Please introduce yourself [Aug 2017 - Feb 2019]

[CarolineS]

UPDATE: We've archived this post and created a new space for introductions here.

Welcome to the Meraki Community. We are excited to provide this forum as a place for our customers and partners to interact with us and with each other. We’d love to get to know you.

Reply to this thread to let us know who you are, what you do, what expertise you have to share, what you may be looking for in this community, your hobbies… anything you’d like. Just hit that first big green "Reply" button below to get started.

Pro tip: when replying, you may wish to UNCHECK the "Email me when someone replies" checkbox (screenshot below). This thread is popular and you might not want an email each time someone posts on it!

We look forward to meeting you!

[CarolineS]

I'll kick this off by introducing myself. I'm Caroline, the community manager for the Meraki Community. I'm really excited to help this community get off the ground!

When I'm not community-managing, I hang out with my two small kiddos, ride my bike around San Francisco, and get up to the mountains as much as possible.

[Dave]

Hi all. 

I'm Dave.  I am the Information Systems Officer for a community bank in North Western Pennsylvania.  We have 8 locations and use Meraki gear for all of our firewalls and almost all of our switching.  I'm also using Meraki Systems Manager for windows app deployment and inventorying.    I just started Threat Grid integration into the MX's.  

Recent father of identical twin girls that are only 6 weeks old.  I also have 3 and 4-year-old daughters as well.   Pardon my mistakes as I'm very sleep deprived.  

[Toney]

Hello Everyone,

My name is Toney.  I am UC and Network Administrator for N3 LLC.  We have network locations in US, UK, Ireland, Costa Rica, and Singapore.  I work around the clock with users at are our various locations to make sure that their IT issues are resolved.  We have a small IT Team but each person is an expert in a certain area(s).  I have been very fortunate to work with a Great IT Team and a Great Management Team.

Thanks

[LudwigD]

Hello Everyone,

I'm new to Cisco Meraki. But with not so much experience/knowledge I managed to install my new network (MX65W). 

Very pleased with it! So, m y questions in this community can be a little simple, so apologize...

But thankful for the help.

LD

[Kasper]

Hello all! My name is James and I work for a non-profit and recently became a CMNO! 

[JasonTaylor]

Hi

I am a Senior Product Manager for Meraki,  here at BT Global Services (BTGS). Been living the Meraki dream for 3 years or so.  I have moved into product management recently,  after working in sales for many years.  Look forward to working with the Meraki Community.

Jason.

[Erikjon]

Hi, I'm Erik, CEO of a small nonprofit agency in Kansas.  Having started this project from the ground up myself in 2004 as a "locel" project has taken me by storm, growing into a nationwide organization this past 2 years.  I provide publicly displaced persons, primarily mentally ill and homeless persons/families crisis intervention of some king, all dependent on each individual situation.  I do this because I love people.  I love helping the less fortunate than myself.

I am also retired after a 25 year career with AT&T as one of the executive assistants to the AT&T Kansas President.  Therefore I have a big interest in the success of international telecommunication companies and remain fascinated by the ever evolving technology.

Having said that, and having also been a Cisco customer for 20 years, when the Meraki/Cisco project launched, I must say that I have gotten a bit addicted to learning the cloud structuring of communications - all of which you all do an excellent job at.  I like Meraki because you are a no nonsense, more plug and play system - meaning that you are user friendly, and you can still give quality customer services at a very medium price point.

Actually as well, I am getting ready to transition my agency from a traditional VOIP carrier to the Meraki/Cisco project after I learn what you all do and how you do it - how to optimize a custom system for my agency.  If there are any Meraki/Cisco experts/managers out there that have worked with small nonprofits/smaller public service agencies, that you private message me on here - I would love to get some final opinions before launching Meraki - especially those knowledgeable on the Meraki/Cisco hardware setup.  The hardware is ming boggling to me and I am truly having a hard time sorting out what does what because the entire hardware lineup is so multifunctional.  So please email/message me on here - I need some final input here.  If any reader here handles the State of Kansas where I am I would like to speak with you to at least get the ball rolling.  I am thinking at this point of starting out with your free trial.  I am also taking recommendations on carriers that provide services that work in sync with Meraki products.  If I have it right, I guess there are many 3 party VOIP/internet providers that can power your systems.

Have a wonderful week and I look forward to all of your replies.

Peace, 

Erik

[CarolineS]

---

@Erikjon wrote:

Hi, I'm Erik, CEO of a small nonprofit agency in Kansas.  Having started this project from the ground up myself in 2004 as a "locel" project has taken me by storm, growing into a nationwide organization this past 2 years.  I provide publicly displaced persons, primarily mentally ill and homeless persons/families crisis intervention of some king, all dependent on each individual situation.  I do this because I love people.  I love helping the less fortunate than myself.

