Cisco Champion 2020

I am so full of emotion – elated, excited, honored, humbled – to announce that I’ve been accepted as a Cisco Champion for the second year in a row!

The Cisco Champion program engages with technical influencers that are excited and passionate about technology and sharing their experiences.

As a Cisco Champion you sign an NDA and get pre-release access to nearly every major announcement that Cisco makes. As influencers this gives us the opportunity to ponder the announcement, compose our thoughts, and produce content for our followers regarding the forth coming announcement.

We get access to engineers and product managers that work directly with the products and solutions so we can ask the hard questions and get honest answers!

Additionally, Cisco genuinely seeks our feedback and takes it very seriously. They will even modify based on our recommendations before it goes public. If you were at Cisco Live last year, or watched the keynotes, you heard during the announcement about the changes to the Cisco Certification Program – Susie Wee mention that Cisco Champions recommended DevNet Certifications – and we did. Cisco took that under strong consideration and after getting some additional information from the field, they made it happen.

I had the opportunity to engage with Cisco on many occasions last year at several events where Cisco Champions learned about forth coming announcements on product launches, or other exciting news, like changes to the Certification Program, and the new Catalyst 9600 Series.

In addition to the NDA, and exclusive access is – the people! There are so many other amazing people in the Champions program. We all get to chat and catch up in person at events, we keep in touch via social media and other means. We also collaborate together on projects. I’m also very excited because I’m aware of some new additions to the Cisco Champion program, but I’ll let them make the announcement on their own social channels.

The Cisco Champion program is an annual program – it’s good for the calendar year. You must apply annually and wait for your acceptance email. I was very excited to get mine just a few days ago!

If you think you’ve got what it takes to be a Cisco Champion make sure you’re following the Cisco Champion account on Twitter and look out for when applications will be opening up and go for it!