Six weeks ago Cisco Live US 2023 in Las Vegas closed the doors and a save the date announcement for Cisco Live US 2024 reached me. It motivated me to write down six reasons to attend next years event. In 2024, Cisco Live US will be held again in Las Vegas, Nevada. Obviously there are many more reasons to attend than just Sin City and I want to highlight the most important ones to me personally as well as a review. Besides the stressful traveling from Europe with an eleven hour flight (fortunately direct flights round trip for me) and managing the time difference of nine hours, Cisco Live US 2023 was again a real blast for me overall.

Welcome to Cisco Live

My six reasons

1. The People

Cisco Live is all about the people and the people make this event to an awesome event. You will meet friends, coworkers, or ex-coworkers which you haven’t see for some time. You will meet virtual friends from several social media platforms again or for the first time which is a great experience getting to know each other face to face rather than online. You will make new friends and get to know new business partners and much more. Don’t miss the chance to book a Meet the Engineer (MTE) to connect and exchange with outstanding tech people from Cisco. The opportunity to meet and connect with people face to face is an underestimate value in live which can’t be compensated using online meetings. Attend Cisco Live because of the people!

Cisco VIP Dinner

2. The Sessions

Breakouts, Broadcasts, Customer Success Stories, Demos, DevNet, Instructor-led Labs, IT Leadership, Innovation Talks, Keynotes, Partner Case Studies, Techtorial, Workshops or whatever session you booked, in very most cases you will not be disappointed about the content delivered to you. For the sessions I attended, I could see a slightly increase in the quality of contents and how the presentations were being held. It seemed to me that they brought a lot of the feedback from the attendees into the sessions and therefore it is important to provide an honest feedback at the end of each session. The same increase was for the Instructor-led Lab sessions. I would like to highlight and recommend five sessions I attended. Every session is from a different type to show you an example of what type of sessions are available:

  • BRKATO-2106 - Ansible Network Automation, GitOps for NetOps

    A presentation style session type with a duration between 45-90 minutes. In this case it was a 60 minutes deep dive into Ansible used within GitOps for NetOps. The session was a split presentation between between Sean Cavanaugh from RedHat and Adrian Iliesiu from Cisco DevNet. They showed a simple network as code example where a Git repository was the Source of Truth (SoT). Pull requests started the automation workflow for applying changes. Very cool and a really recommended session for all NetDevOps geeks.

  • DEVNET-3008 - Extending CML: Terraforming the Lost City

    A 20 or 45 minutes DevNet presentation session. Quinn Snyder took us into the Lost City and showed us how to use Terraform and Atlantis how to track changes in Pull-Requests for review and approve. It was very cool session which shows once more how important it is to use the tools to build processes within the automation path on your network.

  • DEVWKS-2033 - Hands-on HVAC Python SDK!

    A 20 or 45 minutes DevNet workshop session with hands-on following a step-by-step lab guide while Kareem Iskander guided us through it. Hashicorp Vault is a really great tool to manage your app secrets or credentials. Its API is easy to consume. There is a similar learning lab called Securing your API Token with Vault and Github repository for Securing your API authentication keys with Vault available.

  • CISCOU-3000 - The Future of Network Operations in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

    A 20 to 45 minutes session presentation at the Cisco U. theater held at the Cisco Learning & Certification booth. The magician John Capobianco brought his assistant ChatGBT and showed us some magic tricks how AI could potentially support with network monitoring and troubleshooting. You can watch all session recordings on the Cisco U. YouTube channel and I would subscribe to the channel if you do not want to miss upcoming sessions.

  • LTRCRT-3100 - Building Python Applications for DevNet Professional and Expert Candidates

    A four hour instructor-led lab session including a short introduction and then hands-on experiences till the end. It is an extra paid session which need to be booked in advance, but I promise it will bring you a really good value. Hank Preston and Akhila Pamukuntla provided an awesome lab with three challenges where we had to build Python applications. I can highly recommend this lab for all DevNet Professional and Expert candidates.

Please click on the following link to find out more about the different session types at Cisco Live. Most of the Cisco Live sessions are available on-demand on the Cisco Live website. I tried to add the links for the sessions mentioned above as they are available of writing this post.

3. Learning & Certification

The Cisco Learning & Certification booth is the best place to meet and connect with your Cisco Learning Network community peers. Share and exchange your knowledge about your certification journeys. Hang out at the Cisco U. theater and attend really great sessions with the change to win one of the many raffles. Get in touch with the incredible Learning & Certification team, ask your questions, and get the latest updates. Last but not least, don’t miss to take a look at the latest version of Cisco Modeling Labs. It is always worth to visit the booth and spend some time there.

4. The DevNet Zone

Apart from the session presentations and workshops, Cisco’s developer community is present in the DevNet Zone. If you want to learn, code, inspire an connect, this is the right place where you can innovate with Cisco technologies and platforms. Check out Five Reasons You Need To Visit the DevNet Zone Every Day of Cisco Live and add it to my six reasons for next year. As I am preparing for the DevNet Expert lab exam right now, I spent a lot of time here and attended many DevNet sessions and workshops.

5. The World of Solutions

The World of Solutions is the place for Cisco, partners, learning, networking – all in one place. You can explore 500,000 square feet of interaction and engagement from Cisco products and technologies and other leading technology companies. There are presentations, live hands-on demos, raffles, quizzes, and many more to discover. One highlight was the Cisco football stadium booth and the opportunity to take a picture with the NFL Super Bowl trophy, the Vince Lombardi Trophy.

Super Bowl

6. The Party

The party is final the highlight after an intense week full of learning. Enjoy good music and performances from extraordinary artists while eating and drinking. Calm down and reflect the past days before the final day and Cisco Live closes the doors until next time. This year we were lucky to visit the home of Las Vegas Raiders football team, the Allegiant stadium. We also have Gwen Stefani and Blake Shelton performing live on stage. What a great night!

Party

Conclusion

No matter which Cisco Live you can attend, it is always worth it. There is no question about it. The people you meet and the content you get delivered to learn is overwhelming and priceless. I hope the above mentioned reasons will help you decide whether to attend Cisco Live or even help convince your manager. You might leave out the party when you propose to your boss, but other than that there are certainly good reasons to attend. Hope to see you in Amsterdam or Las Vegas next year and feel free to use the comment section to leave a comment or even add your personal reasons to attend.