Category Archives: Community

Is Cisco Live Still The Place To Be

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You may recall from my post about Cisco Live last year that I talked about legacy and passing the torch to a new generation of people being active at the event. It was a moment where I was happy for what was occurring and thrilled to see the continuation of the community. It’s now a year later and I have a very different outlook on Cisco Live that isn’t nearly as rosy. Which is why I asked the question in the post title.

Destination Unknown

If you are a Cisco customer or partner that wants the latest news about Cisco products and services then Cisco Live is the place you need to be to get them. Sure, you can watch the keynotes virtually and read all the press releases online. However, if you really want to get up close and personal with the technology you have to be there. After all, it was this need to be in-person that inspired our community in the first place. We showed up. We met up. And we made the event even better because we were there.

That was then. 2025 is a different story. The first hints about the situation came when I was walking around on Sunday trying to find the Social Media hub. After all, that’s where the opening meetup usually happens. I went to the area where it was in 2019 only to be greeted by the Social Lounge:

Not very…hubby…is it? As my friend Jordan Martin pointed it, it’s hard to be social with each other when all of the furniture is arranged facing outwards. I found out later that opening meetup was being held in the Cisco NetVet Lounge and not the hub. That’s because the Social Media Hub no longer existed. I should have known that was likely to happen when my friend Kathleen Mudge was let go from her position last year. She had done more than anyone to bring together the social aspects of Cisco Live. She fought for the space and the things that went along with it. The Social Media Hub was present at Cisco Live Europe in February but gone in the US.

The result? A muted meetup. People arrived at 5:00. They waited around for half an hour to take the opening meetup picture. And most of them were gone by 5:45. The schedule said the meetup was supposed to last until 6:30. A few of us looked around and realized that not only was the meetup short this year but that we wouldn’t be able to get back into the NetVet Lounge again because of our Explorer passes and lack of standing. Oh well, time to do something different.

The Monday Banter and Beers party with the Cisco Champions and Tech Field Day delegates was much more what I would have expected an opening meetup to be. Lots of friends chatting and enjoying themselves. Meeting new people. We even closed down the party and kept going. I was able to talk to the people that ran the Cisco Insiders program and told them my feelings on that meetup versus this one. I knew that something felt off but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

The End of the Road?

Fast forward to Thursday afternoon. We had a tradition by now. We go to the closing celebrity keynote. We laugh at the jokes. Then we retire to the social media hub for the closing tweetup until it’s time to take the big sign picture. Then we stay in the hub until they start carrying off the furniture. It’s simple but it works.

This year? No closing keynote. No hub. No sign picture either. We camped out on some couches by the top of the escalators until we got bored and left. No camaraderie as in years past. Aside from the few of us there it really felt like we’d missed closing time somehow. In fact, this was the best picture of the sign I saw. Completely empty.

Part of me is disappointed. I understand that social media has changed for the worse in the past couple of years. It feels like the community that we built on Twitter died when the platform changed radically from what it was into whatever it is now. I’m almost never on it. I spend more of my time on BlueSky now. But the wholesale retreat from all things social felt jarring this year. In twelve months we went from optimistic about the future of the social community to being shocked at the virtual disappearance of it for anyone not directly tied into the success over the years. Honestly, if it wasn’t for us keeping things alive this year I doubt anyone would have realized it at all.

Some of my best friends have come from the social media community at Cisco Live. We talk daily. We reminisce about The Great Beanbag Heist and the Red Bull Incident. We try to figure out how many times Weezer has played and which stadium sounded the best. We groan about going back to Las Vegas for the next few years because we have to balance the ease of logistics with the neon and the heat. But we do it together. We hang out together. We plan together. Those who make it have the fun for those that can’t and the ones that aren’t there swear they’ll be there again next year. We will endure.

What worries me the most is the subtle shift in what this represents. Our social community helped grow into the Insider programs Cisco has today. Our group helped convince people to support Cisco and adopt their solutions. Cisco worked with us to get more people engaged. And now? It feels like we were an afterthought in 2025. Worse still, the focus has shifted. Customers aren’t necessarily driving product direction. Who is Cisco listening to? The people with the money? Or the people wanting to make the money? I can’t honestly answer right now. I’m sure an LLM could help me figure it out but that’s an entirely different story.

Tom’s Take

Cisco Live felt different this year for all the wrong reasons. Things have shifted. It’s not that social isn’t a component of things. It’s that social was practically absent and no one noticed. Many of us are going to continue to do the things we do because we’ve been doing them too long now not to. Maybe that means commandeering couches and holding our own parties. It could mean our group is going to be less visible. But what matters is that we are going to continue to enjoy the event the way we do. Imploding platforms don’t matter. Designated spaces don’t matter. People matter. They always will. And the people are greater than everything.

Argument Farming

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The old standard.

I’m no stranger to disagreement with people on the Internet. Most of my popular posts grew from my disagreement with others around things like being called an engineer, being a 10x engineer, and something about IPv6 and NAT. I’ve always tried to explain my reasoning for my positions and discuss the relevant points with people that want to have a debate. I tend to avoid commenting on people that just accuse me of being wrong and tell me I need to grow up or work in the real world.

Buying the Farm

However, I’ve noticed recently that there have been some people in the realm of social media and influencing that have taken to posting so-called hot takes on things solely for the purpose of engagement. It’s less of a discussion and more of a post that outlines all the reasons why a particular thing that people might like is wrong.

