Wendell Odom's Evolution: Networking, Teaching, and Writing

Send us a text

Ever wondered what draws someone into the intricate world of networking? Join us as we sit down with Wendell Odom, a renowned Cisco Press author and networking expert, to hear his inspiring journey from a college co-op program at IBM to becoming a pivotal figure in networking certification. Wendell shares the moment he discovered his passion for networking, the milestones that shaped his career, and the transition from the dynamic corporate environment of the 90s to becoming a self-employed contractor. This episode promises to offer valuable insights for anyone curious about the early steps into a networking career and the fascinating evolution over decades.

Navigating the complexities of teaching and learning in the networking field can be daunting, but Wendell’s experiences provide a clear roadmap. We discuss the challenges of developing lab courseware, balancing meticulous preparation with the unpredictability of teaching, and staying current with rapidly evolving technologies. Wendell opens up about dealing with imposter syndrome and the continuous learning required to remain a reliable resource. Whether you are a seasoned professional or just starting out, his reflections on transitioning from traditional textbooks to modern learning tools, and strategies like multimodal learning, will resonate deeply.

Get ready to dive into the nitty-gritty of working with Cisco documentation and writing influential technical books. Wendell brings to light the often-overlooked intricacies of maintaining technical accuracy and the painstaking process of updating content. He also shares his thoughts on the future of networking careers in the age of AI and automation, offering practical advice for young professionals. From his extensive writing career to his exciting plans for a CCNA-focused YouTube channel, Wendell's journey is a goldmine of knowledge and inspiration for anyone passionate about networking. Don't miss the practical advice, personal reflections, and forward-looking insights from this industry veteran.

More from Wendell:
https://linktr.ee/wendello

Find everything AONE right here: https://linktr.ee/artofneteng

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is the Art of Network Engineering podcast.
In this podcast, we exploretools, technologies and talented
people.
We aim to bring you informationthat will expand your skill
sets and toolbox and share thestories of fellow network

(00:21):
engineers.
Welcome to the Art of NetworkEngineering.
I am AJ Murray atNoBlinkyBlinky, and tonight I am
flanked by the one, the onlythe Tim Bertino.
Tim, how are you doing, tim?

Speaker 2 (00:37):
I am fantastic, AJ.
I have been looking forward tothis specific episode for a
while now.
I am ready to get going.
Good to see you.

Speaker 1 (00:46):
Good to see you as well.
Also joining us this evening isKevin.
Kevin, how are you?

Speaker 3 (00:51):
I'm doing fabulous.
It's almost Friday.

Speaker 2 (00:55):
That's all I'm looking forward to right now.
It's been a long week.
I was going to say do you needit?

Speaker 1 (01:01):
I think a lot of people out there need it.
We'll cut right to the chase.
Our guest this evening isWendell Odom.
You may have heard that name.
He has written many books overthe years.
A lot of us have used to studyfor our certifications.
Wendell, thank you so much forjoining us and giving us your
time this evening.

Speaker 4 (01:20):
It's kind of you to ask.
I've been looking forward tothis.
It's like hanging out chattingwith friends.

Speaker 1 (01:30):
So I always could use more of that.
It was so great to meet youearlier this year at Cisco Live.
I feel like I ran into you in2019 during a Cisco Champions
thing, but it was really greatto talk to you again and I'm
super excited to dig deeper intohow you got into being an
author and what your backgroundin networking is.
I don't want to jump right toit, but let's jump right to it.
So how did you get intonetworking Never mind the author

(01:58):
thing, is your background innetworking or were you an author
before and decided to tacklenetworking as a topic?
How did this all start?

Speaker 4 (02:07):
Yeah, so wow, we're going way back.
So in college I realized Ineeded money to pay for college.

Speaker 2 (02:17):
Funny, how that works .

Speaker 4 (02:18):
I know it's crazy, right, but you know, being a bit
older than you, fellas, I livedin a world for which you could
pay for chunks of it working,whereas it's just unreasonable
to try that today, right?
So I started the co-op programat school, where you'd work a
quarter school, a quarter, and Ilanded at IBM and a data center
and got to see all thedifferent job roles and fell in

(02:42):
love with networking.
I wasn't even a computerscience major right, I just
needed money.

Speaker 3 (02:47):
Was that a happy accident or were you like
seeking IBM out?

Speaker 4 (02:50):
No, I was seeking a place that paid.
You got it.
It was like you know, I canmake it through halfway through
sophomore year before I'm goingto be working at Subway, you
know that kind of thing.
So once I got there it's likehey, I really like CS, I like
networking, and by the time Igraduated college it was I want

(03:11):
to work in some networking job.
So by the time I fast forwardup to signing up with Cisco
Press for the first book, thatwas 13 years after college.
So I'd been working innetworking for a good 13 years
at that point.

Speaker 1 (03:23):
So what was the intent in college?
What was the degree or, like,what were you studying while you
were in college?

Speaker 4 (03:29):
I was meandering, but I was in industrial engineering
.
But I wasn't like oh, I've gotto do it.
It just it was like hey, you'regood at math, you go to an
engineering school and now whatyou discover, what you want to
do, and nothing really blossomeduntil I got to IBM and the
school is a public school, sothe computers were not all that

(03:54):
impressive and CS was not asought after major that much
because you know it's oldequipment.
You get to IBM and of coursethey had spanky new everything
equipment.
You get to IBM and of coursethey had spanky new everything.
So it's like, oh, this is whatreal live people do with
computer jobs.
I like this, you know, asopposed to hey, you know you can

(04:17):
only use those three terminalsto write APL because you don't
have all the working characterson the keyboard, you know on the
rest of it, that kind of stuff.
So, yeah, that worked out prettygood.
But, yeah, industrialengineering, I think I would
have enjoyed that had I landedthere.
But yeah, I think networkingwas the place for me, so that
definitely would say a happyhappy chance.

Speaker 3 (04:34):
What drew you to networking?
What was the spark that reallylike oh, this is it for me.

Speaker 4 (04:39):
Ah, yeah, well, I'm a rule follower.
I like order, and networkingseems to be about a bunch of
rules fitting together to makethings work right, so I don't
like chaos.
Of course sorry, Kevin, soundslike that was your week this
week, right, and all the coolpeople at work were networkers.

(05:00):
And all the cool people at workwere networkers.
I mean just saying so.
The personal aspect of it wasthat and the school they had
just started emphasizingnetworking.
They were trying out a newsenior level was great, 8 am
class, senior year, all theseseniors in there, and the first

(05:29):
day the professor comes in andsays this is a new class, slams
a stack of papers down and saysit's not going to fit 7.30 every
time so he upped it to a 7.30start for all these seniors, for
the entire year.

Speaker 2 (05:41):
Wow, surprising.

Speaker 4 (05:51):
He was.
I soaked in every word, man.
It was a great class.
Now I'm a morning guy, so I'llbe nodding off in about 30
minutes but uh, but yeah, it'suh that was a great class, but
you know, imagine back to ourcollege days, right, that was
not a time to want to have towake up extra early for
something, but it was well worthit.
I, you know it was.
I don't know what about youguys.
What clicked on it for you?

(06:12):
Was there one particular thingabout networking that was most
attractive?
Maybe that'll spark a memoryfor me.

Speaker 2 (06:18):
I think it's common, the concept you brought up about
rule following, because when Iwent to school I I was a
computer science major, becauseI didn't know any better and I
shouldn't say it that way, butthat's, that's how I say it.
And you know the, the immediatecalculus, the immediate C plus
plus.
I just had a hard time graspingthose things.
But when I sat in, that firsthappened to be Cisco net, a CAD

(06:41):
was the, uh, the program that wehad at school.
Immediately we started talkingabout things like the OSI model
and it breaks things down whereyou can start bottom up or top
down, and helps youcompartmentalize different parts
of the networking stack.
And I think that's what reallyhelped me, because I'm the same
way, wendell, I thrive onstructure.

