I Went to the World's Largest Networking Event!

[00:00] I haven't been here since 2019.

[00:16] I'm taking my entire team to the largest networking conference in the world, This is 22,000 people gathering in one place to talk about one thing,

[00:28] and it happens every year, but this year it feels different. There was kind of a heaviness in the air because of the obvious thing. Ai. It felt like everyone was coming to this to find answers, get direction,

[00:42] what should we be doing? But that's not a new thing for Cisco Live. In fact, and I didn't even attend it. It's 2017, I just poured the crappiest cup of corporate coffee you'll ever taste.

[00:57] Instead of working like I should have been, was the live stream of the opening keynote Cisco Live. This thing was cool. They had these LED balls moving in sync with the music around the stadium and

[01:12] Chuck Robbins took the stage to tell us all about what was new with networking I felt like I had the coolest job in the world because I did, let's be honest, a job that barely anyone knows about, which is part of the allure of Cisco Live.

[01:25] And I begged to go to Cisco Live that year. I'd never been, but my job said, no. it's $3,000 for a ticket plus travel and accommodation. I couldn't afford that,

[01:38] template to fill out and send to your boss, which I did. They still said no, Well download the official Cisco recommendation template than Z did up a little

[01:51] And then I copied him and yep. In fact, I think most people are there because their company paid them to go, A strange thing that I took advantage of in 2018 and 2019,

[02:05] it lived up to the hype. I encountered a thing, an event, but then I didn't go for six years and for some reason I'm coming back in

[02:17] 2025. Why? I think I want to discover that spark, I want to find that again. the San Diego Convention Center, which is where Cisco Live was held this year,

[02:34] It got me thinking, how did this happen? How did this start? The first Cisco Live was called networkers. It's 1989.

[02:48] 200 people are crammed into a stuffy hotel conference room in Palo Alto, computer networking was still a new thing ahead of its time, kind of like AI is now, which it's kind of weird. It feels like this year.

[03:00] This guy had actually been to Cisco live before it was called Cisco Live. So that Cisco live a long time ago, 1995. What was it like? Networkers. What was it like? How was it different from now?

[03:16] Oh, a lot of different topics. Yeah, and the Protocol Wars were raging Max chatting over Apple talk Novell file servers blasting IPX VAX customers on deck net.

[03:29] Banyan Vines keeping ENO alive. Most of you have no idea what I just said. I barely did. And while TCP IP eventually won enterprises in the eighties, figuring out how to make them work together.

[03:42] they had just come out with their Cisco Ag GSA multi-protocol router, They needed a big whiteboard session just to tell everyone and teach everyone.

[03:55] But this wasn't just a big plug for Cisco. This was the pioneers of networking, It was half summer camp, half Apollo Mission War Room knowledge is power is what the CEO at the time John

[04:11] And this event was rare because customers were interfacing with the very They were even giving feature requests, But it wasn't just knowledge they were sharing. They were sharing community.

[04:29] but they were building one of these strongest tech communities out there. Hey, it's time for a coffee break. My coffee's right here. Hold on. twin Gate. Twin Gate. If you've been watching me for a while,

[04:43] We could not get here, be here and do things at Cisco live without Twin Gate. I brought my entire editing team here to make videos and lemme tell you,

[04:55] we have a lot of assets back at our studio that we have to access. right now on my phone, I got the Twin Gate app, connects me back to my studio. Right before I was leaving, this is story time.

[05:09] the servers that I had running Twin Gate died two Prox Maxs host Power outage as twin Gate makes it stupid easy to deploy a connector and get access to

[05:22] everything you need just like this. What's cool though is it's not VPN, add config. No, no, no. You just drop in a quick command, run it in Docker, run it in Linux. It's amazing. It took me like 10 seconds.

[05:37] Huge shout out to Twin Gate. They are a vendor I trust I use every day, check them out. Show some love Coffee Break. Over. By the mid nineties,

[05:50] US and in the world. Yeah, they had gone global. It kept getting bigger Year, That was my last Cisco live.

