Cisco chief, John Chambers says Silicon Valley public schools are an embarrassment. . . . . . and names education and healthcare as the two largest issues facing US businesses

I was on a very interesting panel Wednesday morning at Cisco. With 12 panelists, it could have been a bogged-down-and-dreary-event with much waffling about "virtuality" and how it will boost healthcare and education.

Instead, it turned into a very spirited discussion as the journalists on the panel took on some of the sometimes empty rhetoric of corporate-market-speak from the heads of three large US technology companies: Cisco, NASDAQ and VeriSign, and startup RelayHealth. And in the process, some of the corporate-market-speak at times gave way to a real discussion.

Wendy Kopp, the charismatic founder of Teach for America, made some good observations given that she admitted that she had not a single minute thinking about tech. And Jim Goldman of CNBC rolled with the flow as the panel’s moderator, keeping things moving. I know I took away a lot more than I expected from the event. In a first for Cisco, the event was podcast as well as webcast.

By Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher

Full Story and Podcast address: http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2005/08/please_read_and.php