[CONTEST CLOSED] Show the Meraki Community some love! Win swag!

[AmyReyes]

This month, the Meraki Community turns 5!!! 🥳 Celebrate with us as we feature YOU — all of the lovely folks whose questions, answers, and hot takes 🌶️🔥 have kept things spicy and fun over the years. Birthdays are a great time to reflect and appreciate our years together, as well as how far we’ve come. We thought what better way to honor the occasion than a Community Memories Contest!

UPDATE: This contest has ended. We’ve loved reading all of your favorite community memories, so thanks for all of your submissions! Our randomly selected winners are: @Bassdox, @AndrejR, and @ivankenley19. Congrats!

How to enter

Simply comment below👇and share your favorite memory with the Meraki Community BEFORE 11 a.m. ET on Friday, August 19th (08/19/2022). This could be a time someone went above and beyond to help you, a favorite challenge you took part in, a thread you found particularly useful… the sky’s the limit! We’ll then pick three entries at random to win a Cisco Meraki bag. We will also be featuring a selection of your stories in an upcoming blog post and on our social media channels.

Stay tuned for coming announcements and more birthday fun as we celebrate the Community’s 5th birthday on August 21 together!! 🎈 🎁 🍰 🎉

The Fine Print

• Limit one entry per community member 
• Submission period: Tuesday, August 16, 2022 at 11:00am ET through Friday, August 19, 2022 at 10:59am ET
• Full terms, conditions, and eligibility information

[decassuncao]

Valentine's Days content shared by the community 😁

[KarstenI]

A looooong time ago (yes, far too long) we had a Pub Quiz and that was really fun! (hint, hint ...)

[ww]

Swag is send from US?

[NodgeB]

For me, the network t-shooting scenario - sad, but true. 👜 😏

[Inderdeep]

When i was awarded as All star Meraki Award first time. 

[KRobert]

Getting to know the "regulars" in the community is a lot of fun!  Adding the Project Gallery was a great feature add as well. I enjoy looking at how everyone is using Meraki. Also Gnome giveaways. I never received a gnome, but they should come back out from hiding for swag....hint hint 😁

[TyShawn]

Seeing the Meraki dog from @it_guy!!

[NFL0NR]

Being in the Beta group, and seeing where this community started and where it is now.

[SideStoryQuest]

Seeing the interviews of the community members

[Ansel_616]

For me, it is the community members' overall participation with all the posts by community managers. But one of the most fun posts was showing cable management of network rooms. 

[CharlieCrackle]

Loved the Christmas Tree made from meraki gear !

[sdenny0001]

Had an issue with wireless phones working on Meraki APs a couple years ago. Calls were dropping, audio was choppy, and our users were furious.  Someone in the Meraki community sent me a VoIP setup guide for Meraki.  After a few tweaks between our APs and Cisco Communications Manager the day was saved!  The value in being part of a community like this is impossible to measure.

[LENIN]

Thanks to Meraki, i have now my meraki´s badges cmna, ecms 1, ecms 2, so tks sky is the limit, and ill go so far.

[BaxterGisi]

Thanks to the Meraki community I was able to solve a blocking problem that lasted me 4 days in the office

[Johnfnadez]

I loved the way how everybody help each other and always are being humble!

[Brett_Walker]

I am grateful for how so many people share what they have learned to help others, to not have to struggle with the same issues.

Thanks to @Bettencourt , for the link to documentation around Renaming devices via .csv . This saved me a huge amount of time.

Cheers

[securingnimbu5]

I am grateful for the abundant amount of information available here on Meraki Community!

[Dapinder]

Great support from Meraki Team! absolutely love the Meraki community.. So helpful and lots of information available. 

[BlakeRichardson]

I'm grateful for all of the connections and opportunities the community has provided. 

As a result I've had many conversations with Meraki product developers providing feedback to help shape / improve products. 

