Pants bantz

The hunt is on to track down Canada's boxer-clad carouser; plus plenty of ear-care news, from kissing and taking care of them

Dressing down was a theme at Cisco's annual partner shindig in Montreal as the vendor tried desperately to be "a bit more software". But it seems some in attendance took that message a little too literally.

The search is on for a blue-underpant-wearing Cisco partner who passed out on a hotel floor after stripping down to his smalls at the event. The half-nude reveller, who had clearly imbibed one too many maple shandies, was spotted and photographed by Jon Pickering, the managing director of UK Cisco Gold partner Block Solutions, who was also staying at the resort.

"We need to find this man… Which Cisco partner was it? Retweet," Pickering tweeted, alongside a shot of the unconscious merrymaker spread-eagled on a hotel carpet. Collaboration emerged as a big buzzphrase at the event, which lured 2,000 partners globally (including me and Shirl from Dodgi).

But it's probably safe to say our semi-clad friend - whose identity is, thankfully for him, yet to be exposed as I write this - is hoping his peers had collaborated a little bit less on social media.

Waste of time

It was an unusually crowded field, but this week's prize for the most tenuous and underwhelming piece of IT "research" goes to recruitment firm Ranstad Technologies.

According to Ranstad's latest half-baked thesis, commuting "costs" IT professionals an average of £8,398 a year in lost time.

In a move that defies all logic, Ranstad arrived at this figure by randomly taking the average commute time of an IT worker - 42 minutes - and then charging that time out by the average salary in the sector.

This conveniently ignores the fact that people tend to commute further for better-paid jobs. It also assumes time spent on a train or snarled in a traffic jam is dead time, when in fact - as anyone who has seen me rocking out to Creedence Clearwater Revival on the A12 knows - that is anything but the case.

If anything, I would pay £8,398 just to have that 84 minutes on the open road each day when I don't have to hear Her Indoors wittering on about which curtains will go best with the new dog or Gordon boring me with his latest business development brainwave.

To kiss or not to kiss

We often hear how men have it easier in the workplace, but one area I definitely agree with that is in relation to business greetings. When two guys meet, they have a firm handshake (in some cases bone-crushingly painful) and get on with business.

But bring a lady into the mix and it gets complicated. To kiss or not to kiss? Is a handshake too formal? How can you tell who prefers what?

One of our ladies recently came back to the office extremely red-faced and said she is never doing another business meeting again. She had met a vendor exec and it had all gone swimmingly.

But when the meeting was over she had gone in for the informal peck on the cheek. After all, they had met several times and were on friendly terms.

Unfortunately the male exec wasn't on the same page and she ended up kissing his ear. I only hope the vendor boss in question didn't think it was deliberate and is now offering up his lughole to female business contacts by way of greeting.

Sound advice

I was always warned as a nipper that if I played my music too loud, I would suffer in later life. Luckily for me I got away with it, and only pretend to be hard of hearing when Shirl is giving me grief (often on a daily basis).

But some bigwigs of the music world - Chris Martin and Plan B (yes they are still going) - have teamed up with UK charity Action on Hearing Loss to warn youngsters about the dangers of losing your hearing, with Martin sharing his tinnitus woes.

Luckily for everyone involved (marketing opportunity alert), tech vendor Geermarc also got in on the act, by bunging some special headphones on the charity's website to help protect delicate yoof ears.

I can't help wishing that Martin had gone deaf - and therefore lost the ability to write music - in about 2004, after Rush of Blood to the Head, but before X&Y.