(07:04):
I guess I'm not the rule breaker.
We talked about chaos.
Maybe that's structure.
I guess I'm not the rulebreaker.
We talked about chaos.
Maybe that's Kevin's issue.
He's not a rule follower, Idon't know.
But that's really.
Networking gave me thatstructure and kind of that path.
I keep going back to the OSImodel where you can start at
layer one and work your way up,and that's what really clicked

(07:24):
for me and brought me back.
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (07:27):
To me it was just like the internet is something
that I didn't think about much.
It's this cool thing thatconnects everybody, but I didn't
think the details going into it.
And it wasn't until Idiscovered all the tiny,
minuscule things that arehappening and as fast as they
are, and that was like, oh wow,this is really cool Right there,
fast as they are.
And that was like, oh wow, thisis really this is really cool,
right, there's a lot to it.
Yeah, it took that, that Eurekamoment, I guess, for me.

Speaker 1 (07:53):
Yeah, for me it was around the time I was going into
college was the same time wewere starting to get, you know,
decent internet in the area thatI lived and I was bringing a
home network or I was setting upa home network.
You know, our home internetconnection was coming in and
we're setting up wireless andpulling some cables around the
house and what's a subnet mask,what's that mean?
And trying to figure out allthis stuff.
It was just very interesting.
And then I get into college andfind that there's a networking

(08:14):
track and one of the lastclasses I took in my associate's
degree was a general networkingand it's just like oh man, this
is fun.
I took a programming class andit was really annoying because I
wrote like 200 lines of codejust to get color to show up on
the screen.
And so networking, you know theteacher's, like you know,
telling us all this stuff,telling us about writing

(08:35):
protocols.
We got to make our own cables,which is like any networking
nerds like rite of passage, andit just really stuck.
And it was one of those thingslike, if I'm going to pick a
career, why not networking?
Right, because we're alwayslike, from here on out, man,
we're a connected world.
So it just felt like networkingwas one of those things that
isn't going to go away.

(08:56):
So I still love it.
It's great.

Speaker 4 (08:59):
Yeah, I've been doing it over 40 years and I've loved
all of it, so it was a goodchoice for me for sure.

Speaker 1 (09:08):
So what happened after IBM?
You get to IBM, you get bittenby the network bug.
You love networking About.
How long were you there?
What'd you do?

Speaker 4 (09:20):
Yeah, it was a little over eight years after college
that I was there.
So I had one job that wasinternal IT, so network engineer
in a data center, and then onejob that was kind of like the
consulting SE role that Ciscohas go out and see IBM customers
talk to them about things.
And fortunately that was aroundthe time that IBM started
embracing TCP IP.
So part of my job was to gohelp IBM SNA customers.

(09:41):
That was a protocol thatexisted before TCP IP.

Speaker 1 (09:44):
for those of you that are a little bit younger out
there listening, dan still dealswith SNA.
Amazingly, really, yeah.

Speaker 3 (09:52):
Oh, my goodness.

Speaker 1 (09:55):
Their central application is on a mainframe
and it still uses SNA.
And it's like the bane of hisexistence.

Speaker 4 (10:09):
SNA and it's like the bane of his existence.
So people started consideringalso using TCP IP and then not
using SNA, and so I got to helpwith that.
But IBM pretty much failed intheir networking business to the
point where they sold off theremaining pieces by what?
1997 or 98.
So I split from IBM by 93 toget away from the sinking ship
and started teaching Ciscoclasses.
So we've all heard of CiscoLearning Partners.

(10:30):
Well, I was around when itstarted.
I was one of the very firstCisco certified instructors and
went on the road teaching 30weeks a year doing that kind of
thing.
So by the time CCNA came out in98, so I was so internal IT job
then seeing IBM customers andthen about four or five years of
teaching Cisco as a contractor,running around mostly the US,

(10:52):
sometimes out of the, you know,outside the country.
And that was fun.
I was still single.
You know, you run around, youdon't have to worry about, you
know wife and kids at home andfamily responsibilities.
But the when the CCNA gotannounced then it's like, okay,
you know, maybe I'll get achance to stay home a little bit
.

Speaker 3 (11:08):
So what made you make that jump from engineer to a
teacher?

Speaker 4 (11:11):
Well, that's an interesting question.
So my first job was no teaching.
So the first job after collegeit was just, you know, the old
days version of what you folksmay do today.
Right, keep networks working,build new ones, design new ones
right.
But in that next job about athird to half of the job was
building materials for workshopsthat were hands-on and then

(11:34):
bringing in SEs from theSoutheast.
I was in Atlanta and we coveredabout five states and it was
always about teaching them newIBM networking products as they
would come out.
So new version of TCP IP on themainframe would come out and we
teach a workshop on that.
So I spent a fair amount oftime learning about course
development and workshopdevelopment.
Lab development Everybody thinkstheir way to do labs is best in

(11:56):
every place.
I've ever been Right.
So if you meet people thatdevelop courseware in particular
, just ask them about labs ifyou want to start a conversation
.
So I got experience there.
And then, of course, when I wason the road teaching for Cisco
Learning Partners, I liked thelearning part of that second IBM
job and I knew I could bridgefrom that to being self-employed

(12:20):
by teaching.
There were plenty of companiesthat would hire contractors to
teach, employed by teaching.
There were plenty of companiesthat would hire contractors to
teach and in the 90s, with theinternet growing like it was,
you couldn't help but turnaround and get work in
networking if you knew somethingabout networking.
So to be an independentcontractor, you just had to say
hey, here I am, here's acontract, go do work.

(12:43):
Now, things eventually sloweddown, but, yeah, it was just as
fast as you could go.
Stuff needed to be done inthose days, so it was easy to go
out and teach and then, when Iwasn't teaching, I'd do
consulting gigs.
I'll stop there for now.

Speaker 3 (12:58):
Easy transition and it was just like shooting fish
in a barrel for jobs.
Right there you go.
Definitely definitely shootingfish.

Speaker 4 (13:07):
So I got married in 1998 and I got engaged in
January.
The very first week that Iwanted to be working for pay and
couldn't was like two weeksafter we got engaged.
But all the way through leavingIBM in 93 till 1998, I was busy
working, getting paid everyweek that I didn't want to be on

(13:30):
vacation.
So it was a five-year run andthen, of course, we get engaged
and my wife's like her futurewife at the time well, what are
you doing this week?
You know it was reallyunnerving to her to think that I
could have a week off and notget paid.
And how are we going to pay thebills?
And is she marrying some bum?
That kind of thing.

Speaker 3 (13:49):
You proved her wrong, though.
Look at you now.

Speaker 2 (13:51):
Details we got through it, we got through it.

Speaker 4 (13:56):
Yeah, I'll just keep going.
It's kind of a fun story.
So I'm on the bench for a weekor two she's like wondering
about that.
And then I got a contract thatpaid about twice what she made
in a year in a month.
So then it kind of reversedthat.

Speaker 1 (14:14):
She's like all right this is good.

Speaker 2 (14:16):
Take weeks off all the time please, if this is what
comes in between you, do you?

Speaker 4 (14:22):
That's right.
So that worked out.
She had just grown up in ahouse where dad worked the same
company for 50 years and got apaycheck every week.
Yeah, stability took a little.

Speaker 1 (14:31):
Yeah, you got it so, window, we've got a pretty good
question from the chat here.
Um, from zatharian, was thereever a point where you were
teaching where you felt like youdidn't know enough about a
particular topic?
Do you ever get that, you thatimposter syndrome kind of
feeling while you were teaching?

