Connecting California Universities to the World

[Music] hi good morning and good afternoon my name is cat renee i'm a volunteer with the nanog program committee and we are very excited to have you joining us today we have a special guest nick plunkett from scenic and we get to have a fireside chat with nick and find out more about what scenic is and also about his career and education and involvement in the tech community and at nanak so nick if you can introduce yourself please hi i'm nick flunkett i currently work at scenic i'm at internet services interconnection engineer there which is a lengthy job title but i'm basically a peering coordinator for scenic and the cal run network the scenic runs i've been involved in nanog for a few years now and i'm very excited to present here and answer questions excellent thanks so can you start by trying to explain or give us a little bit of background as to what scenic is yeah definitely i've got some slides on scenic so let me bring those up here so scenic is i'm just going to go off of what we have on the slides here we're a 501c3 nonprofit and our mission is to advance education and research by providing this world-class network called cal ren and we connect in all these different associates schools um we call them associates we connect up the k-12 system the community colleges the csu system um some kind of one-off private universities like stanford caltech usc the uc system the public libraries and a few other one-offs that we do as well around 20 million people use this network every day um we have over 8 000 miles of optical fiber that we run across the state of california um in that network that's called cal ren that scenic operates we have members in all of the counties of california and they connect either by dark fiber that we like or from least circuits we have over 12 000 sites and we're again a non-profit that's uh chartered and governed by our members that use the network and this we've been around for over 20 years now and it's all research and education and all of the university systems there there's another view of our network here you can see we extend a little bit out past california so we're kind of stretching out there and expanding our horizons building out infrastructure for all the schools and university systems to utilize from kind of almost across the country but very centralized to california there we also operate pacific wave which is an international peering exchange across both the u.s and the pacific and we connect in a bunch of the different pacific universities in there and there's a lot of research collaboration that happens there that's another thing that scenic supports and that's kind of an overview of what scenic is that's great a couple of questions i noticed on your slides that there was a reference to kel wren versus scenic yeah i'll explain that a little bit um so scenic is the company and cal ren is the network um so scenic the company operates calran the network across the state of california okay so cal runs like the physical network with the nodes and exactly labeling and network infrastructure and that type of thing yeah yeah cal runs the network um from layer one all the way to layer three we have optical fiber all across the state we light it ourselves with dwdm equipment and then we want to run routers and switches on top of that dark fiber across the state okay cool now with scenic and kel ren is there is scenic being the organization you said it was sort of owned and operated by its members so is there like a committee of all of these universities and colleges that come together and say hey today we want to upgrade the network or how does that how does that work from an organizational standpoint yeah definitely we have a board of directors that's staffed by the people from the member institutions that kind of direct the company as a whole and then we also have technical advisory committees that can provide input and review on to design decisions that we make as an organization for that calern network so we'll typically kick off a project to change the backbone or upgrade it in some way bring it forward to these tax on the board of directors and they'll approve it and they'll say yeah this is the direction we want to go or they'll say oh let's think about that a little bit let's talk about that a little bit more okay cool so no member has more control or say than any other member right yeah it's a consortium where all of the members come together and um collectively kind of uh say have a say in how the network runs okay great now why have a network different from say the internet so you talked about caltech which is down in pasadena california why wouldn't they just have a regular internet connection what value does calryn have yeah definitely that's a great question um one of the keys that we get from bringing everybody together is that when we have to buy leased circuits or we have to like buy dark fiber across the state is we can use our collective resources of everybody all of the members together to negotiate lower pricing to build bigger infrastructure that's more dedicated to these people um than anywhere else would be um so i think the the benefits mostly come from the from everybody being together and buying things all at once and kind of setting direction for their network that they want to use rather than kind of being beholden to anybody else cool so and what type of traffic is carried on the network is it both internet traffic or is it also strictly like between the universities yeah definitely um it started out as highly um specialized traffic between the universities um that was kind of one of the original uses of the network and why people were building it out originally was to have fast interconnection points between the multiple like member university systems but it kind of as we brought on more members there had been kind of a shift in mindset of how we operate the network to kind of being more than just connections between the universities but also enabling access to the general internet um and so that's kind of where i come in my position at scenic is i make sure those connections to the internet that's available to all of our member institutions run as best they can through peering and through kind of the relationships that i've been able to develop in nanohog ah that's cool so here's a trump question for you from your perspective you talked about peering and internet exchanges i noticed you had a slide on that how would you define purine yeah i think peering is um a couple of people or a group of people coming together to improve something between each other it can be networking um like what we do often or it can be anything really when you're working with your peers closely together but in the forum of nanog and the peering that we do typically um it's a couple of people coming together to make things better for each other