Natalen

Len Ledford

My first trip to Las Vegas and my first Cisco Live.  I had an idea of what to expect based on all I had heard and learned from my colleagues.  However, nothing can prepare you for the Grand Scale of this event.  I have always heard that everything is big in Texas, well Las Vegas and Cisco Live are on their own scale.   Take good shoes, you will get your steps in, yepper about 20K steps per day.  I quickly learned to use the shuttle buses and plan my days carefully. 

I stayed at the MGM Grand which was a few blocks away from the Mandalay Bay Convention Center.  To be able to walk between the MGM Grand and the Mandalay Bay Convention center totally indoors was new to me.  While it did take a few times to learn how to navigate this path, I did find the shuttle buses a great relief.  Cisco hosts a buffet breakfast each morning in the basement of the MGM Grand that is very well done, and after eating it was a short walk to the shuttle bus line.  I was skeptical of the efficiency of the shuttle bus service at first but was pleasantly surprised at how organized the service is.   Once at the Convention Center there were people everywhere giving directions to all the different offerings.  This made navigating the event much less stressful for me.   Cisco really has logistics dialed in, which allowed me to focus on the important things at the conference. 

The breakout sessions are amazing and such a valuable venue to learn in.  Sitting in the room with the subject matter expert discussing the various technologies is amazing.  I found that all the speakers are not only experts on the topic presented but the surrounding technologies.  The ability to talk about how to deploy and manage the products in the real world helps me know how to position the product.   I focused on Data Center Interconnect and the new Cisco Security offerings around XDR and Meraki.  I had scheduled my sessions to take advantage of the continuing education credits to help keep hard earned certifications current. The level of insight and depth these sessions offer is amazing, the speakers have a great way of taking a very complex topic and breaking it down into bit size pieces that are much easier to understand.  It was an honor to meet these speakers and ask a question or just stand and listen to others ask questions and learn from the real-world use cases/issues that are being experienced.

I was chosen in 2022 to be a Cisco Champion and was accepted again for the 2023 and 2024 years.  It was really good to meet the other Champions in person who I read their post or have co hosted Cisco Pod Cast with.  The behind-the-scenes tours, the opportunity to be in a whisper suite, meeting different people from Cisco world.  What I like about he Champions program the most is to be part of a community that uses and promotes the Cisco products.  I have learned to step out and participate in pod cast and now begin to blog about the topics I work with daily.

I took the CCDE written exam on Wednesday afternoon and honestly, I was exhausted.  The room was packed and very cold, making this a very uncomfortable experience.  I had not studied enough and was caught off guard on some of the topics on the exam.  Needless to say, I did not pass the exam, but sitting for the exam was an eye opener to what I needed to do to pass this exam.  When I return to Cisco Live, I will plan my exam earlier in the conference so I will not be so tired and distracted.

The CCDE is a path I am wanting to pursue.  I decided to take the CCDE Practical Exam Practice Lab on Thursday morning; I was amazed and humbled by this exam.  The amount of reading and breadth of knowledge is a mountain that must be tackled one step at a time.  I know I have a difficult path to pass the practical exam, however after taking this lab I feel confident that this is an achievable goal.  The testing engine is one of the easiest and most intuitive I have encountered.  It was an honor to meet Zig Zsiga, Rick Bauer, and Mark Holm in this tectorial.  Zig signed his new book The Official CCDE Cert Guide.

I am looking forward to attending another Cisco Live, and this time it will still be an amazing opportunity.