 Hi @Erikjon and welcome to the Meraki Community! We're glad you have found us. This nonprofit you have created sounds amazing!

Actually as well, I am getting ready to transition my agency from a traditional VOIP carrier to the Meraki/Cisco project after I learn what you all do and how you do it - how to optimize a custom system for my agency.  If there are any Meraki/Cisco experts/managers out there that have worked with small nonprofits/smaller public service agencies, that you private message me on here - I would love to get some final opinions before launching Meraki - especially those knowledgeable on the Meraki/Cisco hardware setup. 

This sounds like a great project! I'd recommend that you post your questions in our Off the Stack board, which is for general Meraki-related topics. 

Cheers!

[BBM_Mike]

 Hi Caroline and Hi to Everyone, Mike from Bell Canada Business Market Support (SP), recent client Meraki device/technology launches bring us to further learn and develop our experience and management of Meraki products.

 We are here to grow 🙂

[TammyU]

I'm Tammy and I'm a fairly new CMNO looking to continue expanding my knowledge.  I'm an Analyst in the retail arena and support both Cisco and Meraki switches.  I'm excited to be a part of this community and hoping to share knowledge with others.

I just recently took up Hiking with my hubby and so far I've started exploring trails in the Appalachian Mountains and I absolutely love it! 

[PJ]

Hellow Everyone

My name is PJ and I am new to the community.

I joined the community in the hope that someone could point me in the right direction to setup my newly purchased mx84 security appliance.

When I connect to the management port on the MX84 and open a web browser,it give me an error message saying that "something's is not right

this security appliance is trying to join a network or find a working Ethernet connection"

I have the internet port 1 connected to my gateway router and the lan port3 connected to my Lan core switch.

I have also found that the Lan ports 3-12 on the mearaki appliance are on the 192,168.0.0/24 subnet however my LAN is on the 192.168.18.0/24 subnet.

Any advise would be much appreciated.

PJ

[4Jonjon20]

Hi PJ,

Do you already tried to statically configured the Public IP address from the Internet 1 port?

[4Jonjon20]

Hi PJ,

Do you already tried to statically configured the Public IP address from the Internet 1 port?

[4Jonjon20]

Hi,

I'm Jon from the Philippines, a Network Administrator using Meraki devices. I'am very impressed about  Meraki and hopefully to learn a lot from you guys. Yaaahh Man!!! 🙂

[hosokawaw]

Hi @CarolineS 

How can I change my profile name ? And where i can new post ?

Regards
William Hosokawa

[CarolineS]

Hi @hosokawaw -

You can change your profile name by emailing community-help@meraki.com - which you've already done, I see! We'll respond to that shortly. And to create a new post, simply select the relevant board (likely one of the Product & Technology boards) and click "Start a new topic" in the upper right.

Cheers!

[GeorgeD]

Hi everyone! I'm George and I work on the Training and Evangelism team at Meraki 🙂

[PavlinH]

Hello Everyone,

My name is Pavlin Hristov and I am a Technical Evangelist on the Training and Evangelism team at Cisco Meraki. My job consists of developing, improving and delivering new and existing trainings to our partners and customers. 

[ITzhak]

Hi PavlinH,

What does the Evangelism team do? I am accustomed to hearing that word related to religion, but that doesn't seem to apply here 🙂

Thanks,

[PavlinH]

Hello Itzhak,

Thank you for the question. 

The Technical Evangelist team is responsible for promoting Cisco Meraki through technical certification courses and other focused technical engagement programs. We help Cisco Meraki partner and customer engineers to build the technical expertise that they need to sell, deploy, and support Meraki networks. This technical enablement is a critical lever in growing sales, building channel loyalty, and improving the performance of our partners and customers.

Hope this answer helps. Let me know if I can clarify further.

Cheers,

Pavlin Hristov

[NathanG]

Hi,

I'm Nathan, a Meraki Technical Evangelist based out of Brisbane, Australia.

I cover all of the APJ region.

[Mike_Rapp]

Hello! I'm Mike and I work as an IT Technicial at Medical Associates Plus in Augusta GA. We have 5 facilities using a mixture of network products to include Meraki. We would like to switch all our network equipment to Meraki in the future for equipment continuity. 