For example, it would be like me posting something about how an apple is the dumbest fruit because it’s not perfectly round or orange or how the peel is ridiculous because you can eat it. While there are some opinions and points to be made, the goal isn’t to discuss the merits of the fruit hierarchy. Instead, it’s designed to draw in people that disagree to generate comments about how apples are, in fact, good fruits and maybe if I tried one some time I would understand. In this example, I would reply to the comment with something along the lines of “thanks for your perspective” or maybe even a flippant question about why you think that way to keep the chain going.

I’ve found that this is very prevalent on platforms that reward engagement over content. Facebook and LinkedIn chiefly spring to mind. The content of the message isn’t as important as how people react to it. The reward isn’t a well-reasoned discussion. It’s people sharing your post and telling you how stupid you are for making it. Or trying to change your mind.

Except I know what I’m doing. I may not even have strongly held beliefs on my post. I may even prefer apples to oranges. The point is to get you all in an uproar and make you drive my post to the top of someone’s feed. A contrarian way to look at things for sure. But it works. Because we’ve rewarded people for making a splash instead of making a case.

Crop Rotation

In the 10x engineer post I linked above, I had no intention of it blowing up. I noticed some things that irked me about the culture we’ve created around the people that do a lot and how we worship their aura without examining the downsides. Naturally, that meant that it got picked up on Hacker News and there were a raft of comments about how I was an idiot and how I’d get fired if I worked for a “real” company because I wasn’t pulling my weight.

I was horrified, to say the least. I didn’t want that kind of engagement. I wanted a reasoned discussion. I wanted people to see my points and engage in debate. I certainly wasn’t trying to specifically craft a post with a contrarian viewpoint explicitly designed to incense the community to drive them to my page or blog. Yet that is exactly how I’m seeing some members of the wider community acting today. The clicks are more important than the words. And if you end up being proven wrong? So be it. Whoops. On to the next hot take!

I wish I had a better method for dealing with this new angle other than just ignoring it. If it’s someone with a legitimate bad viewpoint that could use some guidance or education I am happy to chip in and provide a different viewpoint. However the difference between the occasional post and constant engagement farming for arguments in the comments to drive your view counts higher is disingenuous. Disagreeing with something is one thing. Writing 400 words about how it’s the “worst mistake you can make” or “you should think about what that will mean for your career” are a bit heavy handed. And yes, I’ve seen both of those statements in recent months about something as innocuous as a training class.

Tom’s Take

Healthy disagreement and debate makes us improve. Honest mistakes happen and can be corrected. I have no issue with either of these, even if both sides will never agree. What I take issue with is people being deliberately disingenuous to manipulate algorithms or manufacture outrage for their own ends. I always come back to a simple question: Are you doing this to solve a problem? Or become popular? If the answer is the latter it might be time to put down the plow and ask yourself if the crop you’re sewing is worth it.

Tom’s Virtual Corner at Cisco Live Global 2021 – Anniversary

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We made it through the year that was March 2020. Here were are on the other side trying to find out whatever this normal is supposed to look like. We’re not out of the woods yet but we do know that things aren’t going to be back to the way they were any time soon. That includes the events that we enjoyed traveling to and hanging out at.

Cisco Live has made the decision to go virtual again this year. One can’t blame them to be honest. Travel uncertainty and the potential liability of having a huge event just didn’t make sense. If you thought the old Conference Crud was bad you really don’t want this new-and-improved version! Cisco has also decided that one global event makes more sense than several events scattered across the calendar. That means that Cisco Live Europe and Cisco Live US are now global and happening at the end of March instead of January or June.

With the announcement that everything will be virtual again this year it also means that the social aspect of the event is going to be virtual as well. As much as we would have liked to hang out at Tom’s Corner in Las Vegas and catch up it just won’t be happening. I am a bit disappointed because this year was going to be the tenth anniversary of Tom’s Corner. It’s been a decade since I plopped down in an uncomfortable chair and set out on a quest to meet people. I was hoping to bring back the stool and the table and the corner live in person but it appears that we’ll have to do it some other time.

In the interim, we’re still going to be getting together in just a few weeks! We’re going to be hosting a Webex call just like we did last year so we can all hang out and chat throughout the day. Here are the details:

Date: March 29, 2021

Time: 7am PT – Whenever we get bored!

Where: Virtually via Webex (link will be in the calendar invite)

If you want to take part in the virtual corner, you need to either send an email to tom@networkingnerd.net or send a DM/PM/RRM/DMVPN to me on social media with the email address you want your calendar invitation sent to. If there is no email address I can’t send out the invitation! We’ll send them out as we can to get everyone signed up. You can pop in and out whenever you want. We’ll try to create breakout rooms for those that just want to chat on specific topics and such. It’ll be fun! Provided, that is, that we all keep to some basic ground rules:

  • Disruptive attendees may be removed at the discretion of the hosts.
  • Wheaton’s Law applies. If you think you’re violating it, you probably are.
  • Be respectful of the community. We want this to be positive for everyone and that means everyone is responsible for keeping it that way.

If you have any questions about Tom’s Corner or things in general just ask! I want to thank Gestalt IT for allowing us to host this meeting and continuing to support community engagement and involvement. A huge part of my job is doing things like this and I still continue to be thrilled to have the support of Stephen Foskett, Claire Chaplais, and the rest of the Gestalt IT team when it comes to taking part of my day to interact with you all, virtual or otherwise.