Speaker 4 (14:48):
Yeah, I'm trying to think of the rate.
Twice a week, twice a day.
Yeah, no, I don't mean to pokefun at the question.
It's very easy to feel that andyeah, it comes up.
I remember thinking this atsome point many years into, like
, hey, I've taught this topicfor about 12 years and I'm

(15:10):
lecturing something and in themiddle of a sentence I'm
realizing I just had a newinsight into how this really
works.
You just you're going to keeplearning or you're going to back
up, but yeah, there's, youcan't know it all, you just have
to.
Would get over prepared before Iwould teach, and when I taught

(15:47):
it I knew as much as I couldknow from study.
And you know, there's otherthings you can't know without
using things, right, you know.
So you just have you have tohave the pressure of getting
student questions and beingfaced with things you've never
thought of and going off andexperimenting.
But there were plenty ofinstructors who would teach two
or three times as many differentcourses that I would because

(16:07):
they were a little morecomfortable with the I'll learn
maybe a little less and I'llteach it.
And you just answer and say,hey, I don't know the answer to
that, I'll figure it out.
But I always had got verynervous about the whole being
embarrassed in front of the roomto say you know, I have no clue
.

Speaker 3 (16:22):
That kind of brings me to a question I had.
It's a personal question, Idon't want to do podcasts, I
don't care about that stuff, butso I learned CCNA from you.
I read your book when I wasfirst studying all this stuff
and you are a resource for a tonof people who are learning
things, learning CCNA ornetworking in general.
But as the CCNA changes and itevolves over time, how do you,

(16:43):
where do you learn your stufffrom?
Like, how do you keep up withtechnology?

Speaker 4 (16:47):
Who's your resources.
Well, yeah, yeah.
So there's probably two phasesof that for me.
There was the when I was stillattempting to be broadly read
and know many things aboutnetworking, and in this latter
stage, the bridge to retirementstage.
If you will, I'm just focusingin on things that are in the
CCNA space, so say, when I waswriting about QOS and CCIE and

(17:11):
things like that.
You know those things wouldprepare me for topics that
aren't even in CCNA, right so,but it would you know.
If you're writing a CCIE bookand there's some overlap, that's
going to have a natural effectof keeping you fresh on CCA and
you're labbing a lot to writethose kinds of books as well.
But this day and age it is getin the lab and try it and try it

(17:31):
again and, oh my goodness,cisco documentation it's written
down somewhere but I'm surethat's a very difficult thing to
do well with the size of thecompany and the.
It's written down somewhere.
I'm sure that's a verydifficult thing to do.
Well with the size of thecompany and the breadth of
products, I'm sure.
So I am not trying to cast thefirst stone.

(17:54):
There are many times when Iwish there were more details in
there.

Speaker 3 (18:01):
You can be honest, wendell.
You're close to retirement.
You can throw him under the bus, it's fine.

Speaker 1 (18:06):
It's horrible.
What are they going to do now?
Fire you.

Speaker 4 (18:12):
So I'll just go off on one here.
So you got an Ethernet switch,you got ports, you configure
speed and duplex.
Does it turn off autonegotiation?
So if you go into the Ciscodocs over the years, there are
places where it says it turnsoff auto negotiation.
But you can't tell that from atrace right, because you need an

(18:32):
oscilloscope to figure that out.
And then I've learned thatthat's not always true on some
switches and it's not writtendown anywhere.
I've invested probably 25 to 50hours of searching for this
next edition to find that answer.
I just couldn't find it in thedocumentation and what it turns
out from experimentation thatports with PoE consistently

(18:57):
leave auto negotiation on whenyou configure both and ports
without PoE consistently turn itoff when you configure both
consistently inconsistent yepyes, but the documentation I
could not find anywhere.
Now they they did a verypractical thing instead, which
was auto negotiation works.

(19:19):
Use it, and they preached thatthrough all the last five or ten
years worth of versions of docs.
Yeah, I believe that.
So they said why do we need todocument trivia?
I'm thinking to myself, ratherthan you know.
Let's tell people not to bestupid rather than document
stupid things.
So all right, I get that.

Speaker 2 (19:40):
But if we don't document trivia, then we can't
create test questions aroundthat.

Speaker 4 (19:46):
You got that straight .
So yeah, getting in the labtrying stuff and you know you
can read docs, but part of it isyou read other people's things.
If somebody puts something outthat's wrong, and then it gets
propagated, and propagated, andpropagated.
It might even be Cisco, itmight be me right A TikTok
creator and there you go.

(20:08):
Could be a TikTok creator,those videos are hard to edit,
aren't they, kevin?

Speaker 3 (20:12):
They are.

Speaker 4 (20:13):
They're a lot of a lot of pain in the butts, yeah,
so um, so yeah, that's uh,that's a little bit of the how
do you, how do you keep up.
But yeah, I read specifically,I take notes.
I've got an app calledScrivener that I use this time
around, where everything that Ichange in the books that I
researched I've got all my noteson everything I came across

(20:35):
with the links and what happenedin lab and why I believe it to
be true, so that if I then laterlook back and say I think I got
this wrong, I can look and seewhy I thought it.
There've been many times overthe years where somebody will
say, but that's not right,Wendell, and it actually changed
.
You know, iOS changed, forinstance.
And then a few times it's like,oh, I just blew it, you know, I
got it wrong, and you know we'reall human right, so, um so,

(21:00):
yeah it's.
I'm much more methodical aboutit now than maybe I was in the
beginning.

Speaker 3 (21:06):
Which you were mentioning, things changing.
How do you, do you go back whenyou have a revision or a new
version of CCNA?
Do you go back to your oldmaterial and verify and redo all
that, or do you kind of justare able to use that as a base
and move on from there?

Speaker 4 (21:20):
Yeah, I have process.
So imagine, so the books are inparts.
You may recall sets of chaptersin a part.
I won't have to scrub it, Iwon't recreate anything in the

(21:50):
lab for those, unless I havesome external reason to think
about it.
But of course, eventually, ifyou just leave things there, you
know something's going tochange about iOS output.
Like, I scrubbed the IP versionsix chapters this time around.
All that output is eitherregathered or I've confirmed
that the format of the commandoutput is the same and the
commands are the same and theyact the same, to the point where

(22:11):
I know that we're solid.
So yeah, you do have to be.
I mean, it's weird, but it'sway different than writing a
brand new book.
You know it's, it's amaintenance task.
Even you know, say, 80% of thecontent is completely unchanged.
There's still the maintenancepart of that work.

Speaker 3 (22:29):
So do you prefer the maintenance part, or do you
rather start completely scratch?
Ooh yeah.

Speaker 4 (22:36):
Yeah, I like it when I get a chance to improve
something that I wrote earlier.
So there's more than just themaintenance, more than just
recreate the examples and fixthe output and tweak a command
parameter, that kind of thing.
If it's simply making surethere are no lies, you know
that's a little bit morelaborious.
But, like the access controllist chapters, here's a bit of

(23:01):
trivia.
One ACL per direction, perprotocol, is no longer true, so
I had to update that.
Now you can have two ACLs, twoIP ACLs, on an interface in the
same direction, something calleda common ACL, so that you could
have I did not know that.

Speaker 2 (23:17):
Yeah, aces in one set .
I need to redo the CCNA.
God damn it.
There you go.

Speaker 4 (23:24):
Well, I have no clue if they'll even ask about it,
but I'm looking at it.
It's now in iOS, so do I notput it in the book?
Or do I put it in the book incase they ask about it when some
clever person comes along andsays oh I heard this bit of
trivia, let's put an examquestion in about this bit of
trivia and that kind of thing?
So, and I did a whole newchapter on ACLs for overhead

(23:48):
protocols, Like how do you matchand avoid matching incorrectly
OSPF and DHCP and with thepresence of NAT or the presence
of DHCP relay agent, those kindof overhead protocols.
So that was kind of fun toupdate.
But yeah, recreating the sameold ACL example to update output
not very exciting.

Speaker 3 (24:08):
So you mentioned like having to figure out what you
need to put in the book, and doyou.
How do you do that?
How do you determine what'simportant for the CCNA book or
what's not?
Like?
Do you get the the insiderinformation about what's going
to be on the test and youbasically designed the book
around that?
Or do you just get the insiderinformation about what's going
to be on the test and youbasically design the book around
that?
Or do you just get theblueprint that everyone else
gets and you've got to do asmuch as possible.

