All CCNA/CCNP bloggers, where ya at?

In recent days, there’s been a lot of buzz amongst popular CCIE bloggers about the growing trend of CCIE candidates blogging about their experiences. Ethan Banks recently added some new CCIE bloggers on his list and I know he’s been looking for writers to contribute to his own blog as well. Just today CCIE Pursuit summarized some of the previous headlines calling for CCIE candidates to blog about their journeys. IpExpert is looking for bloggers on their new CCIEblog.com domain - and they are giving away excellent prizes to get people to sign up.

I think these are excellent ways to share knowledge and contribute to the networking community as well. In fact reading these blogs is what really gave me a lot of ideas that I incorporate in my own blog. They also serve to inspire me to keep pushing towards my career goals.

But while these expert level blogs continue to increase, I haven’t seen many CCNA/CCNP-centric blogs out there. Once every week or so I scour the internet to find such blogs that can potentially be a source of “information dump” for people like me pursuing the CCNP. And when I refer to information, I don’t just mean facts and figures related to the CCNP subject areas like routing, switching, or anything technology related. I’m also looking for people just sharing about how they feel towards the actual journey itself:

• Are they finding it hard, easy, manageable, etc?
• Do they approach their studies similar to how I approach it.
• Are they spending the same amount of time to certify as I am?
• What kind of real-world experience do they currently have and to what extent does real-world experience minimize the effort needed to pursue their goals?

Essentially, it’s a study of patterns and habits, and ways of doing things. It’s a gauge of where typical is and isn’t. Information and tidbits can be had very easily with all the information that is out there. But to follow a specific person’s journey is a true learning in itself. And I do think it’s a great way to learn.

Just to expound a little bit on what I’m trying to get at: When I was in college, I took a lot of sociology and anthropology classes. When I was learning about how researches studied other cultures/tribes/groups of people, these researches couldn’t just observe them and formulate their own conclusions. They had to live with these people. They followed their every move, their every habits, and participated in their customs. By doing this, we learned why people do things that to others don’t make sense. And we can agree that other ways of doing things can be just as effective as the way we do things.

That’s kinda like how it is with blogging. Technology has gone a long way to bridge people closer. With the popularization of web 2.0 technologies, we are able to experience a whole new way of doing things. I’ve been blogging since late 2003/early 2004 and I found it a very convenient way to interact with my friends and family by sharing with each other happenings, events, images, and other things through this.

So back to my original thought, where are all the CCNA/CCNP bloggers? Make yourselves known if you’re out there. Let us know how you study, how you feel about your journey, and what your goals might be. It’s interesting how so many CCIE blogs are out there when there clearly is a lot more folks running for the CCNP. Is it that CCIE candidates take a more serious effort towards getting their digits than someone who is working on his CCNP? I’d hate to think so. If anything, a strong foundational background of the lower to mid level skills will probably do more to help in preparation for the higher-level certs such as CCIE. Or is it that people just don’t bother with it because the CCNA/CCNP level certs don’t reflect as much “prestige” as trying to acquire a CCIE cert? Who knows! But if you happen to read this and are on a path to getting a CCNA or CCIE, I encourage you to blog about it (if you don’t already do). We get to learn a lot about the characteristics and tendencies of those studying for the CCIE, but there is a huge void about how they got there.