yeah now that's actually a good definition there was we talked about this at nana a lot about you know what is puring and one of the things that we've talked about is when you get an internet uh provider circuit say caltech needs strictly internet they go and get you know we'll pretend it's 100 gig circuit or maybe dark fiber with a provider like a centurylink or they or whoever who's providing internet access a lot of universities and well all of us do because we have home internet connections but for universities that can get expensive because there's so much so many students and there's so much bandwidth being used by the universities so they can sort of pull some of that traffic off the internet and be able to bring that across on on the cal run where it's going to be much cheaper so was that also one of the motivating factors for like building out this separate sort of university network yeah i think that was one of the huge underlying factors was many of the like university networks and as well the like k-12 schools are a huge segment that we serve and so each school would have to have a connection into a major isp that they would have to pay for themselves and they would get connectivity either back to their home hub or they would get like what we'd have on our standard residential connections where it's an isp network and consolidating all that through scenic um and the calran network is has enabled us to um kind of take that volume of traffic and optimize the best we possibly can through things like peering we can optimize it for speed reliability for price like you had mentioned um all that comes along with having this network that we've been able to build out over the entire state of california oh that's awesome so for each of these schools you're helping them connect to the internet for all the reasons that you talked about were there any type of you know entry criteria if a school wanted to become sort of a member or see how they could connect into the network yeah i think that's a big one um one of the big requirements that we have is that our member institutions contribute to the organization as a whole so they join those technical committees they are a member of our board that kind of sets the direction of the organization so that they have a say in what we're doing and what we're building when we build out this network that's one of the big keys is that they we want active involvement from our community members um we don't want to just kind of like dictate like this is how it's going to be right we want to have that kind of engagement with them i think the other one is kind of bringing them in to be technical leaders in their organization as well we want them to be able to kind of not wholly support themselves but be able to troubleshoot with us scenic as an organization is pretty small i think we we're either just under or have now crossed the threshold of 100 employees um serving 20 million end users so we definitely need the people that connect into us to have that kind of level of understanding and ability to troubleshoot themselves that one's yeah so that's a small number of people with a lot of responsibility yeah it's it's a lot that everybody kind of takes on and shoulders here but everybody kind of is really happy to do it because of the mission and the organization that we serve because we're a non-profit and we serve um education in california everybody kind of gets behind that and pulls together and does what they need to to get the job done yeah that's awesome that's great to hear so are there other uh networks like this that are more to support um academics in other states yeah definitely all over the um all over the country there's research and education networks that are kind of regional um there's neisernet in new york there's a great plains network and then some of the universities themselves kind of build out their own network and connect into a larger overall fabric of universities across the country oh that's cool and then for these um schools that join are there any sort of uh you know either training or support that scenic offers so i'm just sort of curious if i'm a network engineer or network analyst or something at a k-12 school you know i see the benefit of joining the organization and getting connectivity for the school that i'm supporting is there are there people who would help me get connected but also sort of uh it could help train me or provide any resources or that type of thing some support i guess yeah definitely there's a ton of people across all of our network and our organization that help on board people um both that are new to their organization or kind of as we bring more segments onto the network we have to keep that in mind one of the big projects that we had over the past like uh five to ten years has been bringing on the library systems in california um to our network so we've had to kind of inform them of what the network is kind of the benefits of it and kind of train them up of like here's what um scenic runs this calvary network here's the benefits that you get from connecting to it and here's kind of like the minimum requirements and kind of bringing them along for the ride and that requires like you're probably aware a bunch of administrative stuff a bunch of technical networking stuff all of that has to come together to make this possible yeah for sure there's um i guess the the other question is so you said you have some libraries and other organizations are there people who want to join scenic that you've sort of politely had to turn away um yeah there's been a few it's hard to dive into specifics but i think a lot of governmental organizations have been tough to get connected just in a regulatory way because one of the big things is that scenic doesn't want to be viewed as an isp we're not like a standard internet service writer that connects up a school we're providing a different service that's distinct and we're like a non-profit charter organization separate from isps but if we start acting like an isp then we start getting viewed as an isp and that comes along with a lot of other stuff yeah there's a lot more regulatory i understand if you start becoming an isp and selling services and that type of thing yeah um there is also um you mentioned government entities that are interested in joining and uh are there different regulations or requirements for government entities like say state-run or federal that type of thing is that something that could also be part of these academic environments or are there challenges around that too yeah there's um some challenges around that as well just because once you start getting into um the like federal government or the state government there's a they have all kinds of requirements for what they need um a service provider to do and that's kind of the realm that we want to stay out of um when we've been able to collaborate with