The Cisco Live 2022 in Las Vegas was my first one in the US after nine attendances in Europe so far. After almost two years of cancellations due to the COVID-19 pandemic it was so good to attend an in-person live event again. The indescribable feeling and value of meeting people face to face, talking (not only about technologies), joking, laughing, hugging, celebrating, and many more things is what matters for human beings.

I had the great pleasure to meet a lot of my Social Media connections from LinkedIn and Twitter, and of course from the Cisco Learning Network and from the Cisco Champion group. It was a lot of fun and a pleasure to built even more close relationships and friendships with many people I only knew virtual until then.

Cisco Champions

Pic.1 - Cisco Champions group photo.


My personal focus of technical sessions was pretty much dominated by topics around the Cisco DevNet Expert certification. After achieving the Cisco Certified DevNet Professional in June I started collecting information about the lab exam for the preparation journey. Therefore I booked a dedicated techtorial session, a related hands-on lab session and I spent a lot of time in the DevNet zone attending various workshops.

By the way if you are interested in achieving the Cisco Certified DevNet Professional I wrote a knowledge base article which was published in the Cisco Learning Network about my Road to the Cisco Certified DevNet Professional. Please visit it if you are interested and leave a comment with a feedback.

My Sessions

Below you will find the list of sessions I attended during Cisco Live but missing some DevNet workshops I was just listening and not actively participating because I didn’t get a seat:

Most of sessions except the extra paid sessions are also available on the Cisco Live on-demand library or on the Cisco Developer Network Learning Lab Center. The links on the list will take you to the sessions available. Now I want to highlight the extra paid sessions I attended and share what was it about.

TECCRT-3778 - DevNet Expert Techtorial

The four hour techtorial session was very good to get additional insights of the DevNet Expert lab exam. The attendees got many more details how to treat the exam topics during the preparation and that you need carefully go through each topic. Another important thing was how to build your strategy according to the lab format which contains two modules, a three hour “Design” and five hour “Develop, Test, Deploy and Maintain” module. We walked through some sample lab tasks to get a better understanding about the scenarios and its constraints you have to deal with during the exam. It is so important to read carefully and categorize the different parts of the questions into tasks and constraints. It was also very helpful to ask questions directly to the team who built the exam and follow the questions of other attendees. I can highly recommend to book such a session when you plan to take an expert level certification.

LTRCRT-2000 - Building Config Change Confidence with Cisco Modeling Labs and NetDevOps

The four hour lab session was so much fun. There was a lab environment in Cisco Modeling Labs prepared which contained a test and prod environment as well as a developer machine. You had to master different things like manage network configuration in the Git version control system, leverage network test scripts using the pyATS framework and Cisco Modeling Labs APIs. After that you need to build a Continuous Integration / Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipeline definition that automatically deployed network changes using Ansible into the virtual network provided by CML. Final step was to tun the pyATS test scripts to validate the changes and deploy the same configuration into production. It was a really cool lab and very well prepared.

LTRCRT-2000

Pic.2 - Lab session file overview.

Cisco Learning Network VIP’s

One of my personal highlight aside the technical sessions was the VIP dinner of the Cisco Learning Network and Cisco Community. It was really a huge honor and a pleasure for me to be there. I had the chance to connect with the fellow VIP’s and the community team who builds, maintains, and evolves this awesome community. We had a delicious dinner and some cold drinks at very nice bar called the House of Blues located at the Mandalay Bay Hotel. Thank you very much to whole community team for this evening!

Cisco Learning Network VIP Dinner

Pic.3 - Cisco Learning Network VIP Dinner.

Cisco Champion Group

Also many thanks to the Cisco Champion organization team! They did a really awesome job to provide a lot of tours around the Cisco Live which gave us insights while the looking behind the scenes of the Cisco Live NOC, Cisco TV, DevNet Zone, Cisco Store, and many more. It was always nice to look over at the Champion’s lounge and catch up with some fellows while grabbing a coffee.

See you in Amsterdam

The next Cisco Live event for me will be probably the Cisco Live 2023 Amsterdam from February 6-10, 2023. I’m looking forward to see all the friends I made in Las Vegas again in Amsterdam and I hope that there will be more people I already know virtually to connect with in-person. Until then, stay safe and healthy!