The 
Exabyte
 Era w/ Cisco VP Ken Wirt

The Exabyte Era and Why Broadband is Essential for Everyone
Ken Wirt, Cisco Vice President for Consumer Marketing

Please join the Hawaii Broadband Task Force in their meeting with Ken Wirt, Cisco's Vice President for Consumer Marketing. Ken will discuss the imperative for advanced broadband services for all. 
Legislators, policymakers, technologists, media and interested members of the public are invited to attend.

Cisco's research indicates that the dam is about to burst for Internet‐based video and high‐bandwidth requirements will be embedded in many applications for business, entertainment, education, health and government. Cisco's analysis indicates that continuous growth in Internet capacity will be essential for individuals, communities and regions that want to ensure their ability to participate fully in the digital societies of the 21st century.

About Ken Wirt
Ken is responsible for partnering with Cisco, Scientific Atlantic, and Linksys marketing teams in the creation and implementation of Cisco’s consumer marketing strategy. his includes developing an overall corporate brand architecture and keeping a pulse on the consumer to develop the most effective marketing and messaging strategies for Cisco overall. Ken has over twenty years of marketing experience with a strong background in developing new consumer electronic categories. He led marketing for one of the first home computers at Atari, introduced the first CD-ROM-based video game system at NEC, headed marketing for the first PDA (Newton) at Apple, launched the first portable MP3 player (Rio) at Diamond Multimedia, and was CEO of the first indie music recommendation web site (Riffage). Most recently, Ken was SVP Worldwide Marketing at Palm where he developed the first consumer PDA (Zire), the first hard-drive based multimedia PDA (LifeDrive), and launched the second generation of Treo smartphones with many of the world’s leading service providers. Ken received an MBA from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business and a BA in The Psychology of Kinetic Media from the University of Michigan.

About the Hawaii Broadband Task Force

The Hawaii Broadband Task Force was created by the Hawaii State Legislature in 2007 to provide recommendations on how to:


(1) Remove barriers to broadband access, including gaining wider access to

public rights-of‐way;

(2) Identify opportunities for increased broadband deployment and adoption, including very high speed broadband services; and

(3) Enable the creation and deployment of new advanced communication technologies in Hawaii.



The Task Force issued its interim report in December 2007 and will provide its final recommendations in to the Legislature in December 2008. For more information, see http://www.hbtf.org.