them on specific projects we've ended up handling them a lot more like a settlement free peer so we're like we're not giving you the full internet access but we are giving you access to the scenic members and we can like um have a collaboration in that way similar to how we would with um another network that would like deliver video from the internet or something we would collaborate that way yeah that makes a lot of sense and with the the settlement settlement free peering that um you know in a lot of this there are uh meetings in people you know and companies that are wanting to exchange traffic but not necessarily want to pay each other like they would in isp so uh you know we so it sounds like you have you had to reach out to other not necessarily isps but maybe content providers like um because it's school-based um you know maybe an amazon or a netflix or sort of these cloud providers and you know have you been able to sort of partner with them to say hey we're education we'd like to exchange traffic with you has is that also part of what scenic is doing yeah that's a huge part of what scenic is doing um one of the biggest parts of like my job specifically is i have to know those needs in advance and build out the network for them before people ask for them at the universities right so you get to foretell the future exactly i get to look into my crystal ball and just decide yeah people are going to use amazon in the next few years let's talk to them there's going to be a huge netflix demand for our schools yeah they have a big show coming out we got to figure out what's going on with them and how we can have great capacity with them um but yeah that's a huge um like benefit that scenic has in building our own network and kind of maintaining an internet presence is that we're able to collaborate with industry partners like what you're saying with amazon and microsoft and all the folks that are doing the cloud computing to kind of optimize connectivity for our members we can say like oh we have a university that's doing a project with like amazon specifically and they want to have direct connectivity into amazon um and they just want to use the general internet right then we can start a collaboration with them and be like okay how do we build this out what do we do to support the needs of both of our users yeah that's awesome that's a lot of what the the peering community does and it's great that there's sort of this behind the scenes um meetings and relationships that are built between these companies and non-profits to be able to exchange that traffic um again no one's you know profiting from it but it's providing a service for both people's customers in this case it's your universities and your k through 12. so that's excellent so now i get to ask you how did you get into tech where did you start uh i've been interested in like technology in general my whole life like most people um that are kind of in our field i would say but i didn't get into it professionally until i was going to a local community college and there was a random cisco networking class that i saw on the list of classes and i was like oh that sounds interesting i kind of want to know how the internet works how my router works at home let me take this class and i'll do some like technical trade kind of knowledge learning at this community college and see what happens from there i took that class it was super interesting i dove right into it i like went full um full speed into the class and learning about what the internet is and what networking is and i kind of got an internship from there at scenic so i was able to build my skills up through the community college and through this internship at scenic to kind of get to the level where i am today that's really cool so um it's it's funny because um i personally have a liberal arts background of all things and so i didn't go and get a computer science degree or anything like that but you said that you you took a cisco class at a community college and then you ended up getting an internship how did you find out about that internship the uh professor of the class actually recommended me for that internship because of what i had been doing i had been helping other students learn i had been really diving into it i had been putting like full effort into the class and been kind of way into the class and so he was like yeah the they need interns at scenic and you seem like you'd be a good fit so i got recommended to the professor for that oh that's cool so you're the guy who stayed after class to rebuild the router configurations for your professor right yeah definitely help reconnect up all the cables put them away clear out the configs all that stuff excellent yeah that's actually where i've heard a lot of the students who attend nanog have talked about internships or opportunities that came out of professors and teachers for classes that they've taken through like you said a community college even a certification class something like that so it's it's important because there are those people connections that can make a difference in how you get into tech or or how you end up having a career in tech yes and that's scenic we've had a super strong relationship with the cypress college we've kind of had an intern program flow through there we've had a bunch of interns come through our network operation center learn about networking find out oh this is a great fit i want to do this as a career and they start and become an operations engineer for us or move around the company or maybe they take the cisco class get the internship and realize that networking maybe isn't for them we have a lot of other positions for them that are like oh maybe you could do some um engineering work over here on like more of the server side of things or maybe you can do some more administrative work because you're more on the relationship aspect with our customers so there's a great fit once they kind of get their their foot in the door through that internship programming that kind of base level of learning and knowledge that they can work off of yeah that's excellent so how long have you been with scenic um over seven years now i started in december of 2013 as an intern and i've kind of worked my way up to the operations team and everything that's cool excellent well it seems like you like it so yeah it's great over there the people are great everything's awesome that's wonderful so another question is did you you said that you took a cisco class at the community college did you end up pursuing any certifications technical certifications yeah i did um that class specifically was for the ccna um it was to train you up to learn how to take and pass the ccna class so they give you all the kind of like base fundamental skills that the ccna is looking for and um i went through and took that once i finished that series of classes um that's that certification