Background

Another year, another CiscoLive in Melbourne. This is third time lucky for me. When i joined Cisco, I dreamt of attending CiscoLive. To my surprise, it was not open to everyone and as a staff member, I had to perform duties to get my golden ticket. So in 2016, I presented a breakout session. In 2017, I attended as a customer and this year I ran the automation demo at the DNA hero stand.

In this blog post, I will like to share my top 5 tips to maximising the value of CiscoLive.

Meet Experts All Of The Time

Many of the folks from the BU fly in to assist with CiscoLive. It is a great opportunity to ask them hard questions. In addition, any feedback and feature request will go a long way as they heavily influence the road map. You can usually see them at Meet The Expert stand in WOS (World of Solutions) or at the Innovation Suites. Your account team can sometimes arrange meetings outside of these avenue if they are unavailable. However the best way to ensure a time slot is locked in, is to reach out to your account team as early as possible.

Explore World of Solutions

This is the best place to see all the demos, partners and sponsors. It is recommended to spend a day exploring this area. Food is provided here during allocated times of the day. Many attendees forget this and complain. There are also a lot of freebies and prize draws throughout the week. I am now the proud owner of a light up spinner pen, socks and webcam covers. Remember to swing past the CCIE booth to get your ribbon and cap. Finally, there are usually happy hour on Tuesday and Wednesday night

Silver Lining

Some attendees are not fortunate to get a full conference pass. However you are still able to access DevNet and self paced labs, If i was in this situation, I would watch the technical break out session from earlier CiscoLive. Attend the keynotes and smash out the labs. I had a colleague that went one year and sat in the labs for 4 days. He returned to the office and automated all our configuration templates in Ansible. Thus, reducing project timelines for this activity from 3 weeks to 3 days across 20 project streams a year. Imagine the potential time saving over the next coming years.

CiscoLive Certified Industry Expert

CiscoLive helps keep you up to date and learn new technology. Comparing the cost to other training programs, it is quite cost effective. I have been to vendor training that cost 2.5 times more. It is best to reach out to your management team and arrange for this to be part of your development plan. Your management team can then work with the account team to get this over the line. CiscoLive Melbourne 2019 dates has already been announced so it will be a good thing to bring up in your next one on one.

The Human Network

CiscoLive is a great opportunity to catch up with old colleagues and customers. There are many social events around CiscoLive’s main schedule. If you find a night that you have nothing arranged. Reach out to your account team early and they will assist you to obtain an invite to a social event that is aligned to your industry or technology stream.

Conclusion

It was awesome to experience stand duty at CiscoLive Melbourne 2018. Thanks to all the attendees, colleagues and friends that visit my stand. I hope to see everyone next year and can’t wait to discover new solutions. I hope this blog helps you plan for 2019 and if you have any tips to share, comment below.