[Teague]

Hi all,

Teague here.  System admin, networking, phones etc.  Meraki fan

CMNO #00875

[BHC_RESORTS]

Hi All! Glad to be here as well. We are Boutique Hotel Collection, and more specifically, I am Chris Biggers. We operate the full Meraki stack minus switching. Our expertise is in hospitality deployments of Meraki equipment, specifically the access points.

[MerakiJockey505]

Hello everyone!  I'm Rod, Systems Engineer for Presbyterian Medical Services here in New Mexico.  I'm psyched to be a part of this beta community and ready to learn and share info about the wide wonderful world of Meraki!

[Mr_IT_Guy]

Hello everyone,

My name is Joe and I am a Network Admin for Atlantic Bay Mortgage Group. We've been utilizing the full Meraki stack for the past year  to support our over 90 locations. We are looking forward to testing out cameras here shortly. We have also been a part of the various Meraki betas and are working to help resolve AMP issues.

[Matthew]

Good Day,

Network Engineer here with Eagle County Schools in the beautiful Colorado Mountains. We are just finishing up our transition from Catalyst equipment to Meraki this week for 160 switches and 500 APs over 19 sites and we couldn't be happier! We are looking forward to the evolution of the MC line and hearing the community's experience with scalability to >1000 handsets.

Kind Regards,

Matthew

[MRCUR]

Hi everyone,

I'm CR, an IT consultant for various public/private schools in Southeastern Pennsylvania. I currently support the full Meraki stack except for MC devices. Very happy to finally have a good place to discuss Meraki with other Meraki admins!

CMNO #12 (thanks @GeorgeD!)

[MarcoS]

Hi! I am Marco, a Technical Evangelist at Cisco Meraki. Nice to meet you all!

[RafaelM]

Hello y'all! Rafael Marta here, one of the Technical Evangelists at Meraki! It's a pleasure to be part of this community!

[NFL0NR]

Hey Everyone, I'm Casey,

I'm a network admin for a mortgage company, we have about 75 branch offices and we have meraki in all of them as well as in our HQ data closet.  We're mostly all Meraki.. now if I can get our phone guy to switch over.... 😉

[JoelKelley]

Then the phone guy wouldn't have a job! 

[Rob_Bauhuis]

Joel is my go to guy!!

[BradB]

Hi all! My name is Brad, and I lead the Training & Evangelism team here at Meraki. I've been with the company for a bit over 5 years at this point, and it's been quite a ride to see Meraki grow from a 150-person startup to the organization that we are today. 

My team creates and delivers Meraki's training programs for partners, customers, and others within the Cisco organization. I'm super excited about this forum as a way for Meraki users to interact and share experiences, and would love to see it grow over time to include additional ways for users to go further in their Meraki learning journeys. 

Thanks for visiting and contributing!

[ThomasEllis]

Hey Brad.  Your team is doing a great job communicating and educating around the simplicity and features available with Meraki.

[adilorenzo]

Hi,

My name is A.J. and I work for Privia Health based out of Arlington, VA.  We manage over 350 small and medium sized doctor's offices in 6 different markets across the US.  We have Meraki equipment in almost 200 of these Care Centers now (some have multiple offices) and manage a separate Meraki organization for each Care Center.  The majority of these sites have at least a Meraki firewall, a lot of them have Meraki APs and a few of them have Meraki switches as well.  Meraki has really changed the way we approach and manage networking in these offices in a very positive manner.

My hobbies include IT (this probably goes without saying), sports, music, food/beer and reading.

A.J.

[Mr_IT_Guy]

Happy to see all the new faces!! Keep them coming!

[btevans995]

Hello everyone.

My name is Bill Evans and I am a technology evangelist and worked in IT for 18 years.  I am excited to be part of this community and look forward to benefiting from the expertise here - and hope to contribute in a valuable way as well.

Thanks.

[TCB]

Ciao everyone.

My name is Sanjay Sodha and I am the Owner of The Computer Business Ltd. In Toronto,  I am also excited to be part of this community and look forward to benefiting from the expertise here - and also hope to contribute in a valuable way as well.  #swagplease

[RobertB]

Hey all!

I am a system support specialist with 20yrs in various areas of IT, and also run my own consulting services. I work for a petroleum company in Newfoundland Canada, which has only recently rolled out Meraki solutions to our satellite offices and retail outlets with more expansion to come.

Really hoping to make use of this community over the coming months, and hopefully able to contribute as well.

swagplease

[DarkStar]

@Everyone

Hello, my name is James Hill I work for Presbyterian Medical Services as the IT Infrastructure Manager. We have about 60 sites using Meraki and another 60 on other types of equipment. I look forward to sharing with this community and am egger to learn more.