I wish things could have been different as far as Cisco Live this year but we’re going to make the most of what we have. That means virtual for now but rest assured the the next time we can all meet in person we’re going to have a birthday party for Tom’s Corner that will be sung of in legends to come!

The Conundrum of Virtual Conferences

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Okay, the world is indeed crazy. We can’t hide from it or hope that it just blows over sooner or later. We’re dealing with it now and that means it’s impacting our work, our family lives, and even our sanity from time to time. One of the stalwart things that has been impacted by this is the summer conference schedule. We’ve had Aruba Atmosphere, Cisco Live, VMworld, and even Microsoft Ignite transition from being held in-person to a virtual format complete with shortened schedules and pre-recorded sessions. I’ve attended a couple of these so far for work and as an analyst, and I think I’ve figured it out.

If you come to a conference for content and sessions, you’ll love virtual events. If you come for any other reason, virtual isn’t going to work for you.

Let’s break this down because there’s a lot to unpack.

Information Ingestion

Conferences are first and foremost about disseminating information. Want to learn what new solutions and technologies have been launched? It’s probably going to be announced either right before or during the conference. Want to learn the ins-and-outs of this specific protocol? There’s probably a session on it or a chance to ask a professional engineer or architect about it. There’s a lot of content to be consumed at the conference. So much, in fact, that in recent years the sessions have started to be recorded and posted for consumption after the fact. You can now have access to a library of any topic you could ever want. Which comes in really handy when your boss decides in November that you’re going to be the new phone person…

Because all this content has been recorded and published before, transitioning the content to a virtual format is almost seamless. The only wrinkle is that people are going be recording from their home instead of a blast freezer ballroom in the Mandalay Bay. That means you’re going to need tighter control over things like environment and video recordings. Your people are going to have to get good and talking and setting up their screens to be effective. Most good presenters can do this already. Some need some coaching. Most are going to need a few takes to get it right since they aren’t going to be editing together their own video. But the end result is going to be the same. You’re going to have great content to share with people to be consumed over the course of days or weeks or even months.

Keynotes are a little bit harder to quantify in this content category. They are definitely content, just not for tech people. Keynotes are analyst and press fodder. It’s a packaging of the essence of the event in an hour-long (or longer) format designed to hit the important points for tweets and headlines. Keynotes are very, very, very rehearsed. No one tends to go off the script unless it’s absolutely necessary. Even the off-the-cuff remarks are usually scripted and tested for impact ahead of time. If a joke fails to land, just imagine the three others they tried that were worse.

But keynotes at a virtual event can be more impactful. Because you can do some editing you can put together different takes. You can inject some emotion. You can even use it as a platform for creating change. I specifically want to call out the Cisco Live keynote from Chuck Robbins this year. It wasn’t about tech. We didn’t really hear about protocols or hardware. Instead, Chuck used his platform to talk about the drivers of technology. He stood up and told the world how we need to use our talents and our toys to build a better world for ourselves and for everyone around us. Chuck didn’t mince words. He postponed Cisco Live by two weeks to highlight the struggles and causes that are being shown nightly on the news. He wanted us to see the world he and his company are trying to help and build up. And he used the keynote slot to push that message. No flashy numbers or sparkly hardware. Just good, old fashioned discussion.

Virtual Hallways

Every positive thing should have something corresponding to balance it out. And for virtual conferences, it’s the stuff that’s not about content. Ironically enough, that’s the part that I’ve been so steeped in recently. Sure, Tech Field Day produces a lot on content around these events. I’m happy to be able to be a part of that. But the event is more than just videos and slide decks. It’s more than just sitting in uncomfortable chairs in a meat locker nursing a hangover trying to understand the chipset in a switch.

Conferences are as much about community as anything else. They’re about seeing your friends in-person. Conferences are about hallway conversations about random topics and taking a taxi to a bar halfway down the Vegas Strip to meet up with a couple of people and some person you’ve never even heard of. It’s about meeting the co-workers of your friends and pulling them into your circle. It’s about sharing hobbies and life stories and learning about the crazy haircut someone’s kid gave themselves right before they left.

Community matters to me most of all. Because a conference without a community is just a meeting. And that part is missing virtually. I did my best with an attempt to do Tom’s Virtual Corner with our community. I was shocked and pleased at the number of people that joined in. We had over 50 people on the calendar invite and over a dozen connected at any one time. It was wonderful! But it wasn’t the corner that we know and love. It’s not that it wasn’t special. It was totally special and I appreciate everyone that took time out of their day to take part. But there are some things that are missing from the virtual experience.

I’ll take myself for example. I have two problems that I have to overcome at events:

  1. I’m a story teller.
  2. Other people need to talk too.

If I get on a tear with number one, number two won’t happen. At an in-person event it’s easy enough for me to deal with the first one. I just pull interested people aside for a small group conversation. Or I wait for a different time or another day to tell my story. It’s easy enough to do when you spend sixteen hours around people on average and even more well into the night with friends.