Speaker 2 (24:29):
Yeah, I was going to say because the exam topics are
just that, they're topics.
It's not in depth of all thespecifics that you need to learn
.
That's a good question.

Speaker 4 (24:39):
Kevin.
Yeah, it's really hard, justflat out.
So it's an educated guess.
It's an educated guess afterdoing this, since the exam came
out.
A lot of education, you got it?

Speaker 2 (24:51):
Yeah, a lot of it.

Speaker 4 (24:54):
Precisely.
That nails it right.
But, yeah, I get the blueprintearly, I have a conduit to ask
them questions about what theyreally mean by the words.
Ask them questions about whatthey really mean by the words.
But what I don't get is theexam database does have these
kinds of topics, exactly withthese specific command
parameters, and not these.
Yes, these concepts and notthese.

(25:17):
What I get is well, here's whatwe intended to mean by this
exam topic, but then there'sreality, right?
I'm sure you've never been to aCisco exam where you thought how
in the world did they ask aboutthis topic in this exam, right?

Speaker 2 (25:32):
Never happens, never happens, not at all.

Speaker 1 (25:35):
I always felt fully prepared to take a Cisco exam.

Speaker 3 (25:37):
Yeah, no curve balls, no weird questions at all.

Speaker 4 (25:41):
Yeah yeah.
So just anecdotally there was Ifelt so bad for Dave.
Dave Huckabee wrote the switchbook a couple of editions.
He's a friend of mine and Iwrote the route book one edition
and Cisco put some weird nottechnical topics about, like

(26:03):
PDIO or something like that youknow, the planning and
deployment et cetera model, andthey put those exam topics in
the route blueprint.
So I tried to write somethinguseful to it.
It's the first time they had itin the exam, so I'm, you know,
just guessing at this pointeducated guessing and so I had

(26:23):
all this great content and theyasked all the questions in the
switch exam so poor dave isgetting all these hate mails.
why didn't you come?
And he's like so anyway.
So, yeah, you can't really doanything about those.
But things like how far do yougo on the topics that are

(26:44):
obviously in the exam?
That's just hard to do, and soI even write to that in the
intro a lot stronger these daysand tell people think of it like
an SAT or ACT exam in the US,where it's college prep exam or
college entrance exam.
You're not going to knoweverything.
So study what you know is on it, except that this is not about
getting a 100.

(27:04):
It's about getting a pass score.
Get the pass score, don't sweatit.
But you know, if you look atthe exam topics, we know where
you should spend most of yourtime.
Or if you just listen up topeople that live here and get
their input, you can figure outwhere to spend your time Right.
No, ospf, everybody.
You know, for instance, justall of it.

Speaker 2 (27:25):
Everything.
I do want to pivot kind of intoactual authoring of books.
Wendell, Were you a writer ofany sort before you started
writing technical content?

Speaker 4 (27:38):
No, I had written a few 50, 100-page consulting
papers summarized the work thatwe did on a consulting gig, but
it was not creative.
I mean it had to follow therules of English language.

Speaker 2 (27:55):
So what has been your approach to writing a book?
Because I just see that as justthis massive undertaking.
I have sat down and writtenblogs before and these are like
one, two page things and it willtake me a week because I'll
write 10 words and go hmm, youknow, I think I need to take a
walk and come back and then thatwas really hard, that paragraph

(28:18):
.
So I'm going to take a week off.

Speaker 1 (28:19):
And then writer's block is a real thing, yeah, so
it's like how do you approach anundertaking like that?

Speaker 2 (28:25):
Do you see it as one big thing or do you, like you
mentioned, those books arebroken down into parts.
Do you take it a part at a time?
What does that look like?

Speaker 4 (28:35):
So, yeah, you get started on your blog post.
It's hard to write two pages.
How do you write 1400 that I'mlooking over there, yeah, yeah,
it's definitely an eat theelephant kind of thing.
You know you just do the wholeone bite at a time thing.
But my mom paid me a backhandedcompliment when I was young.
She said to a friend and shetold me about this.

(28:57):
I said, yeah, I told her.
It's like you know he's not thebrightest guy, but you know he
was really persistent.
And she did it with a smile onher face.
He was about the nicest ladyever.
But you know, and I thought, no, I'm not just, you know, an
average guy who's persistent.
And it's like you know, I mightjust be an average guy who's

(29:17):
persistent, you know, and that'spart of it, tim, it's like you
just got to keep plugging at itand you say, hey, I'm going to
write something down this hourand the next day.
So I think the persistence partof it is a big thing.
But you got to get your headaround the project.
If you spend and this issomething I had already coached
Jason on, because he asked methe same question, oddly enough,

(29:38):
talking about the CCNA books is, how do you attack something
that's big If you are spendingyour energy thinking about the
enormity of the task, be it ablog post that feels large to
you, or you know, a two volumeset, it's going to win.
So what can you think about?
So we can imagine it down intoparts and chapters and sections

(30:00):
and topics and say, all right,well, right now I'm going to
experiment with that weird newACL thing that lets you put two
ACLs on the interface, right,and you go play and we all love
playing in lab, right.
So go figure it out, play withit, see what works, take a few
notes on what might go in it and, hey, today I made progress.
You just keep chipping away atit.
Um, so I would.

Speaker 3 (30:20):
I would be in, I hone in on something and I would
spend weeks on one thing, like,yeah, well, I would just be on
that for like a month and a half.
So how long does it actuallytake you to write a book?

Speaker 4 (30:31):
Well, I'm slower now, but the totally blank sheet for
a new book where I don't needto research.
It's about an hour a page, lock, stock and barrel.
So 500 page book, 500 hours.
So that's write it, get theedit comments back, review those
, get the copy, edit comments,et cetera.
But so little of my writingtoday.

(30:53):
Is that right?
We talked about that a littlebit earlier, right?
So it's oddly enough if you sayhere's a chapter with 20 pages
in the foundation topics whereall the real content is and I
update significantly two pagesand minor updates to two pages,
but I still had to read thewhole thing.
That's not as time efficient.

(31:14):
That actually takes more time.
Removing even a paragraph ortwo with something meaningful in
it is dangerous because youdon't know what else further
down the road is relying on it.
So I mean there are times whenit's like, hey, I'm changing 20%
of this chapter.
I may just throw it out andreuse the figures and examples,

(31:34):
but throw out the words and justwrite the whole thing again.
Yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker 3 (31:38):
And what's easier to do that than have to nitpick,
and what you're going to keepand what you're not, and how
that affects everything.
Yeah, yeah, so who?

Speaker 4 (31:46):
knows, maybe half a page an hour at that point.
But yeah, yeah, page an hour atthat point.
But um, yeah, yeah, it's um,it's a bit of a slog.
I think the last one.
Oh, my goodness, that's been awhile.

Speaker 2 (31:57):
Uh, I was gonna say you're not helping my case for
writing, wanting to write moreblog posts well, blog posts are
I.

Speaker 4 (32:04):
I don't think take as you you'd be surprised how much
planning do you?
So for the context, you have alot less of that right?
Oh yeah, what's your next topicin your blog?

Speaker 2 (32:18):
I've been working so hard that I don't even have one,
all right.
No, yeah, I have not.
I've shifted a little bit moreto video lately, but yeah.
So let's say I had a topic Iwanted to write on OSPF, area
types or bringing up neighbors.
Let's say that's the next topicthat I want to write about.
What would your advice be toattack that?

Speaker 4 (32:42):
I like an iterative approach.
I know some people don't.
I would literally writesomething and not worry about
the wording of the sentence, or.
But I just want to captureideas.
And I learned this in atechnical writing class in
college, actually a techniquewhere you start with ideas and
you try to write only the firstsentence of the paragraph.