[JoseNet]

Thanks to the Meraky community!, i remember my wedding!

[van604]

for being able to take my CCNA in person and had the on hands training and meeting up folks of a like mind in person

[Chris_Sampson]

I'd love some more Meraki merch I just signed a 5yr Meraki EA and got some socks... keen for more 🙂

[Shadius]

Love the Meraki community!

Since joining, I've been able to participate in a podcast with other community members, participated in some Meraki webinars and received some cool Meraki gear to test out!

Learned a ton since joining and plan to continue learning more!

[AntonioDA]

Thanks to meraki, now I have my cmna gear, later I was able to deployment the SASE architecture through an MX and with the community I was able to carry out the micro-segmentation with social networks

I loves Meraki!!

Tnks 4 all!!

[AndrejR]

I have always being helped either by a community member or the Meraki documentation. Have been working with Meraki a couple of year now and have seen how the platform and the products have been improving. Many thanks to all that have contributed to the community, keep up with the great work.

[SUMAN_GHOSH]

While, I manage LAN/WLAN projects Globally, wherein there are lot of requirement on Cisco/Meraki LAN/WLAN devices for Customer new Refresh Projects and Program. This includes MR and MX products. In my current job I am in charge of Project Commissioning, Site by Site, based on agreed timeline. The New Improved Partner Portal along with estimated Lead Time of Delivery of the Products published in the portal gives partners like us an added advantage of estimation and scheduling. We can inform customers beforehand on the Lead time of delivery of the CPEs.

In a recent weekend migration at Customer Site at Singapore last weekend, we installed, 24 x MR56-HW (Access point) and 8 x MS350-24X-HW ( Access Switch) and 2 x MS225-48FP-HW (Core Switch). This was a weekend stretched activity and the transformation from Cisco to Meraki was successful. The installation of Meraki is pretty simple as the the devices download the latest firmware/configs from the Dashboard and everything can be managed from the Dashboard itself which is the most coolest part. Thanks Meraki Team.

[RARAO_PROINF]

happy 5th anniversary

[DarrenOC]

Too many to mention but the Community has helped me out in so many ways.  My first interaction dates back to my first Meraki install.  I hit an issue which the legend @PhilipDAth helped resolve. After that I kept coming back to learn from my peers which then helped me to contribute more as I got more hands on experience with the Meraki solutions.

During lockdown the community rallied together and held an awesome Pub Quiz which I was also lucky to host for the EMEA team.  Great fun and lovely opportunity to see some faces during a difficult time.

[Enuwz]

Happy 5th anniversary🎉🎉

Thank you @Meraki for your products

[ivankenley19]

The Fun activities and quizzes, the learnings and trivia. Love it! I Love Meraki!

[Joe_Eubank]

I would have to say my favorite memory would have to be our first MSP deployment. After testing a successful MSP POC we were stoked with a hint of hesitation due to the fact of not knowing truly how smooth things would go. With a little magic and a lot of great product we were able to turn up our first customer who then painted a successful product for our customers and build the relationship with stronger with Cisco, our disty, and us. Three years down the road it now makes up 5% of yearly revenue and we only hope to grow from there. Thank you Cisco for such a great product and look forward to a bright future together. 

[Brash]

Thankful to be a part of such a supportive and fun community.

I still remember my first post and not knowing whether it would be treated seriously or whether I'd get chewed out. 😅

[Hiciano]

It's been a great time here in the community. My best experience so far was when I won the nicest cloudy green socks which have become my favorite to wear to work every day 🙂

[ROCTEL]

Congrats of being 5 Meraki Community, ROCTEL loved being a winner of the Earth day contest when we shared our ESG target of planting 10,000 trees in Ireland. 🙂

[PhilipDAth]

I'm giving anyone that links to me with an @ code ( @PhilipDAth  ) in this thread two kudos.

Happy birthday.

[ThomasC]

Big Congrats for your 5 year ! 

