Cisco Live 2023 Recap – “I’ve headed west…”

So, I attended my first Cisco Live conference this year in Las Vegas, NV and overall it was a great experience. I was able to hang out with a good friend and mentor of mine, after roughly a 10 year hiatus. Of course I ended up walking right by him as I didn’t even see him; even as he was calling my name out 🤣. In addition, I was also able to meet up “in person” with a few other engineers both from work (including a fellow ‘Black OPs’ engineer/homie “El Duderino”) as well as some other conference-goers (yep, I just made that up). We also got to meet some vendors, and people who work at Cisco. Oh right, and a few of us even got to bring COVID back home with us; so that was exciting. And that’s also the reason I waited to write this article up.

Being a "not quite fully recovered" glutton for punishment, I started my Monday off bright and early at the Testing Center… And before you get way too excited, I did not end up passing the exam. Which was 100% fine, as I wanted to see what this “DevNet Thing” was all about.

So, after the exam it was off to the breakout sessions. I did attend the following sessions (listed below in no particular order), and I’m probably forgetting a couple, pero bueno… Asi soy yo…

• BRKSEC-2347 – ISE Deployment Staging and Planning <– Dear Uncle Cisco, I still can’t download this presentation.
• BRKSEC-2091 – ISE Design, Deploy & Best Practices
• BRKEWN-2087 – High Density Wi-Fi Design, Deployment, and Optimization
• BRKXAR-2016 – Reimagining secure and reliable network architectures to power Hybrid Work
• BRKSEC-1240 – If you don’t have a Security Reference Architecture, you must get one!
• BRKENS-2092 – BGP EVPN in Enterprise Campus / Building Scalable Fabrics with Catalyst 9000 Switches
• BRKSEC-3320 – Demystifying TLS Decryption and Encrypted Visibility Engine on Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense
• BRKSEC-1138 – Cisco Defense Orchestrator Manage Your Cisco Firewalls Anywhere
• BRKCRT-3001 – FirePower Threat Defense Automation using API’s
• BRKNWT-2201 – How Carrier Neutral Facilities (CNF) are Transforming Enterprises to Digitally Converged Architecture <– I missed this session b/c of my flight timing on Thursday.

I think all of the sessions are now available on the Cisco Live Website, so feel free to browse/pa-roose around the interwebs and the site for other stuff that may tickle your fancy… I also heard a rumor that I would be getting some Continuing Education Credits for most of the sessions I attended. “Go on…”

I did get to swing by the Certifications Lounge/area, on one of my many walks of the floor, and I picked up some CCIE Swag. Sorry Dr. Banner 🧪, I wasn’t able to grab another shirt for you, lmao. I look forward to my brothers “War Machine”, “John Wick” and “Surferdude” joining me there one day (despues del Lab examen). Mentor sessions are in process for them and the goal of course is to make them better than I am, and for them to unlock their full potential.

However, I did have enough time to partake in a few “off the beaten path” items… Including some sightseeing:

Some “Stress relief excersizes”

Quite a bit of “Team Building” between all of us. Although, I confess that I must learn the ways of “El Duderino…” Including walking into events prior to them being open with ease and “seizing” the moment as well as other stuff. 🤣🤣🤣 <– see what i did there? Then again, we were “chatted up” and sought after multiple times together after midnight while continuing to “Team Build” so maybe that charm is in fact rubbing off on me. 🤣🤣🤣

Being me, I did try to sneak in a mentoring session with my mentor, however he was not interested… Not in the slightest… Below is how hard core Network Architects avoid their mentees… 🤣

So like a good mentee, I did attempt to get his attention while trying to catch him, but I wasn’t able to… Not even in the “Stark-Mobile”… 🤓

All in all, it was a great experience (see below), I did enjoy meeting some new people and catching up with some old friends. The content was great and the speakers were very knowledgeable. I’m looking forward to putting some of the stuff I learned to use both at work and at home as well as returning one day to the conference.

So along with the good times, I did come home with COVID (yaaaay adulting). I’m finally feeling somewhat better.

Keep learning and keep making a better version of yourself!

– Stark out.