My Lunch With CCIE #1026

A very long time ago in terms of years and CCIEs, the first certifications were earned by some ground breaking individuals. When Cisco began the CCIE certification program only a few understood what the value of the certification was and how it would affect the careers of so many. We have all read about how the first certification was awarded to the lab in San Jose where the qualifying first began and still today CCIE # 1024 awarded to this room is mounted on the wall serving as both an inspiration and a reminder to those future CCIEs of this successful program. I have read Terry Slattery’s blog and some re-posts of his writings on the internet. He is considered an authority by many on various subjects like training, testing, routing and switching, and as an entrepreneur he is regarded as a pretty sharp individual. When Terry Slattery contacted me while I was on vacation a couple of weeks ago, I was happy to learn he wanted to help in the planning of a CCIE Mixer in the Washington, DC area. We exchanged emails a few times in the past and this new opportunity to collaborate with him added to my enthusiasm for organizing the next Mixer. Previous mixers have featured Cisco representatives who are part of the Cisco Talent team and discussions were generally focused on CCIE careers, experience and Cisco’s efforts in regard to several aspects of the talent challenge. I have learned that in these previous gatherings it is important to establish some discussion points which interest CCIEs. Terry has an interest in helping establish some of these discussion points with me and I am delighted to have his support.

I jumped on the Amtrak out of Wilmington and met him for lunch; here is what I discovered about CCIE # 1026.

First of all he does not have a glowing aura or wear saintly robes, but don’t let his mere mortal appearance fool you he is a really sharp CCIE. He picked me up at the Amtrak station and we ducked into a local eatery where we spent a couple of hours getting to know each other and talking about o lot of different subjects. I was delighted to learn he thought what I was doing was good work on behalf of CCIEs. I learned that he is the founder of Chesapeake Computer Consultants and Netcordia, a company that has been successful in the Network Health space. It was a real education to learn about their NetMRIproduct. Wow. In the old days my gang ofCCIEs would use a sniffer and then have to go through mounds of data to manually analyze the findings. I know that often times the collating of the information was so daunting that a parallel effort would sometimes spring up from another engineer who would be shot-gunning the same problem in hopes of resolving it sooner. He also spoke with me about his years of taking the recertification exam and how that process for him has changed over the years. I asked him to put together an article for the CCIE Flyer due out in September and he agreed.

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