However, those above things don’t really work on Zoom/Webex/GoToMeeting. Why? Well, for one thing you can only really have one speaker at a time. So everyone needs to keep it short and take turns. Which leads to a lot of waiting to talk and not so much for listening. Or it leads to clipped quips and not real discussion. And before you bring up the breakout room idea, remember that mechanically there is a lot of setup that needs to happen for those. You can’t just create one on the fly to tell a story about beanbags and then just hop back into the main room. And, breakout rooms by their very nature are exclusionary. So it’s tough to create one and not want to just stay there and let people come to you.

Tom’s Take

This is just a small part of the missing aspect of virtual conferences. Sure, your feet don’t hurt at the end of the day. I’d argue the food is way better at home. The lack of airports and hotel staff isn’t the end of the world. But if your primary focus for going to events is to do everything other than watching sessions then the virtual experience isn’t for you. The dates for Cisco Live 2021 and Aruba Atmosphere 2021 have already been announced. I, for one, can’t wait to get back to in-person conferences. Because I miss the fringe benefits of being in-person more than anything else.

I Hate Excellent Questions

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I was listening to a recent episode of the Packet Pushers Podcast about SD-WAN and some other stuff. At one point, my good friend Greg Ferro (@EtherealMind) asked the guest something, and the guest replied with, “That’s an excellent question!” Greg replied with, “Of course it was. I only ask excellent questions.” I was walking and laughed out loud harder than I’ve laughed in a long time.

This was also a common theme during Networking Field Day. Everyone was asking “great” or “excellent” questions. I chuckled and told the delegates that it was a canned response that most presenters give today. But then I wondered why all our questions are excellent. And why I hated that response so much.

Can You Define “Excellent”?

The first reason why I think people tend to counter with “excellent” praise is because they are stalling for an answer. It’s a time-honored tradition from spelling bees when you don’t know how to spell the word and you need a few more seconds to figure out if this is one of those “i before e” words or not. I get the purpose of defining something of non-native speaker origin. But defining a simple word? It’s such a recognizable trope that we incorporated some of the fun into a video we did a few years ago at Aruba Atmosphere:

Watching my friends “stall” while they’re trying to figure out how to spell a made up word still cracks me up.

More importantly, in technology this response is designed to help the engineer or tech person spend a few critical seconds formulating their response and matching it to the question that was asked. Even just a second of memorized, practiced response repetition means you can think about how to answer the question without leaving silence.

We live in a world today where silence is bad. We’re so used to hearing noise and other kinds of filler that anything regarded as contemplation or thinking is negative. Instead, we must always be talking and making an audible effort to answer things. Even if it means repeating the same phrases over and over again. It’s bad enough when it’s a pause word. It’s really bad when it’s the same word at the beginning of a sentence for almost an hour. “That’s an excellent question” is quickly becoming the response equivalent of “um” in the vocabulary.

High Praise, Indeed

The other reason why I think people are quick to praise “excellent” questions comes from a bit of social trickery. Sadly, too many sales opportunities descend into an antagonistic relationship where salespeople feel they have to use every trick in the book to separate people from their money. They use tactics designed to inflate egos and make people feel more important so they feel like their making a good decision.

Think about the suspect phrasing here. It’s not a “good” question. Or even a “great” question. It’s almost always an “excellent” question. And I’d argue that the more likely a person is to sell you something, the more likely that person is to remark that all your questions are excellent.

This kind of puffery can be infuriating to people. It’s not unlike the standard “have you lost weight?” opening when you see someone for the first time in a long time. It’s verbal garbage. You don’t believe it. They don’t believe it. It’s rare that people even acknowledge it. And yet, we find ourselves repeating it over and over again. “That’s an excellent question” is ego stroking at its finest.

And the worst part? You’re not praising the person! You’re praising their question. You’re really saying that the words they used were good enough to merit praise. It’s not even that you are praising the person as much as their output. If you really, really, really feel the need to do this, think about doing it in a way that calls out the person asking the question instead:

  • Wow, you’re really paying attention here!
  • Did you read ahead?
  • You’re really getting this.
  • I’m very impressed with your grasp of this topic.

See how each of these responses is designed to work with the person in mind and not just the question? Sure, there s a bit more ego stroking here than with a simple “excellent” question. But if you’re just trying to flatter the person and you don’t even care about the quality of the question why not just sell out all the way? If the point of the response is to make a person feel good about themselves then just go all out.

Tom’s Take

I’m not likely to change the world overnight. Lord knows I’ve lost the battle against GIF and on-premises enough already and those are grammatically correct. The “excellent” question thing is a quirk of speech that isn’t going to just disappear because we bring it to light. People are still going to stall or try to boost the questioner’s ego. They’re still going to fill silence or make people full of themselves. Instead of falling back on the tropes of bygone eras, be a different person next time. Instead of the knee-jerk reaction of excellence, take a moment to think and praise the person asking the question. Then give a solid answer that they need to hear. You’ll find it a lot more effective. In fact, I’d venture to say it’s an excellent strategy.

Cisco Live 2019 – Rededicating Community

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The 2019 Cisco Live Sign Photo

Another Cisco Live is in the books for me. I was a bit shocked to realize this was my 14th event in a row. I’ve been going to Cisco Live half of the time it’s been around! This year was back in San Diego, which has good and bad points. I’d like to discuss a few of them there and get the thoughts of the community.

