14 8 DELIVER THE EXPERIENCE
in that the system is running on new Intel processors. “Let’s
have a look,” Jobs says as he walks to the side of the stage. He sits
down and begins exploring many of the conventional computer
tasks, such as calendar functions, e-mail, photographs, brows-
ing, and movies, loading and working quickly and effortlessly.
He concluded the two-minute demo by saying, “This is Mac
OS X running on Intel.”^14Cisco’s Jim Grubb plays the sidekick to CEO John Chambers.
Grubb’s title is, literally, Chief Demonstration Officer. Nearly
every Chambers presentation involves a demonstration,
and Grubb is Chambers’s go-to guy for some sixty events a
year. The demonstrations are unique and truly remarkable.
Cisco replicates a scenario onstage complete with furniture
and props: it could be an office, a retail store, or rooms of a
house. In a demonstration at the 2009 Consumer Electronics
Show in Las Vegas, Chambers and Grubb called a doctor in a
remote location thousands of miles away and, using Cisco’s
TelePresence technology, which lets you see a person as
though he or she is right in front of you, held a medical evalua-
tion over the network.
Chambers enjoys needling Grubb with lines such as “Are
you nervous, Jim? You seem a little tense,” or “It’s OK if you
mess up. I’ll just fire you.” Most of the jokes between the
two men are scripted but are still funny as Grubb just smiles,
laughs it off, and continues with the demonstration—the
perfect straight man. Grubb studied music and theater in col-
lege. His polished performance reflects his training. Although
it appears effortless, he and his staff spend countless hours in
the lab testing and practicing, not only to simplify complicated
networking technology so it’s easy to understand in a fifteen-
minute demonstration but also to make sure it works, so his
boss doesn’t get mad!The CEO Sidekick