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Wendell Odom

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20 Years of Networkers

Cisco's 20th anniversary of their end-user conference

By wendell on Tue, 06/30/09 - 6:26pm.

Today's the first full day of the Networker's conference. It's a busy day, in part due to the 7:30AM start, and in part due to being the day before the customer appreciation event. Seems that every year, the best day to schedule any kind of smaller party, meeting, or event is that one evening on the day before the Networkers party - so three different places to be for me tonight. Anyway, I wanted to take a few minutes and mention some highlights so far. I'm not approaching this like I'm covering the event - I'm just mentioning things that stuck out to me.

First off, I'm so thankful that I have a nice comfy hotel room 2 blocks from the Moscone Center in San Fran. Bad news is that the wireless access at the event is again spotty - otherwise, I'd still be at the show. Seems a bit ironic...

John Mordridge (former CEO and Chairman) and John Chambers (current CEO and Chairman) both spoke at the opening general session. Mordridge talked a bit about the early Networkers conferences, with 100 attendees or so at the first one. He also showed a picture of the house the founders of Cisco used at company startup: a couple of DEC 20's in the garage, the living room as the manufacturing floor, and the extra bedroom as engineering. Pretty cool.

10,000+ attendees this year (a record) plus 3000 virtual attendees.

Chambers did his usual type of pitch, for those who have heard him, other than the fact that he left out the lawyer disclaimers about stock prices. However, he was very optimistic about economic recovery happening, and being really big when it does.

New Cert 1: Solarwinds (www.solarwinds.com) got to put nice glossy brochures on all the seats in the hall of the general session this AM. In it, amongst other things, they announced a new certification - The Solarwinds Certified Professional. I'll probably take a day to blog on it when I return, but go to http://www.solarwinds.com/certification/ for more info. This is NOT a Cisco authorized cert.

New Cert 2: Cisco formally announced the CCNP Wireless. Yep, not Cisco Certified Wireless Professional (CCWP), but CCNP Wireless. Go to www.cisco.com/go/certifications and follow the links. No time today to wax poetic on that one, but I'll look at it soon as well.

Favorite new product and blatant plug - Pearson Education (parent of Cisco Press) brought their tons of books to the bookstore, including the new CCNA 640-802 Network Simulator that I worked on more than a few hours over the last year. www.ciscopress.com. Really, a product in a box you could see/touch/buy if you want. (It took a quite a while...) The Simulator is for CCNA preparation, but not meant for other certs at this point. TONS of labs. But we think it turned out pretty good for CCNA.

Being the 20 year anniversary, Cisco put up a wall with memorabilia, timeline, fun facts, and a marker board asking "What were you doing 20 years ago?" Some wrote things like "attending 3^rd grade", but my personal favorite today:

"Living in a van down by the river"

If the joke didn't click, you might have missed that episode of SNL, so click:

http://www.heavy.com/video/11109

Closing for today, for the minorly curious, tonight's agenda for me, which gives some insight to what's going on:

CCIE NetVets (aka those CCIE's who come to Networkers a lot) get a chance to hear from John Chambers in a smaller group, and ask questions. That's from 5-7PM.

Cisco Press reception 7-9PM - Hang out and ask people "so what'd you write?"

CCIE/CCDE party - We're generally dressed a little nicer than Chris Farley in the motivational speaker video at least... just a place to see/chat/network.

And missing the reception for all attendees at the World of Solutions area from 5-7PM. So, lots to do here. Later...