as well as a couple of other ones recipients so for me i think that's cool would you say that that sort of um helped get your foot into the door for that internship yeah it's those certifications for the vendors and from just um networking in general are super useful and like having a badge on there that you can say yes i have technical knowledge in this field or for this vendor for whatever and that helps you definitely get your foot on the door at a bunch of different places excellent so did you end up having anybody that you met either through your time at scenic or even early on when you were taking classes at the community college who sort of helped guide you maybe answer questions as to hey what is tech you know what companies are out there how do i find a job you know anybody who helped answer those questions for you yeah there's been tons of people throughout my career that have kind of guided me and mentored me as i've gone along um at scenic specifically early on um stan and raul were big proponents for me and big up they gave me a lot of opportunities to like learn about how the business world works um and how like um different companies do different things right and like how uh what jobs are out there for like in the networking field um a really big mentor for me throughout my career especially lately when i've been involved in peering and interconnection has been um daryl newcomb has been pretty involved in the nanook community for a very long time he's definitely helped shape my career and has given me tons of introductions in anaheim and has given me tons of like institutional knowledge that i've been able to build off of and kind of launch myself forward on that and so for that i'm always super grateful that's awesome yeah so tell me how when or how did you find out about nanog or what was it like at your at your first meeting yeah i think um i originally found out about it as i was learning more about networking and working at scenic in the operations group and having to learn technical knowledge there's a huge like resource of all the past presentations and slide decks that people have presented that can give you a good base knowledge about a lot of different things um and so i think that was kind of how i first got introduced to analog was using those resources finding those people that are making those presentations and kind of like getting connected in that way um as far as like the first meeting that i attended i remember it feeling like super intimidating to be amongst all these people that are like way involved in the internet and all know each other really well but at the same time it's a super welcoming environment and you can like literally stop and talk to anybody and i always thought that part always reflected back to me that that was super cool that it was such like a warm welcoming place even though it's all these people that like know so much and are so involved that like for them to be open and warm and welcoming in that way was really cool yeah it's um what i like about uh namnog is you know at the conference you get to attend these technical presentations and so you're not only learning but you're refreshing skills hey what's going on in this avenue and you can approach the speakers you know during the breaks or you know after the presentations to just ask questions and find out more about what they do and what companies they work for and there's a couple folks i know who literally will lead students around and introduce them to different people and once you find out oh my gosh i just had a an entire conversation with somebody who started scenic or who you know was involved in the very beginning of the internet and you just it's it's mind-blowing um but like you said everyone is really welcoming and totally willing to talk to you so with um scenic and you were saying that you were doing the community college uh class and and you had all these opportunities and mentors so is there any volunteer work that you're interested in doing or currently involved in yeah to a degree i've been involved back at that same community college at cypress college where i did the cisco class in the first place they've been looking for industry partners to help them shape their kind of technical trade type classes the cisco classes the kind of like cloud security classes all that kind of stuff so i've been going back with the original professor uh who was teaching that class and helping them shape that whole kind of department of like what skills do employers need in the workforce and their students coming in right so the you can kind of get um the students will get benefits from that because they'll learn valuable important skills that people need and the like businesses that are hiring those students also get people who are educated in the ways that they need to be educated right they're learning about like modern cloud stuff rather than old like the stuff that i learned when i was taking this dna is all old and completely irrelevant now they need to learn they need to keep the skills polished and i've been kind of volunteering to help um set the direction for that that's awesome so was it um hard to or was it intimidating to go back to the school and say like hey i want to help you know jump in and on the program or to help shape the curriculum so you know was that difficult for you at all i don't think it was super difficult it felt a little intimidating at first to be involved in that way i'm like oh they want my input on this aren't i just like a student like oh wait no i've been working for a while and i can actually provide some good input to it um i've also always had a good line of communication with the professor from that class professor izadi and so we've always communicated back and forth and i've like given presentations in his class kind of similar to this of like hey look here's an opportunity of somewhere that you could work after you like take this class and get this base level of knowledge and there's tons of things um that you could go and do after this right the your you have so many opportunities in front of you here's one of them and here's some of the cool stuff that i do that you could too yeah no that's excellent because it's um when students in particular hear about jobs in tech it's really confusing sometimes to navigate talking to students i know a lot of them think oh i need to go be a software engineer or get a computer science degree to get into tech but and i don't know if you have this at scenic you mentioned it a little bit when you were talking about students who get internships and find different positions within scenic but there's administrative there's um you know a network operations center there's engineering there's network analysts but there's also project managers and there's also people who help um like you said from a customer service level account managers and so there are so