorite demos at our stand this year shows how we take advantage of the latest innovations in programmable networking (SDN), and uniquely blend network and video application intelligence along with video client data to improve video quality and bandwidth efficiency. Doesn't get better than that!

But enough about demos and intentions. Let's talk about food! Breakfast is on us from 8-8:30 on Friday the 9^th, in the area outside of the Emerald Room. It precedes a CTO session in the Emerald Room from 8:30-9 to discuss technology insight, withKen Morse,CTO, Service Provider Video Software. From 9:45-11Dave Ward, Chief Architect and CTO, Service Provider Business, will join a 'CTO Roadmap Session' in the RAI Forum.

On Saturday 9/10, from noon to 1:30,Thomas Kernen, Technical Leader for Cisco Switzerland, will participate in a session about technological advances. He'll share his views on deploying accurate time information using Precision Time Protocol within an all-IP studio. Later that day, from 3:30-5,Sam Rastogi, Senior Product and Solutions Marketing Manager, will participate on a media cyber-security session in the Emerald Room, along with other leaders from the studio and broadcast technology community.

Dave Ward is back in action on the panel circuit Saturday to speak about the 'Rising Stars Program: New Skills for the Robot dominated future,' 12:00-1 pm in room G102/103.

On the 'softer-ware' side of things, we have several speakers planned to support 'Power Sessions' at the Imagine Communications booth Sunday 9/11, includingDave Ward and Steve Epstein, Distinguished Engineer, tackling 'Cybesecurity for Media Systems,' at 12:00 -12:45 pm, and Bryan Bedford, business development for the Worldwide Partner Organization, discussing 'Live Production in an IP World,' at 5:00-6 pm. Steve Epstein will also speak about 'Cybersecurity' at the BT stand on Monday 9/12, at 12:00 -12:45 pm.

There's tons more - it's a five-day show - so we'll be playing it out to you in pieces. Follow us @CiscoSPVideo for all the latest, and#IBCShow. If you're going, please come by and kick the tires! See you in Amsterdam!