Welcome! Please introduce yourself. (March 2019 - February 2020)

[AFranco]

• A bit about yourself & your work

I work for a Value Added Distributor for Latin America and Caribbean as CISCO & VMWARE S.E.   

• Your experience with Cisco Meraki

I've just got my CMNA the last week and delighted with Meraki solutions.

• A fun fact about yourself

I have a dalmatian dog which name is "The Cow". 

The Cow

[VictorWise]

• A bit about yourself & your work
  • My name is Victor Wise and I work as a Systems Engineer for a Cisco partner in Ohio.
  • I've been in IT/networking for over 15 years and have used everything from HP, Cisco, SonicWall but now focus on Meraki.
• Your experience with Cisco Meraki
  • I've used Meraki wireless at my old employer, but now working for a Cisco Partner I'm focusing on Meraki and love it so far. It's come so far when I used it just for wireless several years ago.
• A fun fact about yourself
  • I love to travel but especially when I can combine the travel with attending music festivals.

[PGP]

• A bit about yourself & your work

      I have worked in IT for over 20 years and currently work for the John Lewis Partnership in the UK

• Your experience with Cisco Meraki

          I have working with Meraki AP's, switches and MX devices for the past 6 months

• A fun fact about yourself

          In my spare time I am part of Lowland Rescue and work with my qualified search dog 

[mdertinger]

A bit about yourself & your work:

Greetings! I am the senior Network Facilitator for a medium-sized public school system located in south-eastern Michigan, where I have worked for roughly 23 years. Like many organizations we have a very small Technology Department staff. As a result, we stay very busy. We certainly never get bored but neither do we have much time for daily system monitoring or learning complex new tools.

Your experience with Cisco Meraki:

Our first venture into wireless included about 200 Cisco AP's managed with a WLC Appliance.We found the management interface to be a bit cumbersome and not terribly intuitive. Over the past few years we have been experimenting with a few pairs of Meraki Outdoor AP's to provide connectivity to our athletic fields and digital signage. The Meraki Dashboard was very easy to navigate and monitoring the devices was so much easier than what we were use to.

Over the last several months we have been working with a local partner to upgrade our wired and wireless infrastucture. We chose Meraki AP's primarily because of the Dashboard. We are just wrapping up the installation of just over 500 AP's (MR52's and MR66's) in eleven buildings. We have gained a fair amount of knowledge during the installation, but still have much more to learn, especially in troubleshooting client connectivity issues. I hope to take the basic certification course soon. Very excited!

A fun fact about yourself:

Favorite Comedians: Robin Williams, Johnathan Winters, Steven Wright, Emo Phillips, and  of course John Cleese

"And now for something completely different."

[LHSA]

• A bit about yourself & your work
  • I work for the Lutheran High School Association in St. Louis - 2 high schools
• Your experience with Cisco Meraki
  • We have switched over to all Meraki security appliances, switches and access points.  Starting to look more at cameras
• A fun fact about yourself
  • I have 3 daughters that all live in different states

[David62301]

• A bit about yourself & your work. - I recently started working for a small local telephone cooperative who has transitioned into our areas leading fiber optic internet provider. Prior to this I spent 12 years working for a VAR selling all manner of IT solutions. 
• Your experience with Cisco Meraki - Sold Cisco Meraki for a number of years at the VAR I worked for previously. Selling a little bit now and introducing them to the product line since we are a Cisco Partner as well. 
• A fun fact about yourself - There are no fun facts about me. I'm all business. 🙂 

[kami]

Hi all,

Who am I 🙂
My name is Kam and I am working in IT support as a Technical Support Lead. I am mentoring a small local IT team as well.

Meraki Experience, I am very new to Meraki. We recently started using it. So I think that there is a long way to go for this in future. But it is really interesting to learn and I enjoying reading and doing more with Meraki products. I like to say that good work from Cisco. I also see that Meraki is the future. 🙂

Fun Fact about myself - I bought two story books before 2 months and both of these are still in the Amazon packet.

