ZNDP 031 – Cisco Live US 2018 Recap

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Cisco Live US 2018 - CCIE Party

Hey Friends, Nerds, Geeks, and Ziglets out there, today’s Zigbits Network Design Podcast show number 31 is a recap of Cisco Live US 2018 which was held in Orlando, Florida.  We had The Force, Rides, Food, Drinks, Concerts, Technical Sessions, Keynotes, traditional Networking discussions, and a who lot more!!  Sit back and get readying for a great summary of Cisco Live US 2018!!!  Its Recap time, starting now!

Cisco Live US 2018 – Take Off!!

Started off the day on the plane that I didn’t think was ever going to take off, but it did!! ☺ Not the best picture of me with my double chins!! 😉. This is actually one of only a few pictures I took with my phone the entire week.  I also took a picture of my badge, never feel complete at Cisco Live without my Ribbons!!  

  

I got in late Sunday night but was able to get dinner with some of my CCIE R&S Study Group friends (more like brothers at this point).  We talk every day still even years after studying together and each year we do a couple of dinners at CLUS. A lot of us actually work at Cisco now so it’s really amazing to reflect on where we all started out years ago. All of our wives know each other now as well as they come to CLUS every year and hang out too.  I can’t emphasis how such a bond is formed when you are going through the same journey together.  We had some “midnight” pizza which we actually ordered from Dominos and had it delivered to the restaurant we were at. Everyone was staring at us! 😉

Sadly, no pictures were taken of the midnight pizza but there are some with my original CCIE R&S Study Group. We called ourselves the CCIE Kool Kats. There have been a lot of jokes over the years from that name. If you are on social media you can follow our hashtag #CCIEKoolKats.  For the record, my friend Steven and I did not plan to wear the same shirt in the below picture.  Such is the life of nerds at #SummerCampForNerds.

Cisco Live US 2018 – WWT Party!!

Every year at CLUS, one of the most sought-after parties, other than the CCIE party and CAE, is the WWT party.  The WWT party has been literally epic every year, last year in Vegas being the best!  I went this year with a number of people and it was a great party even though it rained, which will be a common theme throughout the week! They had carnival type games and a live Band that was very good playing 90’s music all night.  The food was hotdogs and pretzel bites (love them), and of course Beer, Wine, and Soda to drink.  Being the natural introvert, I am, my day had been overall taxing with the sessions I had gone too and the number of people I was catching up with, I had to recharge a little bit at the beginning of the WWT party (picture me in a corner eating pretzel bites and drinking water by myself for 30 minutes). I think WWT expected a lot more people to be at the party this year but because of the rain and having to move the band inside, it wasn’t as spectacular as years before, still a great party and I had a blast with my friends and co-workers throwing darts at balloons and other carnival type games.

Cisco Live US 2018 – CCIE Party…Is the Force Strong with you? 

Tuesday Night was the CCIE Party!!  Star Wars Themed Party!! Literally awesome, though I think marketing did a bad job as it was very misleading to most people where the CCIE Party was going to be this year.  Most of us thought it was going to be at the World Showcase in Epcot but it was actually at the Epcot World Showplace. Once we understood the mistake, we were taken to this massive Star Wars themed building.  It was one huge room, where surprisingly we all fit.  Half the room was decorated for the Light Side and the other half was decorated for the Dark Side.  The theme didn’t stop at the decoration, the food was even matching the Light side and Dark side.  They also had most of the primary Star Wars characters in the building so you could take pictures with them.  Throughout the 3-hour party they had different Star War’s themed events, almost like a live play.  They had Star Wars trivia and a few other Star Wars games going on.  The food was really good, probably the best the entire week outside of a dinner at a couple of restaurants.  Near the end a few of us decided to get some pictures with the Stormtroopers but for whatever reason they didn’t get put on our card, so we never actually got them.  My wife got a picture with Chewbacca and Darth Vader, I was too busy running into people I knew, meeting people I only knew virtually, and talking a whole bunch to get any pictures with the characters!

Below is a picture of Dmitry Figol and I, with Silva Spiva photobombing us at the CCIE Party! I actually think the intent was for us all to have a photo together but it definitely looks like she is photobombing the picture. 

