(OH)NUG Fall Event 2019

What a fun event this past Ohio Networking User Group meeting was in Cleveland! I joined 120 other Ohio networkers at the Brew Garden in Strongsville for what turned out to be an extremely fun and insightful event. The (OH)NUG membership and events have grown substantially since our first one in February 2017 which had a grand total of 18 attendees. Here’s to a lot more growth and thought provoking conversations in the days to come!

The event started with a debate between Layer 2 Leaf Spine (L2LS) vs Ethernet Virtual Private Network (EPVN). Fellow (OH)NUG founders Mitch Vaughan (team EVPN) debated Chris Kane (team L2LS) the merits of their respective technologies. I was fortunate enough to moderate this debate which certainly was lively. These guys really played the role of a candidate ferociously making the case for their platform and really gave each other some hard hitting (and hilarious) jabs! These guys are buds in real life who understand that each technology has its place in the right environment so concluded the debate with a hug followed by a town hall style discussion breaking down where you would use each.

We took a little break then closed the event with an expert panel which included Bill Blake, Tom Zukowski, Brandon Greer and Luke Teeters expertly moderated by Mitch Vaughan. Topics covered were whether network engineers are really seeing orchestration and automation making an impact in their daily lives, the impact of cloud to network engineers and security challenges netengs encounter. So many insights came out of this incredibly interactive conversation with the audience engaged and asking some fantastic questions.

I’m really proud of what this little group has become. It really is a safe space where network engineers can get together to talk networking in a sales and vendor free environment… with beer. Just as we intended. Hope to see you at the next one!