Good: The Social Media Hub Has Been Freed! – After last year’s issues with the Social Media Hub being locked behind the World of Solutions, someone at Cisco woke up and realized that social people don’t keep the same hours as the show floor people. So, the Hub was located in a breezeway between the Sails Pavilion and the rest of the convention center. And it was great. People congregated. Couches were used. Discussions were had. And the community was able to come together again. Not during the hours when it was convenient. But a long time. This picture of the big meeting on Thursday just solidifies in my mind why the Social Media Hub has to be in a common area:

You don’t get this kind of interaction anywhere else!

Good: Community Leaders Step Forward – Not gonna lie. I feel disconnected sometimes. My job at Tech Field Day takes me away from the action. I spend more time in special sessions than I do in the social media hub. For any other place that could spell disaster. But not for Cisco Live. When the community needs a leader, someone steps forward to fill the role. This year, I was happy to see my good friend Denise Fishburne filling that role. The session above was filled with people paying rapt attention to Fish’s stories and her bringing people into the community. She’s a master at this kind of interaction. I was even proud to sit on the edge and watch her work her craft.

Fish is the d’Artagnan of the group. She may be part of the Musketeers of Social Media but Fish is undoubtedly the leader. A community should hope to have a leader that is as passionate and involved as she is, especially given her prominent role in Cisco. I feel like she can be the director of what the people in the Social Media Hub need. And I’m happy to call her my friend.

Bad: Passes Still Suck – You don’t have to do the math to figure out that $700 is bigger than $200. And that $600/night is worse than $200/night. And yet, for some reason we find ourselves in San Diego, where the Gaslamp hotels are beyond insane, wondering what exactly we’re getting with our $700 event pass. Sessions? Nope. Lunch? Well, sort of. Access to the show floor? Only when it’s open for the random times during the week. Compelling content? That’s the most subjective piece of all. And yet Cisco is still trying to tell us that the idea of a $200 social-only pass doesn’t make sense.

Fine. I get it. Cisco wants to keep the budgets for Cisco Live high. They got the Foo Fighters after all, right? They also don’t have to worry about policing the snacks and food everywhere. Or at least not ordering the lowest line items on the menu. Which means less fussing about piddly things inside the convention center. And for the next two years it’s going to work out just great in Las Vegas. Because Vegas is affordable with the right setup. People are already booking rooms at the surrounding hotels. You can stay at the Luxor or the Excalibur for nothing. But if the pass situation is still $700 (or more) in a couple of years you’re going to see a lot of people dropping out. Because….

Bad: WTF?!? San Francisco?!? – I’ve covered this before. My distaste for Moscone is documented. I thought we were going to avoid it this time around. And yet, I found out we’re going back to SF in 2022.

WHY?!?!?!?

Moscone isn’t any bigger. We didn’t magically find seating for 10,000 extra people. More importantly, the hotel situation in San Fran is worse than ever before. You seriously can’t find a good room this year for VMworld. People are paying upwards of $500/night for a non-air conditioned shoe box! And why would you do this to yourself Cisco?

Sure, it’s cheap. Your employees don’t need hotel rooms. You can truck everything up. But your costs savings are being passed along to the customer. Because you would rather them pay through the nose instead of footing the bill yourself. And Moscone still won’t hold the whole conference. We’ll be spilled over into 8 different hotels and walking from who knows where to get to the slightly nicer shack of a convention center.

I’m not saying that Cisco Live needs to be in Vegas every year. But it’s time for Cisco to start understanding that their conference needs a real convention center. And Moscone ain’t it.

Better: Going Back to Orlando – As you can see above, I’ve edited this post to include new information about Cisco Live 2022. I have been informed by multiple people, including internal Cisco folks, that Live 2022 is going to Orlando and not SF. My original discussion about Cisco Live in SF came from other sources with no hard confirmation. I believe now it was floated as a trial balloon to see how the community would respond. Which means all my statements above still stand regarding SF. Now it just means that there’s a different date attached to it.

Orlando is a better town for conventions than SF. It’s on-par with San Diego with the benefit that hotels are way cheaper for people because of the large amount of tourism. I think it’s time that Cisco did some serious soul searching to find a new venue that isn’t in California or Florida for Cisco Live. Because if all we’re going to do is bounce back and forth between San Diego and Orlando and Vegas over and over again, maybe it’s time to just move Cisco Live to Vegas and be done with the moving.

Tom’s Take

Cisco Live is something important to me. It has been for years, especially with the community that’s been created. There’s nothing like it anywhere else. Sure, there have been some questionable decisions and changes here and there. But the community survives because it rededicates itself every year to being about the people. I wasn’t kidding when I tweeted this:

Because the real heart of the community is each and every one of the people that get on a plane and make the choice time and again to be a part of something special. That kind of dedication makes us all better in every possible way.

You Don’t Want To Be A Rock Star

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When I say “rock star”, you probably have all kinds of images that pop up in your head. Private planes, penthouse suites, grand stages, and wheelbarrows full of money are probably on that list somewhere. Maybe you’re a purist and you think of someone dedicated to the craft of entertaining the masses and trying to claw their way to fame one note at a time. But I’m also sure in both of those cases you also think about the negative aspects of being a rock star. Like ego. And lack of humility. I want to touch on some of that as it pertains to our jobs and our involvement in the community.

Great Like Elvis. Without The Tassels.

The rock star mentality at work is easy to come by. Perhaps you’re very good at what you do. You may even be the best at your company or even at the collection of companies that are your competitors. You’re the best senior architect there is. You know the products and the protocols and you can implement a complex project with your eyes closed. That’s how people start looking at you. Larger than life. The best. One of a kind.