(33:03):
So you write the first sentence, and what do we want to do as
nerds?
Right?
Well, detail, detail, detail,detail, detail, right, because
that's the fun, cool stuff.
But there's a style oftechnical writing that says the
first sentence ought to be thetheme of the paragraph and the
subject ought to be the subjectof the paragraph and the subject

(33:26):
should be the first phrase inthe sentence.
You don't need a novel, youdon't need stylistic words.
Make it clarity over everything.
So if somebody can read thefirst four words and know the
topic of the paragraph.
So now I've made my mind thinkI'm writing a blog post with
eight paragraphs and my topicsof the paragraphs are these

(33:48):
eight short phrases.
And then, nerdy people right,if I said, hey, compare and
contrast a normal area to astubby area, you can go off on
that, right, but now I've gotthe structure of what those are,
so I have found that effective.
But also just the get somethingdown.
I can edit something I'vewritten a lot better than I can

(34:11):
write something new.
Does that resonate with any ofyou guys?
Yeah, yeah.
Right, so write something crappyand then make it better and
then make it better.

Speaker 2 (34:20):
That makes a lot of sense, not use chat GPT.

Speaker 3 (34:23):
Got it.

Speaker 4 (34:27):
Can you use AIs to write?

Speaker 2 (34:37):
Taking that a step further and talking about
learning and knowledge retention.
You mentioned that you had abook next year that was 1,400
pages.
I think it's human nature weget a book, we want to read it
cover to cover and just gowhat's kind of some of your
advice there on okay, you'vewritten a book, it's out there
in the public for people tolearn and practice and study for
a certification.

(34:58):
What's your guidance on howpeople should use your books?

Speaker 4 (35:03):
Yeah.
So it's a two-volume set forCCNA, and Volume 1, before
Chapter 1, is a plan for how touse the books on purpose, and it
answers that very question, tim.
So the idea is that you knowyou certainly can't.
If your strategy is to readthem both cover to cover and
then start studying, you'regoing to have forgotten almost

(35:26):
everything, if not everything,right?
So it's got to be a process andI would even I would even
improve and change it now, eventhough the books just came out.
I debated whether to put evenmore advice in that section or
not.
But in terms of books, you reada small chunk, you do the
review and study.
You read a small chunk, do thereview and study, but it's not

(35:48):
necessarily even sequential thereview and study, but it's not
necessarily even sequential, asmodern learning science tells us
that you will retain more ifyou delay between, say, your
reading and your review.
So the thing I would add even,is read chapter one, read
chapter two, do a bit of reviewon chapter one, read chapter
three, do a little bit morereview on chapter one.

(36:10):
So space learning is one of thebig things in modern learning
science.
Science that they say improvesyour retention over time.
It's a little less comfortablebut it's more effective.
But yeah, so I imagine fromyour days using the books, tim,
that you remember the end ofchapter review.
There's activities in the bookthat it suggests to you.

(36:30):
There's end of part reviewactivities In my YouTube channel
.
When I sat down to say, allright, what do I want to
accomplish there?
It's not meant forentertainment, it's just more
CCNA learning, right?
But I decided, hey, if I make avideo about a topic, I'm always
going to have one more reviewsomething.
Whether it's another video,that's a review exercise or

(36:53):
points you to a blog post,that's a review exercise.
And I've really enjoyed comingup with video-based review
exercises to go along with, youknow, content videos.
But yeah, you've got to.
If you don't commit to thestudy part of the equation, I
don't think you're going to beas successful at any big body of

(37:13):
learning, whether it's IT ornot.

Speaker 3 (37:16):
Wendell, you mentioned your YouTube channel.
That's relatively new.
What was your idea there of whyyou want a YouTube channel?
Is that to supplement your CCNAstuff on your books, or is it
to meant to replace it, or what?

Speaker 4 (37:29):
Yeah, in fact I may.
I may exercise that I can askyou guys questions.
I want to.
I want to answer your question,but you tell me, when you're
learning for something big, likeyou're studying for a
certification exam or you knowsome big thing, you're learning,
not just finding outinformation about the
CrowdStrike failure, right, butuh, you know you're learning

(37:51):
something big.
Why do you pick video?
Where do you find it effectiveand why do you pick reading
something big like a book?
Can you think of one or twothings that's appealing about
video learning for big learningtasks?
And what do you find appealingfor books for big learning tasks
, if anything?

Speaker 3 (38:09):
For me.
I'm an auditory learner.
I'm used to like lectures andaudio books and podcasts and
that kind of stuff where I'mingesting a lot of the knowledge
through my ears, and so Iprefer videos.
Just because of that, I cankind of focus in and I don't
know it's when I read something,I'll read it like three to four
times and lose where I am andjust not keep track what I'm

(38:31):
doing.
So I prefer videos.
I've used CBT Nuggets and thenI also supplement with your book
to go kind of reinforceeverything that I'm learning.
But my primary source is alwaysvideo personally, either of
your other guys.

Speaker 2 (38:44):
I agree with Kevin.
I think that video to me seemsalmost more conversational, so
that it's, like Kevin mentioned,kind of that auditory, that
classroom style.
I think there's value in that.
Where I really like text is,within the last couple of years,
how I have approached studyingfor certifications is using that

(39:06):
space repetition approach thatyou brought up.
We talk about the Ankiflashcards a lot on here.
In fact we had an episode way,way back on space repetition and
how people learn and that kindof thing.
And what I like about text,especially digital, is I can
take, you know, I can copy thosethat text and put it right into
these flashcards that I canleverage and review on a daily

(39:30):
basis and the text just is justmakes that a lot easier than
hearing it in a video and thenhaving to type it down and that
kind of thing.
So I think that combinationapproach is what really helps
for me.
What I like to do is to takedifferent mediums.
So like I would take your book,wendell, I'd read the chapter
and then if I had a videoresource of the entire CCNA

(39:56):
portfolio, then I wouldbasically take that chapter and
watch the videos for that.
And so take one topic, use thedifferent mediums I have at my
disposal and then build thoseflash cards as I go.
So I'm constantly reviewing asI'm learning something new.
Because I'll tell you, in thelast couple of years I got the

(40:17):
CCMP and pretty much the entirefirst year that I was studying
for that, I was just going readthe chapter, watch the videos
about it, read the next chapter,watch the videos.
I was not doing that reviewthat you were talking about.
So, other than getting valuefrom doing labs as I went, I
basically wasted a year ofstudying because I finally hit

(40:38):
the end of that and I'm likethis isn't working.
And that's when I developedthat space repetition approach
and that's what really, I think,kind of got me over that line.

Speaker 1 (40:47):
Yeah, wendell, for me I like to introduce myself to a
topic by video first, becauseusually they do a great job at
like breaking it down.
You know, high level.
When I want to go deeper, I'lllook for, you know, the
textbooks, the technical papersand stuff like that and just
kind of immerse myself in itfrom there, and then if I've got

(41:08):
to go back and review it, thenit's flashcards.
Maybe watch the video again,you know, and all the stuff at
the end of the chapters thatthey want you to do to try to
memorize key topics and termsand stuff.

Speaker 4 (41:20):
So all three of you gave different slants on it, and
I've heard those things before.
See how thick that is.

Speaker 2 (41:27):
That's one of them.
Yeah, that's one.