many different jobs in tech and it's and i don't think a lot of people are aware of that yeah um so you find a lot of students in the class are asking those questions sorry yeah no i think that's um that's key i think to a lot of the kind of educational stuff that's going on for the tech jobs right a lot of people like you're saying think that there's just like software engineer and that's it right yeah there's they don't think even like within the tech field that you could be like a network engineer or you could do all kinds of different things in different spots um within the tech stuff and beyond that the tech companies all have like an hr department they all have like relationship management components to it so it's not just like oh we just need technical people they need like well-rounded people for every like aspect of that kind of product that they're building yeah agree wholeheartedly so um the other question i want to ask is at nano we have the technical presentations and they're sort of uh it can be intimidating and we as the program committee are always looking for presenters um to uh from different companies or different backgrounds and that type of thing and i was wondering if you ever considered giving a technical talk at nanog yeah i have uh before i've considered it and then i gave a lightning talk a few years ago um that i remember the overall feeling with that was cool to get it organized and then once i realized i had to make a presentation to this group of people that are super technically knowledgeable and like it just became super intimidating i was like wait i actually have to do this now what am i going to do um but it was just a lightning talk it was really quick um the like everything about it was really quick there's a reason why they call it lightning talks i've learned um even like building up the slides we were doing that up to like five minutes before we went on stage we were like oh hold on wait let's tweak this a little bit let's make these changes oh okay no i'm going up okay let's do it hi guys um yeah it's been it was really cool to like dive in and do that and kind of be a part of the analog in a way that i wasn't before um and even though it felt intimidating at the beginning once i was up there and after i had done it i realized that oh yeah that wasn't so bad that was pretty easy actually um i had a topic and i talked about it and then people followed up afterwards and were like that was pretty cool can we talk more about that i was able to like have those um kind of like follow-up conversations and like integration into the community in a way that i hadn't before so it was a it was a really positive experience overall when i did that good positive but very intimidating yeah very intimidating initially especially being on stage in front of like so many people like that that i know like actually understand what i'm talking about and i have to be correct yep or they'll call you out in the question and answer session exactly right there they'll walk up and be like actually i helped invent ip6 let me ask you that question about this no that's great so the other question we get from students is do you find that there's a big difference between say you know going to a community college which is more affordable in a lot of cases but also sort of a good place to take a few classes and and understand what they want to get into and make those initial connections so have you found while working at scenic either with interns or maybe you were involved in interviewing employees or even the volunteer work you're doing at the community college have you found that there's a big difference when um between say a community college degree or even just taking a few classes or somebody who has a um a full bachelor's degree yeah i was um involved with interviewing and i was involved in kind of like the bigger overall team with both the network operations group and our kind of senior engineering group um so i've seen a lot of people come through with a lot of different backgrounds and i got i can kind of contribute my experience with that as well i know for me when i was in um when i was going to that community college i was there because i didn't have the grades to make it into a full university um so i was kind of exploring things there um seeing what i liked to do what was actually interesting to me and i think kind of that was a super valuable part of that community college experience was you the classes are way cheaper so you can just dive in and be like oh yeah the cisco class seems interesting let's see what we get from this and i end up making a whole career out of it right so there's all those opportunities in front of you at the community college um to be able to kind of like explore your interests and see what is available to you but with regards to like the differences between like a community college degree and like a four-year actual bachelor's degree i think there's some value that comes from the bachelor's degree but it's not what defines the person right the person has their like skill sets that they have and their personality type and how they mesh well with others and what they can contribute to the organization um kind of outside the degree itself i think there's a lot of classes at a community college and at the universities that can prepare you for the business world and for operating in that way in general um but i've seen really smart people with no degrees and i've seen um people that have degrees that you would expect to be more experienced in or not and you say you have the full range the piece of paper itself is not the most important part the most important part i would say is figuring out what you want to do and like the networking that you do to get to that right the interpersonal relationships that you have with people are like the most important part yeah i i like to make the joke that there's um sort of computer networking or network engineering and then there's the people networking aspect of it so because as you said in in tech it takes a broader skill set it's not just like you said a degree or a certification or even your technical background um in in my first job i had a lot of um hands-on um trained at my company initially that type of thing and but a lot of people look for soft skills people skills you know do you work well on a team are you willing to ask questions if you don't understand something um reach out across teams even on different projects and that kind of thing um so it's it's great that you mentioned that yeah that's been something that i've been a huge advocate for in that kind of like volunteer work that i've been doing with the community colleges is kind of setting that direction as well to like help develop people's soft skills and help develop those kind of like business relational skills um because those honestly from what i've experienced so far are the most