I had a budget and an Imagine Pass. Now I had to work out the logistics. I wanted the crowdfunded money to go as far as possible, so I got the cheapest flight and started looking for roommates for a hotel/Airbnb. Luckily for me, a few of my fellow RouterGods were also looking to team up and split room costs. These were my fellow study group members and we knew each other pretty well though we hadn’t met in real life yet.
After booking everything, I just had to get sign-off to travel for the week to Cisco Live. Luckily, working at Cisco, this was a pretty easy process. My manager was very supportive, and just like that, I was going.
The Imagine Pass wouldn’t allow me to attend any breakout sessions, just visit World of Solutions, which is the large convention floor including Cisco and other vendors. I started planning to visit the Walk-In Self-Paced Labs and DevNet for most of my time, but I was also on a mission of my own: A scavenger hunt.
I wanted to meet my fellow RouterGods, but also some other notable people attending Live. So I put together a list of people I’d make a point of finding and getting a picture with as kind of a fun game. Since I had just started this blog and began really branching out into social media, the plan was simple: Find them, introduce myself, talk, and get a selfie.
After checking into the hotel on Sunday, I headed over to the convention to meet up with my fellow RouterGods. We had a dinner planned for later that evening, so I wasn’t too worried about missing anyone.
I don’t think the size and scope of Cisco Live can be adequately described without being there. Because of this, it’s actually kind of tough to find people. A common theme of the week would be the RouterGods ‘Marco Polo’ game trying to coordinate and find people, but it wasn’t too bad on Sunday. The World of Solutions wasn’t open yet and most attendees weren’t yet in attendance, so I met up with my fellow RGs for dinner and drinking.