Thanks -DS

BTW: I will sign replies, notes, comments, etc. with my user name and typically abbreviated.

[Cisco-Techcom]

Hello,

I am Yoldy from Haiti. Actually working with PC HAITI SA (PCXPRESS) company. I am so glad to be part of this community and ready to share and learn from you. Meraki technology is so fascinated and I would say it is a great accomplishment by Cisco. I love it !!!!!!!!!!

[NFL0NR]

Haiti!  Nice!  we're going international!

[Southwind]

Hello,

My name is David and I work for Driving Force as an I.T. team lead, we currently utilize a fair amount of the gear that Meraki sells in our environment,  the hardware and support are great!

[Dave]

Welcome, David.  

Nice name by the way.  

[Miroslava]

Hello Everyone!

I'm Miroslava and I'm a SE for a Cisco Partner in Guadalajara, Mexico... and a big Meraki enthusiast.

[AlexS]

Hello all, I'm Alex and I work in Meraki Support in San Francisco. I believe I'm the first Support person in here but I shall not be the last. We're all looking forward to meeting the community here and helping out with some of your tougher issues.

I'm sure I'll be posting here with many of you soon!

[DarkStar]

@AlexSwelcome, glad to see some Meraki Support staff here!!

[wirednot]

Lee Badman here- long-time Meraki user (since well before Cisco acquisition) and freelance analyst/writer. Have covered Meraki often through the years. (my articles are easy to find online). Also use Meraki in my own small company outside of the day job as WLAN functionary for large university (we use Meraki as branch solution in several states/countries). I'm a fan of Meraki, but I also eval other cloud vendors regularly.  Hoping the Meraki community discussions provide value, looking forward to contributing.

[JoshW]

Hello! This is Josh Wellman with Meraki Support. I have been a part of Cisco Meraki for almost 3 years and am excited about this community!

[DarkStar]

@JoshWWelcome! Glad to see Meraki Support Staff here!

[jlandky]

Greetings All,

Jeff here from Louisville, KY. I am currently the Senior IT Business Analyst for a tier-two automotive supplier. Running full Meraki solutions in 3 of my 4 plants.

Make IT a great day!

[Fady]

Hi All

My name is Fady and I am Systems Engineer with Cisco Meraki based out of Meraki Sydney office and my role is to cover the whole APJC region. 

[cpudude]

Dale here in northern California. Network engineer by trade for the last 26 years. Supporting a non-profit in my spare time; and today was my first experience with Cisco Meraki. I'm already on the forum, and looking forward to learning for the power users! Thanks in advance for sharing your knowledge; passion and experience with Meraki products.

[Myky]

Hello All,

Mykhaylo here. I work as a Support Services Engineer in London. For the last 3 weeks, l was discovering Meraki products and realised that the Community Forum was missing. I think it is very important for all vendors to have and l am glad it has finally arrived. 

Very good way to learn new things, meet other IT Professionals as well as sharing thoughts, knowledge and ideas.

Reg,

Myky

[Jak_Medina]

Hello, everybody! I am Medina. I live in Brazil, and currently, i been working with more than 300 Meraki MX64 clients. In this community, I want to become a contributor for all, bringing problems, experiences, and CASES, which I have facing day by day with my managed networks. I want to contribute with everyone, in their processes of troubleshooting and learning. For I believe that if we all add our expertise, we can learn from "Real Life", and not just from labs. Good work and good learning and growth for everyone! Greetings Jakson Medina

[RafaelM]

Welcome to the community! It is good to see the Cisco Meraki products get more and more popular in Brazil! I'm also Brazilian and, just like you, I am happy to help and contribute here!

[BHC_RESORTS]

---

@Jak_Medina wrote:
Hello, everybody! I am Medina. I live in Brazil, and currently, i been working with more than 300 Meraki MX64 clients. In this community, I want to become a contributor for all, bringing problems, experiences, and CASES, which I have facing day by day with my managed networks. I want to contribute with everyone, in their processes of troubleshooting and learning. For I believe that if we all add our expertise, we can learn from "Real Life", and not just from labs. Good work and good learning and growth for everyone! Greetings Jakson Medina

---

That's a lot of MX64s. ISP/end users?

[Jak_Medina]

Hello BHC_RESORTS, incredible as it may seem, we actually have this amount of equipment that feeds more than 300 sites, to end users.

