Review: DevNet Express Cloud Collaboration - Las Vegas 2017

My Cisco Live US 2017 in Las Vegas starts with the 2-Day DevNet Expressway Cloud Collaboration event. Cisco DevNet Express events are an offer from Cisco to provide the possibility to dive deeper into the programmability of today solutions. The Cisco DevNet team provides a mixture between theoretical backgroud and technics about programming and small labs and tasks to train the theoretical stuff in practice. 


After the usage of scripting and the development of small own tools helps to make the daily work of every engineer easier, the DevNet Express are the ideal start to build up the required programming skills. To level the field for all participants of the event, Day 1 starts with the basics of Python, programming basics, the benefits of APIs and usage of Rest APIs. The theory parts are always mixed with small exercises which really help to deepen the understanding of the theory parts.

The second day was focused to use the basics from day one in combination with Cisco Spark. The handled topics were the possibilities to automatize typical Cisco Spark operations with the help of Python scripts and the start to create own Spark bots based on existing SDKs. During all the sessions Cisco experts were available to help with if any problems occurred with the self developed scripts or general questions to Spark APIs.

Cisco publishes all upcoming DevNet Expressway events and registration is without fee, and they are the ideal start to start. The Cisco DevNet page is also a place to improve the own skills with lots of different labs, exercises and information material to basic programming topics or Cisco APIs. For me the Cisco DevNet Express 2016 in Berlin was the start to make my daily work simpler with small Python scripts. Why to test manual video endpoints after a major upgrade manually when a Python script can do the same?

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