Speaker 4 (41:31):
Did any of you or any of the other people listening
probably say you know I lovereading thick technical books
cover to cover and I absorbdoing that right.
And it's definitely happenedmore as a cultural thing too.
I've got a 23-year-old daughterrecently out of undergrad and

(41:51):
she just laughs when it's like,so do you think anybody would
read this book who's anywhereclose to your age.
She's like, nah, you know.
So what I'm trying to do withthe YouTube channel is say, how
do you take a book that's, inall fairness, I think, pretty
good at being a book, a book forCCNA, I think we've got that

(42:12):
down here.
But how do you make iteffective, in the lens of what
you three just said, forsomebody that you know, honestly
, would learn everything withvideo and they need some review
tools, but they probablywouldn't read, or I want to.
You know, learn first with avideo and then.
Or learn first with a video anduse as reference a book, and

(42:35):
that's that's the explorationI'm doing with the YouTube
channel.
So I think, a YouTube channelwith videos that are organized
in the same outline as the book.
So here's, here's the premise.
Each content video matches amajor heading in a chapter in
terms of scope, but I purposelyteach it a little differently

(42:55):
than the writing style or theexamples in the chapter, so it's
like a second resource on thesame concept and if you are a
lean video person, you can watchthe video and at the end of the
video I tell you skip thesection, look at these two
topics in the section, make sureyou look at these two topics in
the section, make sure you lookat these two key topics or
whatever the advice is aboutwhether you can skip the section

(43:17):
or dig in if your preference isvideo first.
But we've got a huge amount ofstudy and review tools packaged
into the book in the sameorganization.
So if I manage to complete thetask, then now somebody could
buy the books and if they wantto use it solely for the review
tools like the monster big setof practice questions which I

(43:42):
got a little carried away on,honestly, but it's a large
number or the other review toolsand just never read the text or
just use the the key topics.
Now there's PDFs of all the keytopics from the chapters pulled
to the companion website so youcan review those, watch the
video, read the chapter or readthe section of the chapter, so

(44:04):
somewhere between that.
So I I think we can reach morelearners with that combination
than with just handing you abook.
It just takes a little work toget it all made.

Speaker 3 (44:17):
Do you think people have changed how they're learned
over the years since you firststarted doing this, like these
kind of the videos are the newmedium of doing this, but you've
been writing books forever.

Speaker 1 (44:26):
Do you think that is going?

Speaker 3 (44:27):
to gradual change, or do you think this is just how
it should have been from thebeginning?
Well, it's definitely changed.

Speaker 4 (44:33):
You know, know, multimodal I think somebody had
tossed out that term.
But certainly if you look atwhat, you know, how kids are
taught in school today and I'mnot opposed to to those kinds of
changes, we just want it to beeffective and certainly the more
people learning a thing, themore you can invest in those
different tools.
That may take a little moretime to develop, right, there's
just more money in the game tobe able to do that.

(44:54):
But I grew up in a world forwhich you read the textbook
cover to cover, right.
So you know, partly it was likeall right, well, I've gotten
pretty good at writing books.
You know, I used to teach a lot, so I'm comfortable recording
videos for the most part.
But yeah, if I could doanything in that regard, I would

(45:16):
maybe find some way to makewritten text more useful to
those who embrace video.
But I don't know if how manypeople that embrace video are
gonna start with this, right?

Speaker 2 (45:33):
so kevin, how?
Maybe it's a different beast,kevin, how many tiktoks would
that be?

Speaker 3 (45:37):
tell me that book size I've looked at, you know,
doing tiktok series for ccna,and it's just so overwhelming
the amount of amount of stuffthat has to go over and how much
detail do you go in, and allthat stuff.
I can't imagine writing thebook, let alone having to make
these little videos that you dothat are like.
It blows my mind that you caneven do this.
To be honest, I'm veryimpressed by what you've been

(45:59):
putting out.
That's all I'm saying.

Speaker 4 (46:00):
Well, thanks, it's not quick but it's funny.
On that I mean I'd be curiousto get your input.
So we've had this conversationaround the family.
It's like all right, so could Imake a video course
comprehensive to CCNA?
That was one minute portraitoriented videos that are popular
today.

Speaker 3 (46:20):
I mean how many?
It's hard to get that muchinformation in a little minute
video, you know, and like youhave to do bite size.
But then are you going intoenough detail, is it?
Are you making entertaining?
It's a whole balance there ofis it entertaining?
Is it actually usefulinformation?

Speaker 4 (46:37):
And and can video number 10 rely on people having
watched one through nine?
Yeah, like I rely on that.
You'll never get there, yeah.

Speaker 3 (46:45):
I think a YouTube platform like that you could do
a little better, because I hadplaylists and stuff.
But if you're doing TikTok oranything that's just being
forced, like Instagram Reels andall that stuff, then I don't
think it works well.

Speaker 2 (46:54):
No chance.

Speaker 4 (46:55):
yeah, yeah, but with a 2,400 one-minute video
playlist on YouTube 10,000videos in this playlist.

Speaker 2 (47:07):
Hey, wendell, you never know, until you try, there
you go.

Speaker 4 (47:11):
Well, I'll make 10,000 videos and I'll let you
know how it works.

Speaker 1 (47:16):
Wendell, I don't think we covered this.
How did you go from teaching towriting and then, as a
follow-up to that, what was thefirst book?

Speaker 4 (47:27):
Yeah, yeah.
So teaching to writing.
So I'd been doing this gig,teaching on the road 30 weeks a
year developing some courses.
So in 98, in April Ciscoannounced CCNA.
I was getting married in June Iwanted to stay home more.
They had a placard the size ofa business card that said want
to write for us?
At the Cisco Press Booth atCisco Live they had five books

(47:50):
out and it had a placard thatsaid want to write for us?
Call John John's phone number.
Wow, write John's phone numberdown.
John was in the middle of a jobchange so I called John every
week for like two months.
He didn't return my calls.
So his replacement sorry, itwasn't John, it was Jim that
left.
John took his place and then,after a couple of conversations,

(48:10):
they said sure, we'd love foryou to write a book for us.
Which one do you want to write?
And I said so.
It was basically what grew upto be Route Switch or CCNA, and
I said which one will sell more?
And they said the one that'sthe prerequisite to the other
two, ccna and I said all right,cool, I'll write that.

(48:31):
So that was the motivation.
So it kept me from doing theroad warrior teach on the road
for the first half a year ofmarriage, which worked out.
And they promised up frontabout the whole writing and the
difficulty thing.
It's like all right, so sign upto write a 500-page book when
you've written 50-pageconsulting reports half of which

(48:51):
are tables and things like thatto tell them things like IP
addressing plans and the like.
And they said we need the nerd.
We've got people that can writeEnglish.
So I said we will fix everysentence as need be, but we
can't write about the technology.
So they said just get the techinto the Word doc and we'll take

(49:14):
care of it.
And I'd like to think that itwasn't all that bad starting out
, but I definitely have growninto it.
It took some practice to getbetter and better at it.

Speaker 1 (49:24):
It took some practice to get better and better at it.
When you wrote that first book,did you get the vibe like I can
see myself doing this for along time, or is this like a
happy accident?

Speaker 4 (49:35):
Yeah, it was probably two editions in before and
those were pretty quick.
They revved CCNA, so it cameout in 98.
They revved it again in 99.
They revved it again in 2001.
By the 2001 edition, it's likeyou know, I could probably do
that and then add a couple otherbooks in with it and make a
business out of that.

(49:56):
A business that paid me, not abusiness where I had a bunch of
employees running around.
Books just don't pay wellenough to do that kind of thing,
but certainly to keep me and myfamily fed.
It seemed reasonable at thatpoint.

Speaker 1 (50:09):
So that's when.

Speaker 4 (50:09):
I started thinking all right, well, what other
books do you add in?
So I talked to the publisher.
They were happy with me.
They're happy to send projectsmy way.
So that's when we added inthings like I did a couple of
editions of a QoS book and thenwe decided I'd do the CCIE route
switch written Did.
And then we decided I'd do theCCIE route switch written did
three editions of that.
That was a beast.

(50:31):
So that was you know.
Talk about the whole impostersyndrome Writing a book where
all of your customers are goingfor their CCIE.
Yeah, that was pretty scary.

Speaker 1 (50:44):
But it worked out.
How many total books have youwritten over the years?

Speaker 4 (50:49):
All right.
So I have to do this mathoccasionally.
So it's 10 or 11 separate books, 29 editions, three video
products and I helped out with asoftware product.
Wow products and I helped outwith a software product.
So almost all so 29,.
I count a new edition of a bookas a book.

(51:10):
Because of the work, involved?

Speaker 1 (51:13):
Yeah, no doubt.

