One of many joys of being a product manager for a true platform product (NSO that is) that you get to find out the many cool and inspiring things people do with it that you may not have thought of in the first place. NSO is to some extent that magical fishing rod for network automation, and our users go fish in a very wide variety of lakes hunting for pretty exotic fish. And I'm always delighted to see their catches on display. Add to that the fact that people who fish with NSO are generally very passionate fisherpeople and it makes for an interesting day.
In order to keep this (already somewhat stretched) fishing parable alive, I've also found that many of the fisherpeople (network automation anglers?) are very happy and proud to show off their catch during public events, including the sharing of some spectacular fishing stories. So in order to stay up with the latest and greatest in catches and stories I headed over to the Fishco^H^H^H^H^H^H Cisco Live US 2019 sessions catalog and did a free form search on 'NSO'.
This time around I found 27(!) different sessions that had "NSO" in either the topic name or in the abstract description. And that includes my own two sessions. I can honestly say that I only knew of about half of the people and topics beforehand and some of the ones that I had not seen before have topic names that makes me extremely curious and interested to know more. The depth and breadth of the topics and the role descriptions of the presenters is truly great, and the wealth of insight and experience in using NSO in some of thew world's most challenging waters truly humbles me.
As a cisco employee we get dispreferential (!) access to sessions that are fully booked, so I don't have too much hope in getting comfortable access to all the sessions. But for those of you going to Cisco Live US this year, and are planning to attend any of the NSO sessions. Look for a weathered fisherman against the back wall as that might just be me trying to learn more. And if you feel like it, come up and share any kind of fishing story you may have, or ask me for one. I love this stuff.