important part right you can be the most technical person in the world but if you can't like have a conversation with somebody you're not going to be able to like get peering or get like a career started and that kind of thing so you have to have those soft skills as a base level um to work off of and then you can like add the technical knowledge on top of that yeah for sure and it's uh funny you say and you and i know a lot of people through the nano community and you're 100 correct we know brilliant people who never took a college-level class yeah and so it's it can the technical certifications can help taking a few classes and starting to people network can also get your foot in the door and the having a degree can sometimes come in later in your career i find but not necessarily at the beginning yeah that's something i've definitely ran into as i've gone further in my career is once you try to like shift into more managerial positions or stuff like that that becomes more of an expectation yeah there it is interesting um i've had a few friends who've been in tech for a long time and as you said they'll go through a managerial track or maybe a team lead track and and that's when their managers will circle back with them saying well we're looking you know for somebody with a degree but what is interesting about that is later on in your career there's some benefits there because you have a better sense of what you want to do yeah and you can also um from your employer sometimes take advantage of um college credit classes uh tuition reimbursement you know that type of thing so it doesn't hurt yeah i've definitely um kind of ran into that and experienced that and that was one of the things that in the past few years i had started to do as well was go back and finish out my degrees and kind of build that out to kind of get myself to be more well-rounded and kind of check those boxes for people and kind of develop my skills as well because there's things that they can teach you in the classroom that you're not going to experience or have experience too in the real world unless you've gone through there and been like oh yeah here's we'll prep you for this or we'll this is how you handle this kind of situation um so that's been super interesting and super useful yeah 100 the other question i have is so do you feel um in your job experience or in working with students and interns do you think that the very first job you get out of college is the thing you're stuck doing your entire life yeah definitely not it helps you launch your career but you're not stuck doing it there's a lot of mobility especially in the industries that we're involved in there's so many different places doing so many different things in so many different ways with a base level of skills you can apply to all of those that you can find whatever is most interesting and most comfortable for you to do is available out there you just have to look for it yep exactly the uh the other thing i find is um when you folks were posting positions for an open rack or you know looking for people to fill a particular job so you write up that job requirement and that's what we find on the job sites like indeed or on the company website hey we're looking for this type of engineer or this type of internship opportunity um do you feel that the folks who are applying to those jobs need to have every single skill listed in that job requirement yeah i've uh gone through that myself as well where you're like this seems like a lot to have to have for there uh well i'll apply anyway and see what happens a lot of the times they're looking for someone who has a lot of those skills or like a general knowledge of those skills not necessarily like the industry expert on this one topic right and i think people can kind of get those conflated in their head of like there's all these job requirements i need to meet every one of those before i even try to go in this direction it's like give it a shot and see if you can do it yes never hurts to apply yeah honestly that's a great motto to have yeah that's cool so the other question i have for you is there any advice that you would give someone who's interested in getting into tech or exploring jobs in tech or maybe a student who's going to be graduating soon any uh good advice yeah i think um like hands-on experience and like knowledge in that way is the most important thing when you're early on in your career being able to say that like yeah i have experience with configuring something in aws or like hands-on doing things like that and being able to go to a potential employer and being like yeah i would like to be a network engineer at scenic right and i understand i've done the ccna class and i've done um through that i've um like learned how routers work i have the certification now that like says i have some industry knowledge that i think is the most important thing above anything else being able to have that like technical skill set and that technical experience to build off of rather than like um that full degree path or what the the other options that are kind of available to you i think that knowledge and experience directly is kind of the most important part the dive into that is important yeah thank you that's great advice yeah i know some of the like candidates that i've worked with the most interesting ones that i've wanted to hire right away are the ones that have like built a home lab or have like just do that as like for like something that they were interested in they just dove into it was like i wonder how aws works or i wonder how i can log into a router on like my home network or something right and they've done that and kind of been curious and explored that themselves those have been some of the people that i've been like yeah let's talk more to this person yeah it's the um curiosity and the wanting to learn more and how does that work and i want to understand the internet and it's the the interest that you really look for yeah that interest and they're not being afraid to ask questions and then to dive into things and kind of go uh do like just fully dive into it and be like yeah this is what i'm interested in this is what i'm doing now i'm gonna actually like go forward and put all my energy into that yes 100 i had a a great manager who used to say there's no such thing as a stupid question and it's you know the but you need in order to fully understand something you really do need to ask those questions and you really do need to in some ways sort of build something or tinker with it to understand how it works and then completely screw it up yeah break it and break it badly yeah exactly because that's where you learn and you know every person um i've met her talked to at you know nanag or at the industry conferences always have a story about a mistake they made on the job yeah so we we all have our stories yeah some of them we can tell some of