Cisco Live is a flagship IT event where customers, partners, and Cisco come together to learn and explore upcoming innovations. Cisco Live 2026 marked my second participation, delivering a technical session and engaging in many other activities. The path to this milestone began nearly four years ago when I joined Cisco as a graduate Customer Success Specialist (CSS) in SD-WAN. Back then, speaking at Cisco Live felt like a distant dream. Still, I started submitting topics I found interesting, expecting to wait my turn until I had more experience or was better known. So, imagine my surprise when one summer day just before my second Cisco-versary, I received an email: “Congratulations! You have been selected to present a session at Cisco Live 2025 Amsterdam.” That moment marked the beginning of an incredible journey.
An Expert with Many Hats
Even after years on the job, and thousands of interactions with customers, much like those at a Cisco Live breakout session, there is one question that always lingers in my mind: When can you really feel like the expert that can answer all questions that might come up from those hundreds of people you engage with? I think the answer is simple, never. There is always a deployment more complex than you’ve encountered before, or one question so unusual that you need to check if anyone has ever tested it.
At Cisco Live, that question will inevitably come up. That’s exactly why an event of this scale exists, to give customers direct access to Cisco people from all technologies and roles, and to discuss with them what’s in their minds. Although I was there to deliver my session, that was just 90 minutes of an entire week spent working with and for the attendees.
Hands-On Learning and Real-Time Problem Solving
One of the most impactful experiences is the Meet-the-Engineer (MTE) sessions, where customers can book time with the Cisco experts and discuss their ongoing issues, or learn about new features and tools. Apart from gathering feedback and feature requests, these sessions offer me the opportunity to help them resolve some problems on the spot, suggest helpful or interesting features and demonstrate them in the lab, or we might brainstorm for hours on a unique deployment design they are considering.
Another very different activity from the MTE that I had an was active in was the Capture the Flag (CTF). As a fan of hands-on learning activities rather than passive presentations (a bit ironic given my own session), I love CTF, because it combines the practical exploration of the products with a gamified, competitive edge. Players try to find all the answers with the least amount of help to earn the most points and win big prizes. Here there is an interesting mix of Cisco Live crowd, from those that come to try one or two missions to check out a product they wanted, to people staying for hours or even days to get education credits, or learn as much as possible across multiple technologies. Questions range from how to connect to a lab, all the way to advanced niche features they wonder about during their lab exploration. You also get to meet the team behind the Cisco CTFs, who support the activities in customer engagements (like we use them in CSS) and in other open events for partners and customers, that happen throughout the year around the world.
When Every Audience Member Becomes an Expert
And of course, the place where the most questions come both in quantities and complexity, is the session room and its respective Webex chat. It is always both exciting and scary when someone in the audience makes the first question, right in the middle of your presentation, and after the first one, it’s an avalanche. But that is what makes the sessions at Cisco Live the most interesting and challenging of the year. When I chose to present a beginner-level breakout, I expected an audience with beginner-level questions, thinking that they would be people that are newer to SD-WAN, but I was so wrong. People with all kinds of knowledge and years of experience are there, with questions that extend way beyond the topic you are presenting, to other features, needs that they want taken care of by the solution, and technology in general. For me, these interactions, hearing the perspectives of the people outside of Cisco, the actual users of our products, is the most valuable takeaway from the whole event, one that makes me better in my job and growth.
Ultimately, Cisco Live is a maze of overlapping stages, meetings, booths, dinners and sessions. As a Cisco expert, you must help and enrich the experience of the attendees in all the different ways that you interact with them. Whether you are wearing the hat of a CTF proctor, or the hat of a speaker, every interaction is a chance to grow, connect, and make someone’s (net)work a little better.
The Cisco Side of Cisco Live
One of the great opportunities that the Cisco Live experience offers for us employees, except travelling to the event, getting a nice speaker-tshirt, enjoying delicious dinners and a big closing party, is the chance to meet with our customers and coworkers in person, often for the first time. While we might see each other virtually almost every day, that doesn’t match the serendipity of sharing a cup of coffee while walking around the booths, or comparing the different doughnut flavors we discovered just in time before the masses vanish them. Connecting face to face under such special circumstances helps nurture our team spirit, and bond over the shared experiences, whether it’s a late dinner, a show at the party, or a peculiar meeting. These moments humanize our colleagues, allowing us to know them as people beyond just work.
At the event, we also get to hear many things for the first time. From the keynote, where major product innovations and launches are announced, to new versions of products and features that we see in the World of Solutions, the amount of information and business passing through is enormous. As part of the SD-WAN community, a lot of things happened, from the SASE updates to AI networking. We had updates also from our CX side with the sovereign support enhancement, which is very relevant for a technology such as SD-WAN.
Reflections and the Future
In the end, the months of hard work that we put into the preparation for Cisco Live all culminate into a week of many coffees, steps, and most importantly, meaningful connections. Every lab that we test, all the demos we put into our slides, ensure that we deliver the best experience to our customers. If I learnt anything over the last couple years, is that we can never be completely prepared for all the things we’ll come across, so being ready to improvise is a crucial skill.
This year, I decided to challenge myself by doing a live demo in my session, and I would say it was truly thrilling. Although not everything went perfectly and at times the lab was lagging, it was something I will definitely repeat next time. The ability it provided to immediately show in the product how something is done when broad questions arose, rather than try to explain it just with words, was really worth the glitches.
Another thing that I loved this year was the CTF missions. While we didn’t have an internal proctors competition this year (last year I won some nice candies as reward for coming in second!), it was still a lot of fun connecting with fellow proctors to flag errors and improvements to the missions, thinking of how the customers would better understand what to do in each step.
A Year of Growth, Collaboration, and Perspective
The first time I participated in the Cisco Live I spent the whole week either presenting or proctoring CTF activities. This year it was different. I had multiple meetings with customers, people I’ve worked with before and new ones, and spent hours with account teams, colleagues of mine, and customers together brainstorming solutions. Shifting into a business-oriented mindset, having a more diplomatic and cross-architectural approach rather than focusing on the technical aspects of SD-WAN, helped me understand better the balances of the different stakeholders and in reality, what mindset customers come to us with. Ideating on diverse scenarios, all with their own quirks, was also a very good exercise, making me think about the capabilities of the technologies we are working with.
All in all, my Cisco Live experience this year was amazing, exhausting, exciting and fulfilling all at once. Delivering again to such a big audience, having private meetings, hearing unannounced SD-WAN enhancements and innovations, and connecting with our CSS team from all over EMEA, all these moments outshine the stress and the tiredness. What we take from this experience is so valuable for our jobs and our growth, helping us engage better with our customers, and learn our technology at a deeper level, both through the preparation, and through our interactions all week.
I’m already looking forward to next year in London, to presenting new upgrades on SD-WAN, creating fresh CTF missions, showcasing the latest features, and most of all, connecting again with my customers and Cisco colleagues. See you next year! 😀
This article is part of our mini-series, Voices of Cisco Live, where we follow different Cisco employees who had their own unique experience and perspective on the event
Authors