[MilesMeraki]

Hello Everyone,

I'm Eliot. I'm currently living in New Zealand and working a gig within "The Instillery" as a Cloud Solutions Engineer.  We help customers on their Cloud Digital Transformation journeys by offering a wide range of solutions - Public cloud migration and feasibility strategies, migrations and Cloud centre of excellence. We also offer a wide range of solutions such as Cloud connectivity, SD-WAN and Networking as a service managed offerings and lead with Meraki as a vendor for some of these solutions.

Prior to this I was working as a Support Engineer for Meraki out of the UK office. I'm very much looking forward to sharing my knowledge and experience and looking forward to collaborating with some of the other industry experts!

Cheers,

Eliot

[JohnStephen]

John Heffernan, PhD - Tech Teacher and IT for a small elementary school in Western Massachusetts.

[PhilipDAth]

I work for a Cisco Partner called IFM located in New Zealand.  We mostly work with small to medium sized business.  We have come from a history of using the traditional Cisco Enterprise portfolio but are now moving most of SMB clients towards the Meraki family.  We love the Cisco Meraki family of products.

[MrGadgetman]

swagplease

[BlakeRichardson]

I just realised I never introduced myself so here goes.

I'm Blake and I am the IT manager at a large school as well as I am a consultant for my own IT business as well as a media producer and video game consultant. I wear many hats and always have plenty to do.

I've been using Meraki for almost two years now and love the product. 

[Fleshwound]

Hi everybody I'm Tyler West.  I'm probably a bit of an oddity in this group but I like it that way.  I have been in the industry for a while and have specifically been a network engineer at one level or another for over 20 years.  I grew up as a beef cattle farmer in a small town in KY and by some miracle got exposed to computers at an early age.  My first experience was on a Tandy Model III which pretty well gives some of you an idea of how old I am.  Besides the network engineering I'm quite an experienced Linux/BSD hack, love my Mac, and have no small amount of disdain for Windows.  Of course I have achieved my CMNA but I am also a CCNP, CCDP, and CCNA Wireless as well as Aruba ACMP (Keep the boos and hisses to a minimum please.  It was forced upon me).  I did pass my CCIE written not long ago and sat for my lab in RTP but that didn't go so well.  As we would say in the south that lab is made for a bunch of 20 and 30-something young whippersnappers.  My brain is wise and experienced but just not that fast anymore.

Aside from all that I have a wonderful wife and a son who is a 3rd degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do as well as two extremely spoiled dogs.  I am a huge music fanatic and work when I can as an amateur sound engineer.

[theant]

I am Mike Butler. I grew up with networks starting with rs-232 and Ethernet in the Industrial Automation business.

I have no certifications although a doctor has told me I am certifiable. No official paper on that one but he is a professional, so that should count for something.

I am at a less than 1000 employee Industrial contractor business so am learning Meraki and Cloud stuff. Different day, different hardware... and software... and interface...

[Alan_P]

Would you be the Mike Butler who does a lot of work with schools? Like the School District of University City a million years ago?

Alan Portman

[jgutter]

Hello all,

I am the Senior Network Engineer for M/I Homes INC. We are a home builder with about 15 Divisions and around 1500 employees.

Run a bunch of Meraki Z1's MX80's and ton of AP's

[Steelyeydwifimn]

Hi, I'm the subject matter expert for wireless in Fujitsu services in the UK. I work across multiple wireless vendors particularly with Meraki

where I've been responsible for creating the dashboard for all our customers. I am working with a number of large number retail customers using pretty much all of the Meraki product range from large MX600s to the little Z1s. I'm particularly involved with Wireless design and implementation with occasional 4th line support role. I'm involved with the world wireless community and attend conferences all over the world to encourage, make friends and of course promote technical expertise in wireless design and implementation.  

[MerakiTexan]

Hi everyone!  My name is Chuck Losh and I work at as a IT Infrastructure Engineer in Plano, TX.  I am a CMNO and a Cisco Meraki Fanatic!  Been using meraki products prior to the Cisco merger.  They have made my job much much easier.

[JPAWELCHAK]

Good day,

John Pawelchak, Managing Partner at Cohort Networks Inc. We are a Managed Services Provider (MSP) specializing in macOS and iOS deployments in the greater Toronto market. We have been Meraki partners since 2011 selling mainly to Cohort's MSP clients but recently launched an on-line Meraki store at https://cohort.ca servicing the Canadian market place and will be launching similar stores servicing the United States (US) and the European Union (EU). US store to launch in the coming weeks and EU store in the coming months. We work closely with small/medium business and the enterprise meeting their Cisco Meraki hardware, licensing and deployment consulting needs.

Looking forward to getting to know more about you, your experience, expertise and challenges with the various Cisco Meraki family of products and services.