them not so much but we all have them oh yes and some of us are not allowed to speak in public about where we work because we have to be so careful yes luckily i have some affordances so i can like be a proponent of scenic but there's a lot of people that are stuck like that yeah it's very true well thank you so much for your time we really appreciate you taking the time to talk about scenic and letting us know about these different sort of academic networks that exist in different states and particularly in california and for giving us a little bit of background as to how you got into tech and some great advice for uh future careers so we will leave some time here for q a in case anybody has specific questions for myself or nick so thanks again for your time yeah thank you so much for having me it's been great to be able to give this presentation here and then to talk to people afterwards it'll be fun definitely thanks [Music] hello thank you everyone for attending the webinar uh we are now taking any questions that folks have we hope you enjoyed the presentation a few questions we did get uh the first one was um nick is there anything that you're aware of or anything that maybe scenic is doing for underserved regions in north america today yeah this is a big one for scenic um it's one of our major kind of goals that we're pushing for as an organization um and one of people that i've viewed kind of as a mentor at scenic is pushing this for us cheryl and evans she's kind of directing scenic's mission in this aspect there's a lot of underserved and underprivileged communities throughout california that scenic tries to with kind of like our collective power of all the educational institutions in the state kind of serve with better connectivity and better access to online resources um so that that's a huge goal for us and something we've been pushing for as an organization for like a long time a lot of it has been through like the central valley where there's rough connectivity in some places um there's been some with like indigenous tribes that we've done outreach for um wildfire support so there's a lot of um that kind of outreach that we do that's amazing i'm sure it's really appreciated by those regions sounds yeah it definitely is yeah that's huge good partnership too especially among you know education in the colleges and universities and the non-profit aspect of it so yeah it's kind of like a natural fit for for all the people that are working there the mindset that everybody has and the kind of non-profit and research and education focus that we have yeah excellent um another question that came through is in your role working with scenic and being a network engineer you know with your background what do you see do you do you see any trends or things that are changing in our field um sort of coming down the pipeline in the future yeah i think looking backwards a little bit first cove had changed things a lot right it forced us to have to think about like online learning supporting kind of the distance model for education and now we're kind of having to have a mix of that so i think being able to be adaptable is the number one key um thing for our networks and like for kind of what i plan for on a network basis um not being so like set in stone of like yeah this is how we do things this is how everything functions on a day-to-day way being adaptable and being flexible and like building things out to be supported in whatever way it needs to be for like our users is key um but i think additionally it's going to be like more cloud stuff more online learning kind of a shift towards that a shift towards having resources available like through cloud services and through ways that can be accessed that aren't like on campus so there'll still be a lot of on-campus learning i think but um there's going to be a shift to kind of continue this online learning format that we're going to have to support yeah everyone's talking about the hybrid model now and how that's you know impacting businesses but also especially education in the last you know year and a half two years so yeah i don't think that's going away anytime soon yeah nope it's also opened up a lot of opportunities for students it has yeah students that wouldn't be able to attend a university because of their distance can now access those resources and take those classes remotely that's been a huge benefit for a lot of students that i've talked to yeah which lends itself to a different network build out and how you're going to be able to support that so there's definitely a challenge there as well yeah for sure there is yeah makes sense cool thank you and also to everyone attending please feel free to continue putting questions in the chat if there's a particular question that you have for nick um another question we got was if you were starting over again what would you do differently in your career yeah i think uh diving into my interest sooner so figuring out like what i want to um what i am interested in and what i want to kind of pursue as a career path making that a priority over like um trying to take like general ed classes and that kind of thing figuring out what's interesting and what's kind of um what yeah what's interesting for me to take that's where things launched off for me because then i was able to dive into like the networking through that certification class and kind of build things up through there so i i think finding that and doing that kind of work um would be something that i'd focus more on rather than like the traditional educational model yeah that's actually a great point because um a lot of colleges and universities say you need this you know certification if you want you take these classes if you have an associate's degree take these classes same with a bachelor's degree but it's important to also try the random class that piques your interest to sort of see if that's something that that catches on yeah and with the kind of volunteer work that i was doing with cypress college that's been one of the key focuses that we've had has been kind of like badging and portfolios with them so that like they can build out a curriculum for like tech stuff specifically that's kind of independent from the regular degree process so you can just say that like a student has a certification from cypress college for this technology or for this learning pathway that is kind of removed from the rest of the degree process and that's that's been super useful to have students find like oh look here's a pathway that i could take that could lead to a career that isn't that kind of standard educational model yeah that's huge so the prerequisites are not always fun they're necessary to get the degree but you know it's always good to branch out of that yeah and i think they they help to make you more well-rounded when you take those classes but there's definitely not one specific pathway