And that should be the end of it, right? That person is the best and that’s that. Unless you start believing their words more than you should. Unless you think that you really are the best and that there is no one better than you. It’s a mentality I see all the time, especially in sports or in places with small sample sizes. A kid that knows how to pitch a baseball well in the 8th grade thinks he’s the king of the baseball diamond. Until he sees someone that pitches way better than he does or he gets to high school and realizes he’s just the average of everyone else around him.

IT creates rock stars because we have knowledge that no one else does. We also fix issues for users, which creates visibility. No one talks about how accountants or HR reps are rock stars. Even though they have knowledge or solve problems for their users. It’s because IT is so practical. Anyone can do math, right? Or fill out a form? IT is hard. You have to know computer stuff. You have to learn acronyms. It’s like being a doctor or a lawyer. And both of those groups produce their own rock stars. So too does IT. And it causes the exact same issues that it does in the medical or legal fields.

Rock stars know it all. They don’t want to listen because they’ve got this. They can figure this out and they don’t need you telling them what to do. Why call support? I’ll just look up the problem. Go do something else and stop bothering them because they’re not going to fail here. This is what they do. Any of that sound familiar? If you’re on the team with a rock star it probably does.

Trade This Life For Fortune And Fame

The rock star mentality extends into the wider community too. People get vaulted into high esteem for their contributions. They get recognized for what they do and held up as an example for others. For most that are thrust into that rarified air of community fame that’s the end of it. But some take it as an invitation to take more.

You’ve seen them. The prima donnas. The people that take the inch of fame they’ve been given and stretch it into a mile. The people who try to manipulate and cajole the rest of their fellows into outlandish things for no other reason than they can do it. Again, if you’ve ever been around people like this in a community you know how toxic and terrible it can be.

So how do you combat that? How can you keep rock stars from getting an ego the size of Alaska? How do you prevent someone from getting an attitude and poisoning a community? How do you keep things together and on-track?

Sadly, the answer doesn’t lie much in preventing the rock star behavior in the first place. Because it’s going to happen no matter what you do. People that do good things are going to be held above others. It’s the nature of recognition to want to reward people’s outstanding behavior and showcase the attributes and traits that they want to see in others. And that can often cause people to take those traits and run with them or assume that you want to showcase all of their traits, even the bad ones.

Cut My Hair and Change My Name

The key that I’ve found most successful in my time working with communities is to highlight those traits and refer them back to the collective to remind the person they are part of a greater whole. If you praise someone for organizing an event, tell them, “Thank you for giving the community a place to meet and talk.” You’re still holding them up for doing a good job, but you’re referencing the community. For the workplace rock stars, try something like “Thanks for working all night to ensure that the entire office had email service this morning.” It reinforces that Herculean tasks like that have a real payoff but that the work is still referenced to a greater whole and not just the ego of someone working to prove a point.

You have to positively identify the traits you like and tie them to greater success in order to select them out and prevent someone from highlighting negative traits that could be detrimental. It’s easy for some that’s good at organization to take it too far and start running everything for a community without being asked. It’s also likely that someone that has a wealth of knowledge at their fingertips could start interjecting into conversations without permission because they think they know the answer. But if you reinforce the value of those traits to the community you’ll make the members think more carefully about their contributions as they exercise them.

Tom’s Take

I’m no expert on community building. Or rock stars for that matter. I’m just a person that does what I can to help others succeed. And I think that’s the mark of a real servant leader and perfect community mentor. The rock star mentality is the polar opposite of this. Rock stars want personal fame at the expense of the group. Servant leaders want group success even if it means not being recognized. Some of the best people in the community I know prefer to hide in the background and avoid the “fame” of being recognized. We would do well to follow their examples when the time comes for us to step on stage.

The History of The Wireless Field Day AirCheck

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Mobility Field Day 2 just wrapped up in San Jose. It’s always a little bittersweet to see the end of a successful event. However, one thing that does bring a bit of joy to the end of the week is the knowledge that one of the best and longest running traditions at the event continues. That tradition? The Wireless/Mobility Field Day AirCheck.

The Gift That Keeps Giving

The Wireless Field Day AirCheck story starts where all stories start. The beginning. At Wireless Field Day 1 in March of 2011, I was a delegate and fresh off my first Tech Field Day event just a month before. I knew some wireless stuff and was ready to learn a lot more about site surveys and other great things. Little did I know that I was about to get something completely awesome and unexpected.

As outlined in this post, Fluke Networks held a drawing at the end of their presentation for a first-generation AirCheck handheld wireless troubleshooting tool. I was thrilled to be the winner of this tool. I took it home and immediately put it to work around my office. I found it easy to use and it provided great information about wireless networks that I could use to make my life easier. I even loaned it out to some of my co-workers during troubleshooting calls and they immediately told me the wanted one of my own.

As the rest of 2011 rolled forward, I found uses for my AirCheck but I didn’t do as much wireless as a lot of the other people out there. I knew that someone else could probably get more out of having it than I did. So, I hatched a plan. I told Stephen Foskett that if I had the chance to come back to Wireless Field Day 2, I would gladly give my AirCheck away to another worthy delegate. I wanted to keep the tool in use with the best and brightest people in the community and help them see how awesome it was.