[Karla]

Hello everyone:

• A bit about yourself & your workI'm a Pre-sales Engineer, I work for a partner in Austin, Tx. I have been in networking since a graduated from College in Mexico. I worked there in different Cisco Partners and then move to the US. My main technology is Collaboration but I've learned a little bit about all the other technologies.
• Your experience with Cisco MerakiI've been learning about Meraki for the past 3 years, I did the CMNA and have all the gear at home, and we are using it. I like a lot the platform and the easy way to administer the devices.
• A fun fact about yourselfI like to spend my spare time with my family and I love to go hiking and camping a lot!!! 

[PhilipDAth]

@MeredithW I was thinking - it might be a good idea to start a new one of these every month (or even every quarter if it is too much work).  This saves them gowing too large, and it means whenever someone joins in the number of emailed out messages would reduce a lot (to basically just those who had signed up in the last month).

[ElCid1989]

I'm a CMNO for the past 3 years, before that a CCNA from 2000. I've worked with cisco routers, switches, firewalls, and wireless, and now working with Meraki devices. In addition, I've used various other brands of network devices as well as various OS's and server brands.

[cirizan]

Hi, Happy to be here

• A bit about yourself & your workI am a Network deployment engineer
• New to Meraki Cloud. Recently we've started to deploy a couple of Meraki sites (hospitality area - Hilton Hotels).
• I enjoy diving - like skydiving or scuba diving

[MeredithW]

Thanks for the suggestion, Philip!

[jmGeniston]

I am an IT officer in a big real state developer company managing our network infrastructure with Cisco products.

This would be my first to experience a Cisco Meraki Switches deployed in our other project.

I'd love to become versatile in all Cisco products in terms of IT infrastructure 🙂

[tantony]

I'm Tony.  I'm working as an IT Systems Administrator, so I do a mix of networking, Powershell, Active Directory etc.  I've used Meraki at my past jobs, but this is my first time managing a network.  So far it's all good.  A little fun fact about me is that, I have my commercial pilot's license, and I'm a US Army veteran, I used to work on Boeing Apache helicopters as a crew chief.  See my avatar.

[nuo]

Meraki makes it easy 🙂

[JTH]

Hi!

A bit about yourself & your work

I work in a big italian integrator since last year. I'm very excited with all the possibilities that Meraki offers and with many new projects underway.

Your experience with Cisco Meraki

Some deployments in Spain but, for now, only with the Wireless/Switches families.

A fun fact about yourself

My dog's name is....Meraki!

[McGruff753]

• A bit about yourself & your work

I work for Cox Communications in Las Vegas.  I am the Network Administrator for the Las Vegas market.  I have been with Cox since January of 2006, but my primary role revolved around telephony.  It wasn't until about two years ago that my focus shifted to networking.

• Your experience with Cisco Meraki

I am in the process of deploying several Meraki solutions to various locations in the Las Vegas market.  My exposure has been through my counterparts in other markets.  I'm looking to take a Meraki course to further my knowledge.

• A fun fact about yourself

Presently service as Sergeant at Arms for a local 501(C)3 motorcycle group that assists children facing adversity.

[StG]

• A bit about yourself & your work

I'm really, really new to networking. I work for a financial institution in West Michigan. I love how easy it is to maintain Meraki MX65W's.

• Your experience with Cisco Meraki

Though I've been into each of our 30+ Meraki switches multiple times, my real networking and/or Cisco Meraki networking experience is just starting!

• A fun fact about yourself

I studied Greek, Latin, and German and Hebrew for a combined 8 years. Never did translate completely to a knack for programming though 🙂

[DanielQueiroz]

Hello! I have been in the networking area for 5 years and I work in a Cisco Gold Partner in Brazil. I have little experience with Cisco Meraki, but my goal is to change this scenario.