Speaker 4 (51:15):
But you know it's not in terms of what the public
sees, so much so.
But yeah, it's a lot.
I kind of lose track, but sincethe publisher said, hey, when
you're teaching, keep keep yourbooks up there in the backdrop,
so that's the most recent CCNAbooks over there, the less
recent over here, everythingelse and stuff I impacted by

(51:37):
passing off material on those.
So yeah, it's a lot, but yeah,it's been fun to do.
It's funny.
I was joking with my publishertoday.
We had a meeting and it's likeso what are you doing now?
You know the CCA books are out.
You don't have any work left todo for us for this edition.
You know what are you spendingyour time on?
And I'm like well, you knowI've been thinking about another

(51:59):
book.
And he's like no, you're tryingto get get rid of this one.
Why do you want to write someother new books?
So we'll see about that, but Iprobably won't do another,
another whole new one.
I might, I might get Kevin'sadvice, maybe, maybe Kevin will
team up and do 10,001 minutes.

Speaker 2 (52:20):
I love it.

Speaker 1 (52:21):
I love it.
Will the YouTube channelcontinue after you enter
retirement?
Is that going to be like, maybethe little side fun project?

Speaker 4 (52:33):
Oh, yeah, yeah.
So this is not a plan forWendell to retire fully.
This is a plan for Wendell tohand off the grandkid to Jason,
so to speak.

Speaker 1 (52:40):
Okay.

Speaker 4 (52:40):
All right, so I'll probably keep my fingers in
something somewhere.
Nice, so I'll probably keep myfingers in something somewhere.
So I really want to try out theYouTube channel to see if I can
.
Can I serve the people I'vebeen helping with CCNA for 20
some odd years better with onelast big push in this YouTube
channel and figure out how to dothat?

(53:00):
Well, not just.
Hey, what we need is anothervideo on ARP.
Right, we may not need that,but we might need something
that's systematic, that workswell with the books, etc.
Etc.
And I'm going to try to figurethat out, but yeah, I would.
I'm not able to talk publiclyabout the how and when and
wherefore, but the goal is forthat to be long-lived.

(53:23):
Like, I chose a network upskillname for the channel so it's
not tied to any other.
Like, search skills is name ofmy company that you know my
paychecks come from and my blogsite is search skillscom.
But I chose another name forthe YouTube channel in part so
that it would be easily setaside and funded and used by

(53:44):
others once I decide to be donewith it.

Speaker 3 (53:47):
Now, when did you get your CCIE?
Because you were talking aboutyou had to write the CCIE book
and you were feeling someimposter syndrome and that kind
of stuff.
Did you have your CCIE waybefore that and was kind of like
doing this, or did you have toget your CCIE while you were
writing the book?
That would have been horrible.

Speaker 1 (54:05):
No.

Speaker 4 (54:06):
I got it in 95 october or something.
It's on, it's on the wall, soit might be on one of those
little doodads on the shelfoctober 24th I think.
So my number is 1624, which isyou know by today's standard
number, um, but so, and it's, Iguess, enterprise now right is
route switch.
They didn't.
They didn't have other namesfor them back then.
It was only Route Switch backthen.

(54:27):
And then I probably wrote thefirst CCIE Route Switch cert
guide.
I did what was effectively thesecond edition, although they
didn't call it that Somebodyelse did the first one.
It was probably 2003 or 2004.
It was the year after Katrinahit New Orleans, because we
signed up the deal sitting atthe convention.

(54:48):
Cisco Live was in New Orleansthe year before the hurricane
hit down there.
Oh wow, okay, so, anyway, so,yeah.
So I was already a CCIE.
I had taught CCIE boot campsfor a learning partner.
I lived it every day and it wasstill a very scary subject to
write about Well yeah, you knowCCNA scrutiny is.

(55:09):
Most people are learning it anddon't know anything about
networking.
So more of the questions arethey're confused about something
and you can help them.
And then you get to CCIE andpeople are you know, they find a
problem in the book and theymay not bother to spend their
time telling you because they'removing on.
You know they've got otherstuff to do and say well, I know

(55:30):
that that's not right, I knowit's really this, so I don't get
the feedback quite as much if Ihappen to have something wrong.
But then when you do get thefeedback, you're talking to, you
know, the lead person atwhatever company you're thinking
of, that's that's the persongiving you the feedback, right?
So that's those.
Those are interesting ones.
It was interesting to go toCisco live in those years.

(55:52):
We'll just put it that way,right?

Speaker 3 (55:54):
Hey, wendell you got a minute, was the feedback?
Personal attacks, cause I getthat a lot from on the internet.
I can imagine being books alittle a I can imagine being
books a little a little, alittle, a little easier.

Speaker 4 (56:06):
Yeah, yeah, it's, it's not quite so personal.
It's like no, you mean, thebook is wrong.
Not that you know I'm ugly andmy mom addresses me.
Funny, you know, and not youknow, it's interesting, though.
You talk about putting yourselfout there on your videos, right
?
I mean, you're doing more thanteaching, You're being
entertaining while doing that toget people engaged, and of

(56:28):
course, you know haters gonnahate, right?

Speaker 3 (56:30):
so yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm.
I kind of tone it out now.
Um, I just had a video recentlythat's over a million views now
and you know, once you break acertain point, you start
breaking into the the generalpublic, not just the tech nerds,
and that's when the peoplereally let loose yeah the
general public, not just thetech nerds, and that's when the
people really let loose.

(56:51):
The general public has no ideawhat I'm talking about, or?

Speaker 2 (56:53):
anything like that and they just really you have it
, I have no idea what you'retalking about, but I'm going to
tell you why you're wrong.
Exactly Just personal.
It's like just making fun of me, Like like the way I look just
random stuff.

Speaker 4 (57:07):
It really is.
You're ugly and your momaddresses you.

Speaker 3 (57:09):
Funny it honestly really, is it really?

Speaker 4 (57:12):
is oh, I hate that for you, Kevin.

Speaker 3 (57:15):
I hope that reduces dude that's just, you can't be
in the internet without Tune itout.

Speaker 1 (57:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (57:22):
It's part of the growing process, too, of putting
yourself out there.
You've got to like have someconfidence in yourself and who
you are and what you're saying,and just people are going to be
people, no matter what.

Speaker 4 (57:32):
Well great attitude.
I don't know that I'd want togo there.
I'm going to.
I'm going to limit the numberof people that can watch my
YouTube videos.
I don't want to start turningcomments off and yeah, got to
sign a waiver first before youcan see the video.

Speaker 2 (57:45):
Wendell, I've got one more question that I kind of
want to put you on the spot, forI've been seeing and we've kind
of had discussions internallyabout this too.
I've been seeing more and morethings about how there's this
thought out there thatpotentially network engineering
could at some point go away orit's not going to be as big of a

(58:06):
focus as it has been in thepast and I think, is right now.
What are your thoughts on that?
Do you think at some point wewill see a downturn in people
that are trying to learn networkfundamentals and get the CCNA,
or do you think it's got manystrong years ahead?

Speaker 4 (58:25):
I can give my opinion , but it is not based on
researching data from the, say,the US Department of Labor that
kind of thing.
So I can only give you the sensethat I get of it.
I just don't live in that partof the world of the you know
like sometimes people ask me totalk about.
You know, come on some show andtalk about the job market and
I'm like, well, I don't livethere, I'm not part of that.

(58:48):
I'm helping people learn skillsfor that but not to get there.
So the best I can tell thenumber of people needed versus
the number of jobs available,there's still a shortage.
That's what I hear fromdifferent articles, articles
that quote the Department ofLabor, from different articles,
articles that quote theDepartment of Labor Anecdotally

(59:09):
though.
You know, there's compressionin the market.
There's always going to be upsand downs in the market.
I don't think we're anywhereclose currently to a world for
which you can turn around andget two offers in a month if you
want to start job shopping.
So there are times when that'sbeen true.
But I've just, you know, inthinking about what we're going
to do tonight for this recording, I was thinking back to the
early days of my career.