Sure enough, I was invited to Wireless Field Day 2 in January 2012. I arrived with my AirCheck and waited until the proper moment. During the welcome dinner, Matt Simmons and I found a way to randomly draw a number and award the special prize to Matthew Norwood. He was just as thrilled to get the AirCheck as I was. I sent my prize from Wireless Field Day 1 on its way to a new home, content that I would help someone get more wireless knowledge.

But the giving didn’t stop there. Even though I wasn’t a delegate for Wireless Field Day 3 or Wireless Field Day 4, the AirCheck kept coming back. Matthew gave it to Dan Cybulskie. Dan gave it to Scott Stapleton. The AirCheck headed down under for half of 2013. When Wireless Field Day 5 rolled around, I was now a staff member for Tech Field Day and working behind the scenes. I had forgotten about the AirCheck until a box arrived from Australia with Scott’s postmark on it. He mailed it back to the US to continue the tradition!

And so, the AirCheck passed along to a new set of hands every event. Blake Krone got it at Wireless Field Day 5. Then Jake Snyder, followed by Richard McIntosh and Scott McDermott. Even when we changed the name of the event to Mobility Field Day in 2016, the AirCheck passed along to Rowell Dionicio.

Changing Of The Guard

In the interim, the AirCheck product moved over to Netscout. They developed a new version, the G2, that was released after Mobility Field Day 1 in 2016. The word also got around to the Netscout folks that there was a magical G1 AirCheck that was passed along to successive Wireless/Mobility Field Day delegates as a way of keeping the learning active in the community.

Netscout was a presenter during Mobility Field Day 2 in 2017. Chris Hinz contacted me before the event and asked if we still gave away the AirCheck during the event. I assured him that we did. He said that a tradition like that should continue, even if the G1 AirCheck was getting a bit long in the tooth. He told me that he might be able to help us all out.

After the Netscout presentation at Mobility Field Day 2, Chris presented me with his special surprise: a brand new G2 AirCheck! Since we hadn’t given the old unit to its new recipient just yet, we decided that it was time to “retire” the old G1 and pass along the G2 to the next lucky contestant. Shaun Neal was the lucky delegate this time and took the new and improved G2 home with him Wednesday night. I was happy to see it go to him knowing that he’ll get to put it through its paces and learn from it. And then he will get to bring it back to the next Mobility Field Day for it to pass along to a new delegate and continue the chain of sharing.

Tom’s Take

When I gave away my G1 AirCheck all those years ago, I never expected it would turn into something so incredible. The sharing and exchange of tools and knowledge at both Wireless Field Day and Mobility Field Day help remind me of why I do this job with Stephen. The community is an awesome and amazing place sometimes. The new G2 AirCheck will have a long life helping delegates troubleshoot wireless issues.

The old G1 AirCheck, my AirCheck, is in my suitcase. It’s ready to start its retirement in my office, having earned thousands of frequent flyer miles as well as becoming a very important part of Tech Field Day lore. I couldn’t be happier to get it back at the end of its life knowing how much happiness it brought to people along the way.

It’s Not The Size of Your Conference Community

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Where do you get the most enjoyment from your conference attendance? Do you like going to sessions and learning about new things? Do you enjoy more of the social aspect of meeting friends and networking with your peers? Maybe it’s something else entirely?

It’s The Big Show

When you look at shows like Cisco Live, VMworld, or Interop ITX, there’s a lot going on. There are diverse education tracks attended by thousands of people. You could go to Interop and bounce from a big data session into a security session, followed by a cloud panel. You could attend Cisco Live and never talk about networking. You could go to VMworld and only talk about networking. There are lots of opportunities to talk about a variety of things.

But these conferences are huge. Cisco and VMware both take up the entire Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas. When in San Francisco, both of these events dwarf the Moscone Center and have to spread out into the surrounding hotels. That means it’s easy to get lost or be overlooked. I’ve been to Cisco Live before and never bumped into people I know from my area that said they were going, even when we were at the same party. There are tens of thousands of people roaming the halls.

That means that these conferences only work well if you can carve out your own community. Cisco Live has certainly done that over the years. There’s a community of a few hundred folks that are active on social media and have really changed the direction of the way Cisco engages with the community. VMworld has their various user groups as well as VMUnderground constantly pushing the envelope and creating more organic community engagement.

You Think You Know Me

The flip side is the smaller boutique conferences that have sprung up in recent years. These take a single aspect of a technology and build around it. You get a very laser-focused event with a smaller subset of attendees based on similar interests. It’s a great way to instantly get massive community involvement around an idea. Maybe it’s Monitorama. Or perhaps it’s OSCon. Or even GopherCon. You can see how these smaller communities are united around a singular subject and have great buy in.

However, the critical mass needed to make a boutique conference happen is much greater per person. Cisco Live and VMworld are going to happen every year. There are no less than 10,000 – 15,000 people that would come to either no matter what. Even if 50% of last year’s attendees decided to stay home this year, the conference would happen.

On the flip side, if 50% of the DockerCon or OpenStack Summit attendees stayed home next year, you’d see mass panic in the community. People would start questioning why you’re putting on a show for 2,500 – 3,000 users. It’s one thing to do it when you’re small and just getting started. But to put on a show for those numbers now would be a huge decision point and things would need to be discussed to see what happens going forward.