[SoCalRacer]

I own an MSP business and we are a Cisco Select Partner. We work within the SMB size companies within many verticals (Healthcare/Construction/Engineering/Financial)

We have been integrating Meraki as our preferred vendor for over 1 year in our new and existing clients networks and really like the solution

I designed my first webpage when I was 12 (1995)

[_Henrik_]

• A bit about yourself & your work
  • I´ve been in IT for about 4 Years now, with a little break inbetween. I work for a little premium-provider in the northern Germany.
• Your experience with Cisco Meraki
  • I´ve got first in touch with Cisco Meraki in 2018, when we started a large project with a Telecomunication Company. Since then, i work with Cisco in my everyday 🙂
    
• A fun fact about yourself
  • When i bought a cat i would only get a White one with long hair, to make the James Bond Scene: "I've been expecting you"and then swing around in my chair.

[Timo3]

Hello together,

• A bit about yourself & your work

I'm an IT-Consultant and since two months, I work in a Company in Germany, that only use Cisco Produkts. 

• Your experience with Cisco Meraki

My first experience that I made with Cisco Meraki was two months ago, when i started in this company, but since than I've learned really much about many of the Meraki Products.

• A fun fact about yourself

I hardly never wear T-Shirts for work, but when I do, it'll be Cisco T-Shirts.

[Mostafa_Nasr87]

hello for every one

this is mostafa nasr from egypt 32 yaers old graduated from faculty of arts hebrew department

working as account manager at IT Dynamics intergerated solutions

[Josper]

• A bit about yourself & your work:

I work for AVALORA, almost 10 years.

A spanish construction group technological division. And also integral technology services provider.

• Your experience with Cisco Meraki:

3 years deploying cross platform (Meraki/Cisco/Checkpoint) infrastructures.

• A fun fact about yourself:

Love to travel, working out and spent my spare time playing PS4

[IsraelFilho]

• A bit about yourself & your work - I am from Brazil and I work for IBM. I just started working on Cisco Meraki lately on two local customers
  
• Your experience with Cisco Meraki - At the moment I have few experience on Meraki and I am looking forward to learn a lot on this community
  
• A fun fact about yourself - On my leisure time I enjoy swimming and trekking
  

[GJdeBoer]

Hi, glad to be here and able to share experiences with Meraki peers all over the world!

• A bit about yourself & your work

I have been in IT for 19 years now. Started out as an allround system administrator running a large Novell Netware network with Nortel Baystack switches. Built out the WAN for that organization and enjoyed that very much. I have been working with Cisco since 2003 and started my own business in 2006. Fast forward to 2019, I'm now a CTO for that business, a Netherlands based but internationally operating Cisco Partner. We focus on networking and security and we almost exclusively sell Cisco products. I'm a Cisco Champion since 2017 and love to solve problems for customers.

• Your experience with Cisco Meraki

We're using Meraki as a service to our clients. We sell cloud-managed networks including daily operations. The networks we operate vary from 1 AP to around 800 in the largest deployment. We've been using Meraki for a couple of years and find it very quick to deploy standardized networks for our clients.

• A fun fact about yourself

I like to be outdoors so in my spare time I like to ski or hike in the mountains. To that end I've bought a vacation appartment in a German mountain region where my family and me like to spend as much time as possible. I also own several barbecues because I like to cook outdoors. My current collection consists of a Smoker, a Weber, a portable BBQ, a cast iron BBQ and an Uuni 3 pizza oven. Also I built a Tandoori oven out of clay pots.

[MDPiechowski]

• A bit about yourself & your work

I have been working in larger international enterprise environments for 15 years.  Working for another international company now supporting everything under the sun.

• Your experience with Cisco Meraki

2 weeks

• A fun fact about yourself

I have been on TV in forty-eight US states - local broadcasts, not national.

[Krumms]

• A bit about yourself & your work

I live in Michigan and work for CDW out of our Southfield and Grand Rapids Offices.

• Your experience with Cisco Meraki

Love it, It runs my house, I sell it!

• A fun fact about yourself

Where I live it's supposed to Snow....this weekend....and it's almost May!

[Krumms]

• A bit about yourself & your work

I live in Michigan and work for CDW out of our Southfield and Grand Rapids Offices.

• Your experience with Cisco Meraki

Love it, It runs my house, I sell it!

• A fun fact about yourself

Where I live it's supposed to Snow....this weekend....and it's almost May!