[06:02] And while it started with the focus on sharing knowledge and building community, They had these giant customer appreciation events with some big names like the

[06:15] Blue Man Group, Weezer Journey, imagine Dragons, Lenny Kravitz. They would even have famous people come to these people who I don't think even knew that networking was a thing. Like my favorite actor, Brian Cranston.

[06:27] Heisenberg came to Cisco Live. They even rented out Harry Potter World one year. And Cisco Live was also known for announcing big things, they debuted the CCIE certification,

[06:41] the first expert level networking certification. In 1998, The CCNA is still the best IT certification in the world. In 2006, 2007, things started to change. This is when it went from networkers to Cisco Live.

[06:56] They're kind of shifting from being just a pure training bootcamp to being more which you can see right here. making, which this year it was ai, ai, ai, everything, ai,

[07:12] they announced the DevNet zone, creating a space for developers, not just network engineers to come and hang out. And then in 2017 and 2018, we see these roles start to emerge. Intent-based networking. IBN was a thing.

[07:27] Cisco announced their DNA center and SD wan. It was that year that Suzy, which scared me to death in 2019. They refreshed all their certifications, and then something happened in 2020 and there was no conference virtual only.

[07:43] but it wasn't that in-person experience that people were used to. We didn't see Cisco Live come back to an in-person event until 2022. The attendance hasn't fully recovered since before COVID. This year,

[07:58] we're going to see again 22,000 people. But I will say the excitement, And even though it's been six years since I last came to a Cisco Live coming

[08:10] back, I'm excited. The community, they just embraced me again. Honestly, I was overwhelmed seeing old friends making new ones. This is probably the coolest IT community I've ever been part of,

[08:22] the Cisco Live of today is a mix of education and community. you have community events. Then you also have sessions, technical sessions where you'll go to learn the latest and greatest things.

[08:37] I would watch replays of these events. I think I learned more in the six days I was at Cisco Live than I did the rest

[08:50] I took it in and went to a bunch of sessions and learned quite a bit. So. you often do learn more in one week than you will the entire year, It's worth it for them.

[09:04] It's a time for you to step away from the business of your job where you barely And you get a chance to look at the industry as a whole and get to exchange increase your skillset and learn how to do your job better. And I'm telling you,

[09:18] I brought my friend Rachel with me and looking around. She said, this feels like one big brain. Everyone's here to just learn. It's the nerdiest most wonderful place. I'm telling you, it's so fun.

[09:34] why do you keep coming back to Cisco life? and while many will say they come for the sessions to learn stuff, that's definitely a key thing. The main thing they come for is the community,

[09:49] Relationships are so valuable. Just connecting with people. you start forming those connections with people that you never get even when

[10:02] I know I've already met a few people that I'm like, man, I think you and I should link up after this and figure out where this It's a great experience interacting with other people.

[10:15] Talking to people like yourself I think is a great thing. Cisco Live is one of those events where now here I get a

[10:27] chance to meet in real life all of the remote networks that I made and kind of renew those kind of a yearly Okay, so now Cisco Live 2025. Did it change me?

[10:44] Did it light that same spark I had back in 2017 sitting in my cubicle with a crappy cup of coffee? Yeah, I think it did. Being there physically there with all these people who love technology and

[10:56] David Baal made a joke during our interview. He's like, oh, Because I kind of taken a field trip to other technologies on my channel hacking

[11:10] but it's kind of taken a backseat. But I got to tell you, this event has made me fall in love with networking again. It's reminded me the importance of a network for everything. Now,

[11:23] especially with ai. Like with ai, they need us more than anybody else now. AI will be nowhere without the switches and the routing that make everything And while there was some uneasiness about AI and what it might do to the

[11:37] overall people were excited, ready to learn that next new thing, the people I want to associate with. So I think I will start making networking content again.

[11:53] That's what Cisco Live did for me. And I probably, definitely, yes. I'm going to go to Cisco Live 2026. I think it's in Vegas. I'll be there. I would love to meet you again. Let's do another photo.

[12:07] you will not regret it. That's all I got. I'll catch you guys next time.