Meraki DevNet Express: 2-days, Hands-on Learning Event

If you were at CLUS 2019 in San Diego this year, you may have heard some rumblings around the beach campfire about a new offering in the DevNet Express portfolio. Those rumblings were true as we were running a beta version of the new DevNet Express focusing on Meraki.

Over the Saturday and Sunday prior to CLUS, a group of developers were introduced to REST APIs, Python, and most importantly, integrations with the Meraki platform. Now, after processing the experience from that event and making some tweaks, I can proudly say that we are officially launching the Meraki DevNet Express track starting today!

DevNet Express Events – An instructor-led, hands-on, coding experience

If you’re not familiar with a DevNet Express event, it is a *free* two-day intensive course that allows those interested in Cisco technologies the opportunity to have an instructor-led, hands-on, coding experience: attendees listen, learn, and put their learnings into practice through hands-on missions, and get rewarded for completing them. The first day of content is an introduction to foundational aspects of software integration, focusing on REST APIs and a crash course in Python. The second day is technology specific, depending on the event’s focus.

In addition to offering DevNet Express events for Cisco DNA (enterprise networking), Cloud Collaboration, Data Center Infrastructure, and Security, now we’re excited to add Meraki to the family!

Getting hands-on learning with Meraki at the Meraki DevNet Express
event during Cisco Live 2019 in Las Vegas.

What you’ll learn at a Meraki DevNet Express event?

Glad you asked! Meraki is Cisco’s fully cloud managed networking infrastructure. This means that even though all the hardware like switches (MS series), security/SD-WAN appliances (MX series), access points (MR series) are on likely on premise, the controller (i.e. Meraki’s Dashboard) is in the cloud! What this means from an operational standpoint is that all Meraki devices are plug-and-play out of the box and configured in one place. Most importantly, however, almost all management and configuration control is accessible via REST API. This provides the opportunity for organizations to produce scripts and applications that support robust and repeatable configuration, management, and monitoring that EXACTLY meet the needs of executing their IT business. This two-day intensive event will give you the tools to get started with those APIs.

The first day is foundational and designed as “no experience necessary”. We will cover software development environments, REST APIs, and an introduction to the Python programming language. Then, on day two, we delve into the Meraki-specific bits. You’ll be first introduced to what is called the “Dashboard API”. This will give you the baseline understanding of how to use REST APIs, and their corresponding documentation, to interact with the dashboard to configure your networks and devices. After that we will move into the various monitoring APIs offered, covering webhook based alerts and location analytics. As part of that module you’ll also get hands on with both the REST and MQTT APIs available with the MV series smart cameras. Finally, as if that weren’t all enough, we will work through the mechanism behind external captive portals and how they are built and configured (you know…those splash pages you get when you’re at a coffee shop or hotel…we will learn how those work). At the end of your experience, you will have a working knowledge of all of Meraki’s integration points allowing you to build solutions with Meraki at the heart of it all.

Ok, um, that sounds awesome…where can I attend one???

Between DevNet, Cisco partners, and Cisco Systems Engineers, we’ve held 300+ DNE events all over the world! Here is our current list of events.

Our first Meraki DevNet Express is scheduled for October 15 and 16 in Atlanta GA. If you’re interested in attending, take a look at the website and apply for a place. There’ll be many more DevNet Express for Meraki events coming up over the coming months, so keep an eye out for one near you!

Check out all the Meraki resources available on DevNet.