CLUS - Wifijanitors Blog

CLUS 2014

Well, another Cisco Live has come and passed. And again, it was a great time with the tweeps (twitter people for the unknowing).

Again this year I was astounded by the huge sense of community and togetherness that comes when geeks let their flags fly. I think the only session I made was the Cisco Champions radio, but that session was so much fun.

Click here for more about the Cisco Champions

I think what I like best about #CLUS is the ability to have an intelligent conversation almost anywhere. Sitting around the Social Media Routed Bridge, Lunch, Dinner…everywhere.

Wednesday evening comes to mind, where a group of us were sitting in a cigar shop after the CAE, and talked to a voice engineer, CCIE candidate about why he should be on twitter! The best part of this, was when Renee joined in and explained how it helped Aaron study. Growing the community, getting people involved, helping each other, THAT is what it is about!

Or Thursday evening sitting in the lobby of the Hilton talking about SDN and wireless enjoying the “hometown gift” that Scott Morris brought with him.

Getting to meet the greatest people EVAR! like:
Denise Fishburne

Denise Donahue

John Schreiner Capt USMC @jschrein

Carole Reece @cwreese

and many many more.

as well as just hanging around the best people in the world!

Some parting questions. If you didn’t enjoy #CLUS2014, why? What can you do next year to make it more enjoyable?

If you’re not part of the community, why? Why are you not participating, sharing, and growing with the all of us?

Lesson learned? When you need a little bit of luck, kiss a unicorn!

CLUS T-Shirt Order

It is that time again ladies and gentlemen. Time to place your order for the 2014 #CLUS shirt!

I will leave ordering open until Monday April 14th. Once I have all the orders, I’ll be able to finalize the pricing and email/DM everyone with the costs.

Please leave your shirt size and twitter handled in the comments.

Cisco Live 2013 aka Geeks in the Swamp

So being my first blog post, cause you know I heard somewhere this was the thing to do between tweets..thanks Amy (@CommsNinja) decided I’d revisit why I didn’t blog in the past, and why I’m going to be doing it in the future. So why is this titled “Cisco Live 2013 aka Geeks in the Swamp”? Well the picture above has a lot of tweeps and bloggers that finally made me rethink, and it’s where I was last week.

The Why I Didn’t

Basically, I could call it laziness and that would be a part of it, but not the whole truth. The biggest reason I didn’t blog was I couldn’t really find anything that “I” found interesting enough to blog about.

Let’s be honest, I work with wireless and oh yes it is definitely an interesting technology. But after ~5 years in TAC there wasn’t a whole lot I haven’t seen, broken, fixed, played with or snarked about. It was multiple conversation at Cisco Live this year, Tom (@networkingnerd) Andrew (@revolutionwifi) Colin (@colinmcnamara) Amy A.(@amyengineer), and way too many others to realistically list here, that made me realize it’s not what “I” find interesting, it’s what I can share to help others grow!! *facepalm* It really is that simple

The Why I Will

There are two main reasons why I decided I should kick off a blog, one is to share knowledge around wireless/BYOD which is kind of a passion of mine, and to help me document my learning of scripting (Python, Puppet etc).

Cisco Live 2013

Let’s call it what it is, Geek-vana! A bunch of really really smart people all getting together to share knowledge, see old and new friends, and let our Geek flags fly.

In years past (2006/2007/2008) I was stuck in TSC (Technical Solutions Center), and last year sitting in session after session. wHile I did learn a good bit during the sessions, this year I took a different tact. This year, it was all about the social aspects of the conference. I spent a vast majority of my time in the Social Media Hub. Chatting with new friends I met on twitter over the year, old friends I met at other events, and listening. Yes, I listened, amazing right!? Funny thing is when I did I heard the same thing. Blog, Bacon, Blog, Cloud, SDN, Blog, Unicorn and Bacon.

But being in the Hub also allowed me to be agile of calendar. I could go to the side meetings and briefings, there were a few where I thought I’d just listen and not have anything to share…turns out that I was incorrect about that.

To sum up, I learned a lot during the breakouts, where the network is going, why Engineers need to learn some scripting, what cloud can do for me, how many others enjoy bacon (really who doesn’t!), and that I should blog.

I call it a net win for the week.

So the long and short..pay attention kiddies.