Cisco Live and VMworld are fun because of their communities. But boutique conferences exist because of their communities. It’s important to realize that and drastic changes in a smaller conference community have huge ripples throughout the conference. Two hundred Twitter users don’t have much impact on the message at Cisco Live. But two hundred angry users at DockerCon can make massive changes happen. Each member of the community is amplified the smaller the conference they attend.

Tom’s Take

Anyone that knows me knows that I love the community. I love seeing them grow and change and develop their own voice. It’s why I work for Tech Field Day. It’s why I go to Cisco Live every year. It’s why I’m happy to speak at VMUnderground events. But I also realize how important the community can be to smaller events. And how quickly things can fall apart when the community is fractured or divided. It’s critical for boutique conferences to harness the power of their communities to get off the ground. But you also have to recognize how important they are to you in the long run. You need to cultivate them and keep the focused on making everything better for everyone.

Culling The Community

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By now, you may have seen some bit of drama in the VMUG community around the apparent policy change that disqualified some VMUG leaders based on their employer. Eric Shanks (@Eric_Shanks) did a great job of covering it on his blog as did Matt Crape (@MattThatITGuy)with his post. While the VMUG situation has its own unique aspects, the question for me boils down to something simple: How do you remove people from an external community?

Babies And Bathwater

Removing unauthorized people from a community is nothing new under the sun. I was a Cisco Champion once upon a time. During the program’s second year I participated in briefings and events with the rest of the group, including my good friend Amy Arnold (@AmyEngineer). When the time came to reapply to the program for Year 3, I declined to apply again for my own reasons. Amy, however, was told that she couldn’t reapply. She and several other folks in the program were being disqualified for “reasons”. It actually took us a while to figure out why, and the answer still wasn’t 100% clear. To this day the best we can figure out is that there is some kind of conflict between anyone working with the public sector or government and the terms and conditions of the Champions program.

The lack of communication about the rules was the biggest issue by far with the whole transition. People don’t like being excluded. They especially don’t like being excluded from a group they were previously a member of. It takes time and careful explanation to help them understand why they are no longer able to be a part of a community. Hiding behind vague statements and pointing to rule sections doesn’t really help.

In the case of the VMUG issue above, the answer as to why the dismissed leaders were disqualified still isn’t clear. At least, it isn’t clear according to the official rules. There is still some debate as to the real reasoning behind everything, as the comments on Matt’s blog indicate. However, the community has unofficially settled on the reasoning being that those leaders were employed by someone that VMware, who is more-than-loosely affiliated with VMUG, has deemed a direct competitor.

I’m no stranger to watching companies go from friends to frenemies to competitors in the blink of an eye. VMware and Cisco. VMware and Scale Computing. Cisco and HP. All of these transitions took two aligned companies and put them on opposite sides of the firing line. And in a lot of cases, the shift in messaging was swift. Last week they were both great partners. The next week shifted to “We have always been at war with Eurasia.” Which didn’t bode well for people that were caught in the middle.

Correcting The Position

How do you correctly go about affecting changes in membership? How can you realistically make things work when a rule change suddenly excludes people? It’s not an easy path, but here are some helpful hints:

  • COMMUNICATION! – Above all else, it is absolutely critical to communicate at every step of the process. Don’t leave people guessing as to your reasoning. If you are contemplating a rule change, let everyone know. If you are looking to enforce a rule that was previously not enforced, warn everyone well in advance. Don’t let people come up with their own theories. Don’t make people write blogs asking for clarification on a situation.
  • If a person is being excluded because of a rule change, give the a bit of grace period to exit on their own terms. If that person is a community leader, they will need time to transition a new person into their role. If that person is a well-liked member of the community, give them a chance to say goodbye instead of being forced out. That grace period doesn’t need to be months long. Usually by the next official meeting or briefing time is enough. Giving someone the chance to say goodbye is much better than telling everyone they left. It provides closure and gives everyone a chance to discuss what the next steps will be.
  • If a rule change is in order that excludes members of the community, weigh it carefully. Ask yourself what you are gaining from it. Is it a legal reason? Does it need to be made to comply with some kind of regulation? Those are valid reasons and should be communicated with enough warning. People will understand. But if the reasoning behind your rule change is spite or retaliation for something, carefully consider your next steps. Realize that every rank-and-file member of the community has their own opinions and vision. Just because Evil CEO made your CEO mad doesn’t mean that his Local SE has the same feelings. And it absolutely doesn’t mean that Local SE is going to subvert your community for their own ends. These are the kinds of decisions that divide people at the expense of keeping your community free of “influences”.

It can’t be said enough that you need to talk to the community before you even begin debating action. There are no community organizations that blindly follow orders from on high. These are places where thinking people interact and share. And if they are suddenly told how things are going to be without any discussion or debate, you can better believe they are going to try and get to the bottom of it. Whether you want them to or not.

Tom’s Take

Kicking people out of something is never easy. Tech Field Day has rules about delegates being employed by presenting vendors. More than once I’ve had conversations with people about being disqualified from being a delegate. Most of them understand why that’s the case beforehand because our policy is straightforward. But if it’s ever changed, you can better believe that we’re going to let everyone know well in advance.

Communities run on communication. Discussion, debate, and ultimately acceptance are all driven by knowing what’s happening at all times. If you make rules under the cloak of secrecy for reasons which aren’t readily apparent, you risk alienating more than just the people you’re looking to exclude.