(59:31):
I got out of college in 1985.
It was a great job market.
I almost got a master's degree.
I would have gotten out in 87.
Horrible job market.
So you know, part of it's theebb and flow, but I don't think
the long-term outlook is poor.
But we are definitely in thewhat's the analogy.
I can't remember who to givecredit to, but it's like one

(59:52):
generation's Nobel laureate isthe next generation's engineer,
is the next generation'stechnician.
We're definitely in thetechnician stage and eventually
the jobs would go away.
But you know, it's maybeliterally.
You know maybe it's a 20-yearthing, maybe it's a 40-year
thing, but we're all going toget replaced by AIs anyway,
right?

Speaker 2 (01:00:14):
No, that's variance.

Speaker 4 (01:00:17):
So where did all of you land on the?
What's the long-term network oroutput?

Speaker 2 (01:00:21):
So I don't think network engineering in and of
itself is going to go away.
What I see happening is thekind of continued push toward
abstraction and trying to takeas much of the intricate details
of configuration and buildingnetworks away.
I mean, we're seeing that Ithink a good parallel to that is

(01:00:45):
the public cloud model.
Is we want to be able toprovide people an end user
interface that they can go inand easily point, click, pick
what they want.
I think at some point that'swhere the industry is trying to
take networking.
But networking is still thereand you're still going to need
people who understand and areable to troubleshoot and fix

(01:01:08):
things when they're broken.
That's kind of my stance on it.

Speaker 1 (01:01:10):
Yeah, I think we'll eventually get there, tim, but I
think before we get there,it'll probably be network as a
service and you're going to needa lot of network engineers to
operate that model.
We're not going away anytimesoon.

Speaker 3 (01:01:24):
I don't think.
I'm curious to see how networkas a service and all these
things go in, that, like we justsaw with CrowdStrike, how it
caused a global outage becauseof one little thing, and I can
see network as a servicehappening and the provider or
whatever goes down and we haveno one to fix it.
We have no one on premise.
We have no idea what's going on.

(01:01:45):
We're at the vendor's mercy.
So as we move towards the samething with the cloud, you know
we're moving off premise andgoing to cloud.
I'm curious to see how thisprogresses and if there's like a
boomerang back of you know,getting all this, all this power
away from our individuals whoare at the company and seeing,
if you know, I don't know, I, I,that's my hope.
I guess I like control, I likecontrol and I like having people

(01:02:07):
on premise.
I don't like the cloud, I'msorry, cables to cloud guys.
I mean I love you guys but likeI, I want control of everything
.
I don't like having someoneelse's computer, I don't like as
a service and like that.
So I know we're moving that way.
So but my hope is people willsee the light eventually and
start peeling it back and comingback into control.
But who knows is that gonnahappen or not.
But that's my hope is, peoplewill see the light eventually

(01:02:28):
and start peeling it back andcoming back into the world.
But who knows if that's goingto happen or not, but that's my
hope.

Speaker 4 (01:02:34):
I love it.

Speaker 3 (01:02:38):
Let's just do away with cloud completely by 2026.

Speaker 4 (01:02:43):
That's awesome, but I'm hopeful for the future.
That's awesome, but I'm hopefulfor the future.
But you know it's a questionthat comes up related that
sometimes.
If you're you know, if you're20, which technology area and
you want to be in computers,computers, you know what
technology area do you want toget into.
Then you see, you knowoccasional articles.
You know what are the bestpaying entry level things to go
for and clouds in it now, andyou seldom see networking

(01:03:05):
mentioned.
So are those accurate?
Are those just trying to getclicks to sell ads or not?
But I think people that wrotethe articles are probably
genuinely interested in it.
But uh, but yeah, it's not likeyou know, in the, as I
mentioned in the 90s, it's likenetwork.
You know internet growing at 14per month.
You know you're gonna have somejobs right.

Speaker 1 (01:03:24):
So well, wendell, uh, we have been at this for over
an hour.
I cannot believe how quicklythis, uh this, has flown by.
Um, I want to give you anopportunity to talk about
anything you're working oncurrently and where people can
find you uh, at all yourdifferent places oh sure, so you
can find me at link treereeslash Wendell O, wendell O.

Speaker 4 (01:03:46):
So I love it.
Or Wendell O if you prefer, andthat'll link to everything in my
digital life.
And the big thing for me thesedays is continuing on with the
YouTube channel generatingcontent.
We've got, I guess for the livelisteners you're hearing this

(01:04:06):
in time to know that we've gotcontent coming out in August
related to the exam release andfor those of you that see it
recorded, the goal is to getvideos related to one book part
out every month until I've gotsome out for all of the parts of
both volumes.
So that's the publishing planthere.
So yeah, and I do teach onlineoccasionally at the O'Reilly

(01:04:28):
platform.
It used to be called Safari, soif you want to learn CCNA level
things from Wendell, you canpay them money and come to my
class.
It doesn't pay me money directly, I get paid another way, but
it's a paid service, but love tosee you there.
They do have short free trialsoccasionally, but it's
definitely a give them yourcredit card short free trial.

(01:04:51):
So if you go that route, makesure you note in your calendar
when to cancel your trial if youreally don't want the trial.

Speaker 1 (01:05:00):
Awesome.
We'll have all those links inthe show notes so you can easily
find them there.
Wendell, before we sign off, isthere anything that we should
have asked you, or is thereanything you want to ask us?

Speaker 4 (01:05:10):
Well, you guys want to stay up another hour, but yes
, I won't.
I won't keep us going too long.
I know you were.
You were leading us to theclose with that, didn't you?

Speaker 3 (01:05:22):
Before we sign off, I also want to say, just just,
wendell, like I met you for thefirst time, cisco live, and as
someone who is younger, um, thanthese guys, these guys are old
as crap, um, but I'm pretty surewe're the same age I know man
why I'm way younger you know,you were my head forward.
I dare you no, you don't talkabout my bald spot, um, but you

(01:05:45):
were.
You know I read your book.
That's how I first got into myCCNA studying and stuff like
that, and you know I always hadthat fear don't meet your heroes
, kind of thing.
But I met you for the firsttime a couple months ago at
Cisco Live and you are genuinelyone of the nicest guys in the
world and I am so glad that wegot to meet.
You are amazing and I justwanted to, before we sign off
and I don't see you for a while.
I just wanted to say that Ireally appreciate you man.

(01:06:06):
You're an awesome guy.

Speaker 4 (01:06:08):
Absolutely, absolutely.
Thank you.
It's very, very sweet of you tosay and feel, and, uh, you know
Cisco live was prettyoverwhelming for me this year.
You know that's where we metKevin and uh, it was.
there were a lot of peoplesaying nice things to me and
know it's great to hear, but ityou know it, I just by wednesday

(01:06:29):
or so, I think, my heart wasfull and it just, it just hit me
.
I just um, it was, it was a lot.
I was very thankful for it, butit's like, man, all these
people, I need to get back tothe basement and hide out for a
while but thank you for that,kevin awesome.

Speaker 1 (01:06:47):
Wendell, thank you so much for your time.
This has been such a funconversation again.
We'll have all the links in theshow notes to everything that
wendell mentioned earlier.
Thank you so much for joiningus, uh, and we'll see you next
time on another episode of theart of network engineering
podcast.
Hey everyone, this is aj.
If you like what you heardtoday, then make sure you
subscribe to our podcast andyour favorite podcatcher.

(01:07:07):
Smash that bell icon to getnotified of all of our future
episodes.
Also, follow us on Twitter andInstagram.
We are at Art of NetEng, that'sArt of N-E-T-E-N-G.
You can also find us on the webat artofnetworkengineeringcom,
where we post all of our shownotes.
You can read blog articles fromthe co-hosts and guests and

(01:07:29):
also a lot more news and infofrom the networking world.
Thanks for listening.
We'll see you next time.