Blog
Whoa, what a busy month September turned out to be. I am only now just catching my breath. The first of what will be annual CWNP conference was held in beautiful Raleigh, NC September 22-24 and had quite a nice turn out. 7signal was a show sponsor. Talks have already begun on holding the event on the US West coast next year. This is the 15th year of CWNP's existence.
CWNP’s mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go ... oh geez sorry. Its mission, to educate the broader community on all aspects of Wi-Fi from a vendor neutral perspective. The education is structured starting with basic Wi-Fi technology (CWTS) and administration (CWNA) to more progressively and technically advanced topics focused on analysis (CWAP), design (CWDP), and security (CWSP).
I am on a personal mission to obtain my Certified Wireless Network Expert (CWNE) credential by the end of 2014. A CWNE designation requires passing all four CWNP certifications (CWNA, CWAP, CWDP, CWSP) plus regularly contributing meaningful content to the broader Wi-Fi community. The CWNE's are the tip of the spear, the edge of the knife! (I just finished watching 'Edge of Tomorrow' aka 'Live Die Repeat' - good movie by the way and have the phrase stuck in my head after hearing it repeat over and over and over).
My journey through the CWNP process began with completing my CWNA earlier in February. Recently in September, I passed my CWAP and CWDP which kept me busy in the intervening months. A shout out to CWNP authorized training partner, Eight-O-Two Technology Solutions aka Robert Bartz, @eightotwo on Twitter, for putting up with me for two weeks straight (no small feat)! It so happened his CWAP course was back-to-back with his CWDP course, which was presented after the CWNP conference ended.
I am not new to Wi-Fi having worked as a pre-sales systems engineer in the Wi-Fi "early" days of 1997+ with FH/DSSS 802.11, 802.11b, 802.11a days, WECA/Wi-Fi Alliance so it is great being able to connect all the dots, another topic of information vs. experience we won’t get into know, with the technology, having lived through and experienced it first-hand.
On the topic of CWNP certification, one of the conference presentations by Tom Carpenter, CWNP's CTO, titled, CWNP Exam Prep, covers the complete process I am following on my certification journey, so I highly recommend you read it over. Tom's presentation along with all of the other presenter materials are posted on the CWNP website here: https://www.cwnp.com/conference-presentations.
I count myself fortunate enough to be amongst a number of respected industry presenters. The presentations covered a wide variety of topics and certainly kept everyone interest! In my upcoming blog posts, I will reflect on a number of those presentations, factoring in my own experiences along the way.
My friend, Eddie Forero, @HeyEddie on Twitter, had an excellent write up on his experiences at the conference that I recommend reading, https://community.arubanetworks.com/t5/Technology-Blog/The-First-Annual-CWNP-Conference/ba-p/205945. Eddie is a conference groupie so we always seem to be at the same conferences together! (WLPC, Airheads, and now the CWNP Conference).
Stay tuned for my upcoming posts...