I will say your Valentine's Days contents Rock ! 

Keep Safe ! 

[KRobert]

Okay @PhilipDAth I'm here for some Kudos! @Inderdeep , @DarrenOC , @BlakeRichardson and @ww, I see you guys here as well! Happy Birthday!

[KarstenI]

And similar (but different) to Philip, I'll give two kudos to everyone who posts a celebration picture of him- or herself wearing Meraki branded underwear! Only that shows the real Meraki Love (I only have socks, so I am out!).

[Richard-K]

Any time there is a major outage with Meraki, I know I can come here to find out why within minutes instead of waiting on hold to get the same answer.

[Inderdeep]

@PhilipDAth : Kudos to you always 🙂

[Nouroudine226]

Happy birthday all !

This reminds me of my first years with cisco meraki.
I was in charge of the redesign of the corporate network to the PCI standard and we had proposed Meraki to the client.
The deployment should be done on the 4 floors of the company.
the first day we had started the segmentation of the 1st and 2nd floor.
to our great surprise the client calls us the next morning that all his networks are down.
It took us 72 hours to find out that there was a loop on one of the catalyst switches where the uplinks were connected.
And only knew it when we were desperately looking for the source of the problem and we replaced the catalyst with an MS425.
Barely plugged in, you can see on the dashboard that it had a loop!
Since then I swear by Meraki.
It is my favorite memory

[jrsilvius]

I'm a reader, not much of a writer. I always find it helpful to search the community for issues that I run across. I was one of the early adopters when they were giving out free equipment for attending their online demos. I got an MX, MS and MR that way. I used that equipment in the office for proof of concept testing, and once I showed the boss, we started use more of it. I move that equipment to my home and I renewed the 3 year license they gave away with those a couple of times for before just found it wasn't worth the cost for a home network. I also attended the free training that Meraki offered to get your CMNO. I tried and tried to get access to the next class that they offered in person in San Francisco, but could never make it work. This community is very helpful for finding solutions and bouncing ideas off each other, and I love that occasionally we get responses from the support teams themselves. I hope this group continues to grow and share.

Happy Birthday Meraki Community!

And just for fun, @PhilipDAth 

[cody_roche]

I had a lot of fun with the 2020 API scavenger hunt! The tricks with the MV cameras, timing and forcing people to remember the change to ISO time formats were the best bits of the hunt. It was the best API scavenger hunt I've done.

I even made a little badge that matched the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy theme @BrechtSchamp had for the event. Super fun!

 

[jlandky]

Loved finding and receiving my first gnome. 

[TONY5]

Great community with great information to share. I deploy 80 Meraki MR33 in our offices and it was great experience.also I hope to win the swag 🙂

[TONYSAMIR]

Meraki is one of the best product that i experience.

[EJN]

Participating in a Meraki Unboxed podcast earlier this year.

[Chew_Yaka]

When I first started working with Meraki, it was just something used as an MDM and MAM for iPads to centralize app deployments. After switching roles and organizations I'm now using it to manage Meraki MS, MX and MR equipment. It reminds me of how far this platform has come and has been built since then.

[david35957]

I inherited a system that had numerous warehouse with AP’s mounted 40 feet above ground. I worked with a community members to get the AP’s lower and more strategically placed. I did not have the budget for a site survey, however, we entered my information into Ekahu and determined the best AP placement. I have read so many articles and post in this community that has saved me from impending doom. I am really thankful for this community and what it means to some of us.

Thanks!

[Epldt]

My meraki badges, CMNA, CMNO, Cisco Meraki Balckbelt, Meraki Fit 1 and 2. Because of that I'm now expert on meraki products! Thanks Meraki!!!! 

[AnshSahu]

Meraki is really making life easier for us. Kudos to the Tech team.
My father is not technical but due to the user-friendly dashboard, he knows how to view the camera (MV12) recording. 