A couple of notes here:

  • Dmitry runs a Network automation / orchestration live stream on Twitch.tv.  Normally this site is used for stream video games, but he is using it to stream him doing automation / orchestration which I think is a great idea.  This past weekend he did a stream on Cisco NSO!  Here is his link:  https://www.twitch.tv/dmfigol
  • Silvia is also someone you should know of and given a chance should meet.  She is the Cisco DevNet Community Manager and has her hands in a lot of different public / social things.  She is also just an all around great person!

More Pictures of the CCIE Party!! Let the Force be with you!

 

   

Cisco Live US 2018 – The Customer Appreciation Event (CAE)

Wednesday Night was The Customer Appreciation Event (CAE).  They rented out Universal Studios, not part of it, not half of it….The Entire Theme Park was rented out for the night.  For us it opened at 7pm and we were off.  I think the limiting factor with the Theme Park is that there is just so much to do, you really have to choose what’s most important to you.  Are you a thrill seeker and want to go on all of the Roller Coasters??  You could if you wanted too.  If you were more into music and concerts, you could have just found a good spot to stand / sit at a number of the different bands and performances playing (Sam Hunt, Blue Man Group, Cake, etc…).  Then of course there was food, and everything was open and free.  The downfall for the night was that it rained…wait it didn’t just rained it poured for over an hour.  The group I was hanging out with wanted to go to Hogwarts so we were literally running from one side of the park to the other when the downpour started.  For most of us, we weren’t going to let the rain ruin our fun.  The Harry Potter themed area was really cool, I had never seen it before.  We also did a number of other rides but one of my favorites was the Simpson’s ride.  For dinner, I had a chicken and waffle sandwich…Yum!! After dinner we decided to check out Sam Hunt’s concert before heading to the buses and calling it a night!  Below is a picture of me at the CAE before it started to rain with the Cisco Live HAT!!

 

Cisco Live US 2018 – The Final Day 

My friend Steven and I decided to make a trip to Chuy’s for lunch, which is Brad Edgeworth’s favorite place to eat! We always like to give Brad a hard time.  We’ve been known to make BGP questions each year in an attempt to stump each other.  Two years ago, at the ICE Bar in Vegas, we were writing on the napkins trying to solve some weird BGP corner case Brad saw in TAC one day for hours.  So, we took a picture to send to him. He then gave us a verbal lashing on Social media and then decided to also go to Chuy’s a few hours later with Vinit Jain.  See both pictures below.  I couldn’t find the picture of our food though, so you get the picture of our pretty faces. What Nerds do when at #SummerCampForNerds

   

 

Outside of Customer Meetings, Sessions, Keynotes, and “Night Life” at Cisco Live US 2018!!

When I wasn’t running, and I literally mean running at times, between the Customer Meetings, Technical Sessions, Keynotes, and the night life activities, there was the World of Solutions, The Social Hub, The Social Impact Area, and The Certification Lounge.  I also did three podcast episodes for my podcast, and another podcast episode for another podcasting brand.

World of Solutions (WoS)

Pretty cool this year, not as big as the last two years in Vegas but still a lot of booths.  It took me all week to make it through all of the booths, I try to read / watch / take in each one to understand what the problem is they are solving.  I spent a lot of time at the Live Action booth with the LiveNX demo.

The Social Hub

The social hub is usually a place where you can find a seat and chill for a few minutes, check email, do some work. The other thing that happens here is the traditional networking talks; meeting people for the first time, discussing things, etc… Last year I had done a Cisco Live Commercial here for the Social Team.  They added a number of things this year that I thought was neat.  You could play battleships, connect four, table tennis, and a number of other cool games, but they were rather life size.  If I can find a picture I will share it.

A picture of the social hub screen at CLUS, but it doesn’t do it justice or the World of Solutions justice but its what I could find.

The Certification Lounge

I spent most of my “free” time here.  This is a lounge within the World of Solutions were anyone that holds a Cisco Certification can hang out.  And a lot of us hang out here.  I would plan to be here for 1 hour and before I knew it I was there for 3 or 4 hours.  A lot of the key players like to discuss new initiatives within the industry here as well.  I couldn’t find all of the pictures that others took but I was able to find some below.