[MDPiechowski]

6"-8" of the heavy wet snow here in southern Wisconsin

[DroneDelivery]

Hello,

Just started a new job and am joining the community to learn more about Meraki. Just purchased 10 AP's and looking at switches and a firewalls for remote sites

If someone could point me to best practices for setting up the AP's it would be appreciated. 

Cheers,

John 

[CarolineS]

---

@DroneDelivery wrote:

If someone could point me to best practices for setting up the AP's it would be appreciated. 

---

Hi John, and welcome to the Meraki Community and to Meraki products! For your question about AP setup best practices, I'd recommend that you post in the Wireless LAN board. You'll get more input from our wireless experts there!

[KaylaEik]

Good Afternoon!  I have been in the community for a while, but I have never replied to this thread.

A little about me and my work

• I am the network engineer for a hospital in Indiana.  We use Cisco for all of our networking equipment, and more specifically use Meraki APs for our wireless environment.  We have 3 main hospitals and multiple clinics, so we have a "simply complex" network as I would like to say!  I have been in the network field for 7 years and have loved every minute of it!

My experience with Meraki

• I was first introduced to Meraki when I worked for a school in 2013, and now work with Meraki daily in my current position.  I enjoy being able to remotely access my wireless environment wherever I am at, and have enjoyed seeing the progress that has been made since 2013. 

A fun fact about myself

• My fiance and I are both network engineers and the day after our wedding we are flying out to San Diego for Cisco Live!  He's been CL in Las Vegas, but this is my first year going.  We're both taking recert exams for the CCNP R&S 🙂 What a perfect honeymoon for two geeks! 

[PhilipDAth]

@DroneDelivery there are several best practice guides depending on what you want to do.  This is one of the basic ones:

https://documentation.meraki.com/MR/WiFi_Basics_and_Best_Practices

[bill_berry32]

Greetings Fellow Merakians,

I just took a new Admin position at a large restaurant chain.  We are migrating all restaurant locations from WatchGuard appliances and firewalls to Meraki MX-67c's and MX-250 FW.

Cool stuff!

BB 

[joeljimenez103]

Hi! I currently work at both and Elementary School in Naperville School District as well as Tarilon Technology Services as a part-time consultant.  I am also pursuing a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science as well as certifications in GCP.  I have very little experience with Cisco Meraki but a bit more experience in Cisco Network configurations.  A fun fact about myself is that along with my love for tech I have a love for coffee and brewing beer!

[PHARDSTAFF]

Hi,

Long time lurker first time poster;

A bit about yourself & your work

I have been working in the IT industry managing an Automotive IT network/infrastructure & users for a little over 8 years now. I have just finished my IT Degree and have been exposed to Cisco gear much to my pleasure and would like to explore/learn more.

Your experience with Cisco Meraki

I have a lot of experience managing a Meraki WAP infrastructure, recently rolled out my first few SDWAN appliances and am currently venturing into the switch space with meraki.

A fun fact about yourself

Not a big fan of heights and my cats name is Thor.

-Phil

[MerakiGuy90]

• A bit about yourself & your work
• (I work for a Cisco Business Partner, we are bringing more and more customers over to Meraki Cloud, its a great experience so far) 
• Your experience with Cisco Meraki
• (Just completed CMNA, great course looking forward to the future Training and Exams that will further my knowledge within the platform) 
• A fun fact about yourself
• (I love Technology, I am such a geek for all the latest tech!) 

[APOC]

Hello,

• A bit about yourself & your work
  • I am a Network Engineer, and if Meraki makes it, we use it.
• Your experience with Cisco Meraki
  • About 5 years
• A fun fact about yourself
  • I have spent way to long stressing about what to type on this bullet point.

[MattBeacham]

I'm (not entirely) new to the IT business world and am working as a sales rep for Marco Technologies. This is my first position where I'll be selling and working with Cisco Meraki, but it's a name everyone has heard so it shouldn't be too difficult to generate interest. I fully intend to live and work overseas for a couple years, at some point in my career.