[Bassdox]

It‘s always fun 😊

[Mr_V34]

Oh, my first Meraki deployment! 

was done in under 30 minutes, stacked, 802.1x and all bells and whistles.

had to call the supplyer to ask what was wrong, they calmed me down and insurred me that i was good.

really cool wow experience !

[SpiePaCom]

There are too many Memorys to pick a specific one

[HahnPD]

All the great help we can get here

[raburger]

 Having my own Meraki gear! So cool to do all the fun stuff hat home 😊

[Pi]

My favourite memory, 1 April 2021, my first official day at Meraki, after 4 years of applying (literally)

Then, receiving all my promo gear.

#MerakiMagic #lovewhereyouwork #onceyougofullstackyoudontgoback

 

[iw3ibg]

I think I was among the first to use Meraki in Italy but I must admit that it changed my life. After about 5 years of installations I have almost migrated my entire Wan consisting of 800 MX and Z3. On several occasions I had disruptions on autovpn but in a few hours thanks to the community I got the answers I wanted.

[ChrisDoucette]

Meraki helped us get one of our biggest wins!

Client bought an MS220-48LP. The original IT provider couldn’t get the switch installed into their setup. The ISP couldn’t figure out the proper configuration. Meraki Support was struggling due to lack of documentation. 

Our rep, Ben, called us and asked us to help 2 years after the client bough the switch to say “Client is frustrated and is threatening not to renew the rest of the network (20+ APs, 6 Firewalls, multiple switches). Can you help?”

It took us half a day. We installed it and it worked. Awesome. 

3 months later. We get a call “We’re buying 20 locations across Canada. Let’s start getting the network in place.”

That was a year ago. They are now a full-time co-managed client. 

Thanks Ben (our old rep) and Meraki!

[CptnCrnch]

There are two unforgettable moments regarding this forum:

1. Having my first answer marked as "problem solved"

2. Being awared as an All Star 

Another very pleasant memory was finally being able to meet @MeredithW and @KarstenI at Cisco Live US this year. 😎

[KarstenI]

@CptnCrnch Yep, that is right!

[ScottBussell]

I am with @CptnCrnch - being able to meet some of the folks on this thread at CiscoLive was incredible.

[BaGeri]

I was invited for the student day in May to Cisco Poland and there was an amazing Meraki presentation and won a blower for being one of the most active members during the event. I would like to wish a happy anniversary to all Merakies and all the best 😍

#Happyanniversary #Happybirthday

 

[Noore]

Cisco Live 2017 Meeting Raj Krishna and thanking him for our first beta opportunity years ago. Then realizing I was going to need a chiropractor. That is one tall guy!

I then had the opportunity of meeting George Bentinck and will always remember learning and being a part of the first Meraki camera development. Also I will never forget that iconic hat!

Happy anniversary Meraki , Can't wait to see what the next few years bring!

[AmyReyes]

UPDATE: This contest has ended. We’ve loved reading all of your favorite community memories, so thanks for all of your submissions! Our randomly selected winners are: @Bassdox, @AndrejR, and @ivankenley19. Congrats!  

[Stefaan]

Nog vele jaartjes er bij doen vijf jaar samen werken en oplossingen goede meraki comunity en elkaar helpen te implementeren van de onderwerpen die op meraki comunity komen te staan samen sterk en nog meer onderwijs en vriendschappen bedankt voor de kennis die we zorgvuldig mee omspringen en allemaal gefeliciteerd 

[Inderdeep]

Congratulations to @Bassdox, @AndrejR, and @ivankenley19

Thanks @AmyReyes for adding these types of contests !

[BlakeRichardson]

Congrats to all of the winners!

[BaGeri]

Congratulation to the winners 😎

[Brett_Walker]

Congratulations to all the winners.

[EzSylester1]

Congratulations to all the winners

[Brash]

Congratulations winners 😉

[EzSylester1]

Happy anniversary to all Merakies and all the best