Duck Season! Cisco's Chambers on the Hunt

Networking giant's CEO turns to YouTube to justify video acquisition

One of the downsides of spending $590 million to buy a videocamera manufacturer is you then tend to have a lot of those cameras lying around the office.

So when Cisco CEO John Chambers -- normally a buttoned-down kind of guy -- picked up a duck call in his office and started quacking, it didn't take long for an employee to stop by with one of Cisco's Flip video cameras, made by newly acquired subsidiary Pure Digital, and take a video.

Says Cisco PR guy John Earnhardt:  "I was sitting at my desk a few minutes ago when I heard a duck call echoing down the corridor.  Then, that inimitable John Chambers laughter.  With my trusty Flip Mino HD video camera in hand I strolled into Chambers office to capture the duck call for you, our loyal readers.  His lesson was brief, but it is very clear that he is a man of many talents."

(Good thing Chambers can still laugh -- Cisco shareholders aren't exactly chuckling after Apple's new video-capable iPhone threatens to make the Flip irrelevant.)

Of course, if you want funny noises coming from high tech CEO's, nothing in the world beats Amazon's Jeff Bezos laughing.

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