[Emmanuel-M]

• A bit about yourself & your work

Started my networking career in 2002 focusing purely on Cisco switches and routers (implementation and support). 6 years later I moved into Pre-Sales in the telecom space and have never looked back. I prefer the social engagement aspect of Pre-Sales.

• Your experience with Cisco Meraki

I've used, designed and sold MR WiFi solutions in the early days of Meraki. More currently we're leveraging the SD-WAN functionality of MXs for network re-designs.

• A fun fact about yourself

When i'm not wracking my brain around solution designs and playing with my 2 year old, I'm a board game obsessive. You'd think I'd want to give my brain a rest...

[ShaunLee75]

• A bit about yourself & your work

I work in infrastructure support for a Cisco and Meraki partner. With over 21 years IT support experience and a previous 9 years of avionics and telecomunications support experience, it is probably fair to say the I enjoy problem solving.

I design, implement and support anything with a plug, from network infrastructure, servers, telephony, cctv down to mobile devies and peripherals, then though to graphic and web design.

We have customers with 500+ daily WLAN vistors on a single site, to a 12 site 3 continent customer with 120+ VLANs.

In the rest of my free time, I enjoy large DIY projects like kitchen refits and electrical rewiring, car restoration, and 7, soon to be 8 grandchildren who pull me away from all of this to play on the Xbox with them. It's a hard life!

• Your experience with Cisco Meraki

I have been working with Meraki for just over 6 years, including, MX, MS, MR and SM. Looking forward to a project with MV soon.

• A fun fact about yourself

I am a better shot with a pistol at 30 metres that I am with a rifle at 100 metres. Random!

[AndrejRistovsk]

Hi to all,

I am working as an IT System Administrator at a international clinical research company called Trial Support Support.

Around 1 month ago we got a demo Cisco meraki products for testing and evaluation.

I have a twin brother that works in the same company as I :).

[johnojo]

• A bit about yourself & your work

I am a Network & Security Consultant with several companies in Nigeria. I started out my career as a Telecom Engineer before transitioning to Enterprise Networks several years ago. I am a Cisco Enthusiast and also offer training locally to young Engineers and interns in my country especially in the CCNA track. I recently became a Teaching Assistant for Cybrary where I assist in developing content for Cybersecurity related training to students the world over. This helps me in building myself professionally and bridging gaps in my skill sets and competencies.

I intend to go back to school in Canada by September to further my training in Information Security Systems. I was a recipient of Cisco Scholarship in CyberOps in 2017. I enjoy studying a lot like a monk and always want to learn new stuff especially in IT.

• Your experience with Cisco Meraki

I am quiet a newbie when it comes to Meraki and actually just had my first training session for ECMS 1 today so I am really excited to be a part of this community. Meraki is a fascinating solution and I camt wait to dig in learn and further familiarize myself with all it has to offer.

Although I have tried for over 4 months or earlier to get on the previous CMNO training I wasn't lucky to get a spot before it was retired.

• A fun fact about yourself

I love to play chess and the piano. I enjoy family time a lot especially playing with kids.

[Garrett_CP]

• A bit about yourself & your work

I'm from the west coast of Canada and work for a small VAR called Liveport. My primary role includes WLAN design, validation, and support.

• Your experience with Cisco Meraki

Our company has been deploying Meraki for over a decade (post-MIT, pre-licensing model). Had a bit of a hiatus for a while after the Cisco acquisition, but we're deploying it quite regularly again.

• A fun fact about yourself

I'm a total metalhead; was a singer in a touring band for years before getting into Wi-Fi/IT. My hair was a bit longer back then. 😉🤘

[jdsilva]

---

@Garrett_CP wrote:

• A fun fact about yourself

I'm a total metalhead; was a singer in a touring band for years before getting into Wi-Fi/IT. My hair was a bit longer back then. 😉🤘

---

Cry of the Afflicted?

[Garrett_CP]

Ha! Nailed it sir. 😆

[jdsilva]

Just listened to your album on Spotify . I would totally been into that in the middle of the last decade. 

[Garrett_CP]

That's the era when we were on the road. It's like another lifetime. The original iPhone came out just a few months before our last tour! Where's home?