Me, Tom Whaley, Jason Gooley, and Daniel Dib

  • Tom is one of 10 Cisco Certified Architects in the world and is a Cisco TSA!
  • Jason is a dual CCIE (R&S, SP), a Cisco Live Presenter, a CHINOG Organizer, and a Cisco TSA on the World Wide Team.
  • Daniel is a CCIE and CCDE (We studied together!) and currently works at Conscia Netsafe in Sweden as a Network Architect

The last day of the conference, Daniel Dib asked a group of us to take a picture for his Daughter’s Birthday so we did!!

Me and David Penaloza

  • David is a Social media beast!  He is on it all of the time.  He is also working on the CCDE which he took the practical in the last attempt! ☺  We are hoping he will join the CCDE ranks soon!!

Me and Tim McConnaughy

  • I met Tim through a CCIE study group called Routergods.  Great guy and come to find out he actually works at Cisco as a NCE.  We will be doing a podcast episode in the near future 😉

Scott Morris, Katherine McNamara, and I

  • A lot can be said about Scott.  He really has been around the industry for a long time, as you can see from the ribbons on his badge.  He holds 4 CCIEs, yes I said 4!!  He also is a CCDE, JNCIE-SP, and a JNCIE-ENT.  He is a Consultant for Cisco in the form of a contractor and also runs his own business called Alchemy Global Networks, LLC.
  • Katherine, or Kat as I call her (right or wrong is what has stuck). She is also known as the ISEQueen. She has two CCIEs, DC and Security (she just passed this one last month or so).  She is a Cisco Security CSE. She loves Cats!

Just Me and Silva in DevNet having fun!  Good times!!

Someone very motivated!!  Not sure who this actually was!

The Engineering Death Match Event this year! 

  • CCNP R&S Speed Question Challenge!
  • Some of the questions were mine!!!!!!
  • So, I always support the Engineering Death Match event.  It can get really crazy at times with people cheering on different competitors.  Last year’s event was multiple Design focused events and I was one of the EngDM Judge, with my CCDE Buddy Danial Dib!!!  So much fun!  This year was focused on the CCNP R&S and I submitted about 20 questions for the contestants to answer!

Cisco Live US 2018 – Studying for your CCIE R&S:

  • Troubleshooting OSPF – BRKRST-3310
    • Presenter – Nicholas Russo – Consulting Engineer, Cisco Systems
    • Can you draw a network diagram from having access to one router in an OSPF configured network?  If not then this session is totally for you!! Hands down the best technical presentation of OSPF I have ever seen.  This is how everyone should learn how to walk through the OSPF Database. 
  • Troubleshooting IS-IS – BRKRST-3302
    • Presenter – Brad Edgeworth – Systems Engineer, Cisco Systems
  • Multicast Troubleshooting – BRKIPM-2264
    • Presenter – Denise Fishburne – Solutions Architect, Cisco Systems
  • VRF, MPLS and MPBGP Fundaments – BRKCRT-2601
    • Presenter – Jason Gooley – Technical Solutions Architect, Cisco Systems

Cisco Live US 2018 – Key Technology Sessions for the future

My personal Technology focus for Cisco Live was around the End to End solution / architecture picture so the below presentations fit that theme.

  • Securing your network from the desktop to the cloud with end-to-end segmentation – BSOGEN-2000
    • Presenter – Victor Moreno
  • Building the Vision: Design and Benefits of the End-to-end Cisco Policy Based Network Architecture – BRKARC-2015
    • Presenters
      • John Bartin – Systems Engineering Manager, Cisco Systems
      • Jerel Howell – CSE, Cisco Systems
  • Building an End-End Policy Driven Secure Hybrid Cloud DC Architecture – BRKSEC-2980
    • Presenter – David Jansen – Distinguished Systems Engineer, Cisco Systems

Cisco Live US 2018 – Keynotes

The keynotes were ok this year, not the best but not the worst.  Last year’s keynote at CLUS17 in Las Vegas really set the bar high and I just don’t think the Keynotes met that same level this year.  I’ve received similar feedback from others, both customers and Cisco employees.  

Cisco Live has put all of the Keynotes from this year into a playlist at the following link.  It’s the first playlist at the top of the page.https://www.ciscolive.com/us/attend/about/daily-highlights/

Cisco Live US 2018 – Summary

There is always more stuff to do than you can actually fit in the time you have at Cisco Live but I think I summarized it all as best as possible.  I met with a lot of customers.  We did a few Cisco Live NOC tours with said customers which was pretty sweet!  As always if you have any questions please let me know.

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