New DevNet Express for Meraki to Premier at Cisco Live

300 DevNet Express events in 50 countries – thank you!

Why is the fact that we’re offering the first ever DevNet Express for Meraki the weekend before Cisco Live in San Diego so exciting? Well… not only is a DevNet Express for Meraki something we’ve been asked for many, many times over the past few months, we’ve also just hit a milestone of delivering 300 DevNet Express events in 50 countries!

With 10 events running this week alone in Finland, Portugal, Bosnia and Herzegovina, United States, Canada, the UK, France and Romania, the DevNet Express event format truly seems to be working. For those not yet familiar, the DevNet Express format brings learners together with experts for a guided, hands-on learning experience, where you listen, learn, and then put your learnings into practice. To see a more technical view of the history of a DevNet Express, take a look at this blog post from my colleague Adrian Iliesiu.

Oh – and they’re free to attend. Did I mention that?

Getting support from proctors at a DevNet Express

A big thank you to everyone who’s attended one so far, and all those who’ve contributed towards making it happen.

Now let’s take a closer look at the new DevNet Express for Cisco Meraki …

DevNet Express for Cisco Meraki

The DevNet Express for Meraki event takes place on Saturday and Sunday (June 8-9) in San Diego and is open to Network Operation Managers, Network Engineers, Network Solutions Architects and Application Developers (web and mobile) interested in provisioning, configuring, hardening, monitoring, and analyzing their organization’s networks.

You’ll learn how to use the Meraki APIs to automate tasks such as:

VLAN management

Layer 3 firewall creation

Network device management

By the end of the two days, you’ll have become familiar with all the Meraki integration points, having fully-provisioned and configured a Meraki network, extended its offering with the addition of network/physical space monitoring, captive portal engagement, client location tracking/analytics, and people detection. All this will set you up to be able to craft your own solutions, that can be built and deployed in a Meraki environment using these integrations.

If you’re interested in attending, we advise you to find out more on the website and register quickly as there are limited places available. It’s free to attend, but don’t let the price fool you…the value is immense!

What’s the DevNet Express format and how does it work?

We all know that one of the best ways to learn about anything at all is to understand it, see it working, and then try it out for yourself. Whether we’re learning how to speak a foreign language, figuring out how to assemble a bookshelf, or yes – interested in using APIs to automate a network … the principle is the same: we need to listen, learn and put our learnings into practice. And THAT’S what’s done at a DevNet Express, with trainers and proctors at-hand every step of the way.

Completing a Mission results in Stamps and Prizes

And it’s not called ‘Express’ for nothing! It’s a truly immersive experience, designed to appeal to both the hackathon-goer (interested in picking things up and then competing to win prizes) and also the traditional conference attendee (who might shy away from the hackathon approach).

Attendees are asked about their level of experience when they sign up, and the answers are borne in mind during the event.

If we see someone struggling during a hands-on exercise or a mission, we point more proctors in their direction to help them. And what’s best of all is that other attendees step in to help when they see their skills are needed. True team work!

Making it easy

How do we manage to run so many in so many countries at the same time? That’s where I, and the rest of the DevNet-in-a-Box team, come in. Our mission is to do everything possible to enable our expert proctors (Cisco SEs and now partners too) to put on a DevNet Express at the touch of a button – from spinning up the website the registration site, the technology-enablement, the email invitations, the slides and training videos, and enabling tech support if a problem happens on-site.

By taking the event management side of things away from the trainers and proctors, it means that they can concentrate on doing just that: training and proctoring so that you can listen, learn and put it into practice!

DevNet Express for Meraki joins existing DevNet Express tracks for:

Cisco DNA

Cloud Collaboration

Data Center Infrastructure

Security

Check out the full schedule of upcoming DevNet Express events

To capture the spirit of a DevNet Express in under 3 minutes, take a look at this:

Join DevNet: access the learning labs, docs, and sandboxes you need for network automation, application development, and security.