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Month: February 2023

Cisco Press Giveaway 2023! –Concluded–

Posted on by mytechgnome
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To show my appreciation for the community, and the constant learning that goes into being an IT professional I thought I’d Cisco Press Giveaway!

The Prize

A free Cisco Press eBook or Video Resource!

You can browse the Cisco Press catalog here: https://www.ciscopress.com/

How to enter:

Entry is simple. Do any of the following (each one counts as an entry)

  1. Comment on this post with what book or video you’re interested in (make sure to include contact info so I can reach you if you win)
  2. Like, share/retweet my Tweet or LinkedIn post
  3. Comment on my Giveaway Tweet or LinkedIn post with the book or video you’re interested in.
  4. Share a link to this blog post
  5. Follow me on LinkedIn or Twitter

Any of the above activities between 10pm GMT February 15th and 10pm GMT February 22nd, 2023 will be entered. I’ll randomly select one entry and contact the winner to arrange delivery.

That’s it. Pretty simple.

Shout outs!

First off, I want to thank the Cisco Insider Advocates program! This prize offered is a reward I’d earned through that program, and since I already own over 30 Cisco Press books I thought it’d be great to pass along the opportunity to someone that’s looking to pick up some new skills.

I also have to say thank you to community programs like Cisco Insider Champions, VMware vExpert, Tech Field Day, and so many others. Being part of these communities has been far more benefitial than I’d ever imagined. Through them I’ve had the opportunity to meet some awesome people, and improve myself both professionally and personally.

Last, but certainly not least, is you! The IT community member that’s working to learn new skills. I know I wouldn’t be for the community. I’ve learned a huge amount from blogs, books, videos, forums, etc., and I appreciate anyone that’s actively working to learn and share their knowledge!

The Drawing!

Before announcing the winner, I wanted to provide some transparency in how the winner was selected. I compiled a list of all blog post comments, as well as Twitter and LinkedIn interactions in a spreadsheet. I then used Random.org to generate a randomized set of numbers that were assigned to each entry, similar to a raffle ticket number. Finally, I used Random.org to generate a number from the total range of entries, with the winner being the whoever had the matching number assigned to their entry.

And the winner is…

<Drum roll>

Sainty Thomas! Congrats!

https://twitter.com/SaintyT https://www.linkedin.com/in/sainty-thomas-20140921

CCDE Journey (Take 2)

Posted on by mytechgnome

Back in 2020 I was planning to take the CCDE exam, but those plans were derailed by a little thing called a global pandemic. With test centers closed for an unknown period, I decided to wait until things calmed down before I started to really dig into it. Then, in 2021 it was announced that the CCDE was moving to version 3.0. I didn’t want to get end up in a race against the sunset of the v2 exam, which meant waiting until the release of v3. Add in some travel, a new job, and a handful of other events that distracted from my CCDE plan, and here I am, ready to give this another go.

I’m planning to continually add content as I’m learning new things, both as a way to help me remember what I’m covering, and hopefully in a way that might help others that are either working towards the CCDE or just looking to pick up bits of information along the way.

Study Materials

I have a handful of material that I’ll be using for the CCDE prep.

Primary resources:

Additional resources:

The CCDE covers a massive range of topics. It will be a fun process working my way through all of it!