Learn more about your community peers in our Member Spotlight!

[MeredithW]

It’s time for our December Member spotlight!

For this Member Spotlight, we chose to recognize @Priesty. Since joining, he has written 114 posts and received 64 kudos! We've really appreciated his contributions across many of our boards, both providing helpful information and asking great questions 🙂

Congratulations!🏅 👏

Tell us a little bit about your background.

Well, I started as an IT Engineer in the mining services sector. Did a lot with mining automation and administration networks in industrial settings. Essentially this is where I was first introduced to Cisco technology for industrial environments. From there I have had numerous positions across different organizations including my own consulting business and acting as a startup advisor. Now I am the CTO for SYNO Global, we are an organization deploying healthcare related technology to Aged Care and Hospitals environments. The Cisco Meraki story is a great fit for us as our technologies require enterprise-grade networking solutions to operate efficiently, Cisco Meraki allows us to also offer MSP based services to compliment our own technology range. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn, I always enjoy sharing and reading stories of others.

What motivated you to start posting in the community and what keeps you coming back?

I consider myself a technologist, so regardless of my position I really get a kick out of helping others, or at least offering any experience. I also actively make sure that I contribute to any community based forum for any products / services we are involved with, this shows commitment to success. I find it most beneficial learning from others and I am a strong believer in being open minded to new ways of doing things, the Cisco Meraki community really highlights this considering how many members there are and how much collective experience there is available to anyone.

 

Any Meraki product / feature that you’re particularly fond of or couldn’t live without?

So many to mention here, all the products have great features. The firewall integration with umbrella is brilliant. The layer 7 rules at the AP level is great for some of our sensor technology and the L3 switching capabilities are a perfect fit for healthcare environments. The MV line is very impressive, the constant development and new features being released really helps with demonstrating value to the customer – we are however really looking forward to face recognition built-in to the camera, which I am just assuming is being worked on 😉. On this question, it worth noting I have been using Meraki before they were purchased by Cisco, even when they first started they had an impressive suite of features, its been amazing to watch just how far the product lines have come. On another note, the Cisco Meraki water-bottle has been the most used items on my desk, not sure why but these water bottles are brilliant and I have never been so hydrated!

 

What’s your advice to folks looking to move to the next level in their Meraki / networking knowledge?

Firstly, spend time with your account executives, show them what you are doing and explain your company strategy. I often spend time in the Sydney, Australia office working with the AEs on a number of fronts (and they are absolute brilliant staff by the way – I won’t mention names but everyone I have worked with so far has been brilliant – you know who you are). The AEs helped us and the team with learning and training opportunities, such as the CMNA training, this was a great starting point (and yep – I got the t-shirt and full stack of hardware). But honestly, the best way to really get dirty is to deploy your own full stack Cisco Meraki networks and go for. Ask questions, read literature, participate on the community and don’t be afraid to ask for help – also consider Cisco training and certifications, most of the material applies to all Cisco Meraki networking products.

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Thanks, @Priesty! Want to nominate one of your fellow community members for next month's spotlight? Submit your nomination here!

[Nash]

Yesssss the water bottles are so good! I’m glad to see I’m not the only person in loooove with theirs.

Hard agree that general network knowledge is essential to really using Meraki kit effectively. Sure, it’s easy to deploy a bunch of switches, but you’re going to have a bad time if you don’t understand VLANs and STP.

Congrats on the focus, @Priesty! 

[BrechtSchamp]

Hey cool! I came out of the world of Industrial Automation too. +1 on the CMNA training and the full-stack that followed it. The free hardware is a genius move by Meraki imo. Although it must cost them a lot of money.

Good to have you!