that you have to take to be successful or to like launch a career yeah that's great advice thanks yeah there was a common uh a comment in the q a chat um also don't be afraid to say i don't know if you really don't know something and that's not only like on the job or in your career or internship or something but i also think that sort of pertains to when you're taking classes in school in some ways yeah i can't tell enough how much that phrase i don't know has helped me a lot in my career and my educational development just being able to say that and say you know i don't know but i'd like to dive in and learn more about that or like i'd like to like can you help me understand that has been like one of the key things that i've asked over my career i think that's helped me more than anything else yeah definitely keep the the curiosity and inquisitive nature can only help yeah definitely and that kind of um i don't know what the phrase for it would be but kind of not holding yourself up so high as like i have to know everything just like being able to step down and be like you know what i don't know i'll admit that i don't know let's talk about it yeah exactly and i think that pertains to to anyone like even in a first job when you have a manager and then a director or if you're working in a corporate environment you know there's the vice president or something along those lines and and even they need to stop and say you can't know everything you need to ask questions and and reach out to people who do know those things and continue learning throughout yeah exactly yeah that's huge cool um and then one of our other questions was um through nanog um and also through the the outreach program in particular we really are focused on uh diversifying in tech and it's not only um background uh race gender diversity it's also knowledge and thought diversity so if everyone on a team has the same background um you know same race from the same country and everything else you're not going to get that diversity of perspective um so diversity is huge at anon it's something that we really do push and i'm sort of curious if you have had initiatives with scenic or any experience when it comes to how you're finding diversity in tech in general or any thoughts you might have on that yeah we're really lucky at scenic to have a really diverse group of employees that are working in like engineering and across the company they bring a lot of different perspectives together and i think that's been one of the major successes of scenic and what's led to a lot of success like in what scenic has been able to do is that there's so many different people from different like geographical regions different backgrounds of how they've been raised and like what they've been through in life and to have that shared experience come together has produced different ways of thinking that a lot of us wouldn't have thought up on our own like people can introduce to me in ways that i haven't thought of before i can introduce ways to them that maybe they haven't thought of before and just having that kind of group mentality and that shared experience with each other has made us really successful as an organization i think um but with terms of like increasing diversity and kind of bringing that um to the fold across kind of scenic and the places that i'm involved in i think that's a key um opportunity for like the volunteer work that i was doing with cypress college because they're starting um bringing in people to this program as early as like high school and middle school so they're identifying kids from different backgrounds that you wouldn't normally expect to have like an interesting tech and giving them exposure to different kinds of technology so that pretty early on in their education um throughout like even just regular like stem or steam programs introducing them early on to the kids and kind of peaking their interest early and then enabling that throughout their um educational pathways so like identifying it latching onto that and being like oh yeah we can actually boost you up and there's interest at this community college for more students in networking or in cyber security or in any type of technology field and i think kind of um latching onto that early is the key part of that of introducing it and then also like developing that up for the kids that's been one of the kind of main focuses of that group within cypress college has been like setting this direction of those programs that's awesome and that's definitely needed throughout tech like you said it's not only you know network engineering where we are but it's cyber security as well as all the different you know jobs or positions that are available in tech and and it's great to get kids excited about it early like you said it's perfect the stem programs junior high high school and continuing through college and afterwards that's that's huge it's great to hear that you're so actively involved in that that's really yeah and i'd like to do that on like a larger level it's not just like one university that kind of spreads out to more of them i'm not sure what that would look like but that would be super interesting to kind of help develop that in more regions and more places yeah that's cool well rumor has it nanog has some volunteer positions over particularly with outreach to you know education so you may you know end up doing a little bit more there i've heard that there's some openings there actually so i'll have to look into that sounds great we're looking forward to it excellent well nick thank you so much for your time was there um any other comments or anything that you'd like to say to prospective students yeah i just would like to say i guess thank you and thank dana for the opportunity to come and present here um it's been really cool to be able to talk about this and kind of share the message of that things are possible and there's great opportunities out there for college students um i think that's the key is that like the the key takeaway that i'd like to give college students that are kind of maybe consuming this is that there's not one dedicated pathway that you need to take to be successful or to launch your career in technology you can kind of forge your own path and kind of lean on mentors and people that are there to support you to be successful in that yeah that's excellent we really appreciate your time you have such a great background and we loved hearing about scenic and your experience so thanks for joining us today and uh thanks everyone for attending if you do have um questions or comments please feel free to reach out to nano and thanks for watching we'll see you soon thank you take care [Music]

Channel: NANOG

Views: 247

Rating: 5 out of 5

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Id: Miko3CJHKwc

Length: 53min 38sec (3218 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 17 2021