Tim: 0:13

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Cables to Clouds podcast. I'm your host this week, tim, and with me, of course, is my co-host, chris at BGP Main on BlueSky. I am carpe-dmbpn on Blue Sky and we have a guest with us who I am not sure whether or not he is on Blue Sky Jason Blue Sky.

Jason: 0:34

I am not Blue Sky, unfortunately. I probably should join Blue Sky, but I've got so many to deal with now I just kind of ignore it.

Tim: 0:40

That's fair and so, yeah, so we have brought a longtime friend of ours and finally have been able to get him on the show to record with us, jason Gooley, a man who probably doesn't need a huge amount of introduction to most of the people that listen, but for the five or six of them that may not. Why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself, jason?

Jason: 1:05

Oh my gosh, when do I even begin? I'm about five foot seven and completely bald. So I'm Jason Gooley. I have been at Cisco for a little over 11 years now. I went from an SE field SE to running as a technical evangelist for all worldwide enterprise networking, for all of EN, for Cisco and software sales because it's worldwide enterprise networking and software sales I always forget and software sales, so I said if you can get through that title on the slide.

Jason: 1:32

I'm like presenting or something like that. If you can get through technical evangelist, worldwide enterprise networking and software sales, cisco Systems Incorporated, you'll be able to get through the next half hour or whatever it is we're going to talk about. You'll be in great shape. So I did that for a long time for about seven years and then I just recently, in November, took a role back on the same kind of like the same team for the same manager who originally hired me at Cisco in 2013. And so I'm still a technical evangelist, still doing that conversation with customers, presenting, doing all that stuff.

Jason: 2:07

Cisco live, all that kind of stays the same, but instead of just focusing on en and doing it for the whole world, I'm doing it for the states of illinois and wisconsin, for, specifically, our, our commercial team and uh, which makes it I mean there's a there's a lot of uh stress off to some degree, right, because I was traveling constantly. I was constantly traveling, which is great and fun, but then after a while, you're like I need you to go somewhere. They tell you this on a Thursday, I need you to be in New York on Monday or something, and you're like I got two kids.

Jason: 2:36

I can't just be like bye and then for a week. It's like you need to give was just funny that I had such a blast on that role and going all over the world and talking to customers everywhere and I've learned so much from from just engaging with people. It was. It was the best. It was a really great role. It was fantastic and but when I came back here and I went to to this team, I have probably the best leader I've ever had, you know, I mean just the nicest guy, and it's not just because he made the decision to hire me originally, but he made the decision to hire me originally, but he made that decision twice and brought me back yet again.

Jason: 3:11

So clearly he's definitely a good guy. So I've been doing that. So my new role is similar in nature, but I'm also taking on all architectures now, so it's not just EN. So I'm learning about a lot of AI, a lot of cool stuff with AI security, things like HyperShield and AI defense and all these other new cool things that got announced at Cisco Live in Europe.

Jason: 3:32

Really a lot of fun and what's awesome is I get to go in and have the conversations with customers about, you know, what do you want to do or what do you like. Here's the art of the possible right. Here's the art of all the things that we can do. We can combine ai and collaboration and all these things and obviously security and segmentation and all of this. It just naturally comes together. So it's really nice to go back to being a call it a generalist talking about all these different uh technologies, but I think it's just, it's been a great, a great change for me, and then uh and then ultimately, outside of that, you know, I think, a lot of it between that and outside of Cisco. I write a lot of books and videos for Cisco Press. Pearson O'Reilly do a lot of training. I just did a live EN core lesson. The crash course for Pearson just ended yesterday.

Tim: 4:20

Wait a live, what? Sorry, it's the EN core 350-400.

Jason: 4:24

Oh, okay, got it, but it's the crash course.

Jason: 4:27

So it's a three day crash course, three, four hour days versus the week long you know, it's kind of like get you going, but it's very it's like theory a little bit, but then it's we go right into the command line on everything and then, and then I do programmability and all these technologies and topics are coming right out of the EN Core book. So it's like this is what you're going to see. So it's for the folks who have read the book but want a little bit more and haven't gone for the full-on deep boot camp or they're not necessarily going directly for their CCIE, because you know, I mean, the EN Core is pretty much the new CCIE, written at this point.

Jason: 5:00

Yeah, that's right, and so it's broad, there is some depth to it. No-transcript, internal network support, kind of technologist, and it's very, it's very like this is where you would start your career really, and I'm talking about things like this as a processor, this is memory, this is a motherboard, this is how, how it connects. And I'm ripping apart computers on camera, which I had to go through all this hassle to get this microphone boom thing that could attach to a dslr camera and all this other stuff so you could show it, right you show it, because you can't hold that.

Jason: 5:59

I mean it just doesn't work right.

Jason: 6:01

But unfortunately you should be able to do your, show you something.

Jason: 6:06

Yeah, I gotta stay far enough back to be like and this, you know, is uh, is where you plug in the sata drive, you know at least now you'll have the equipment to do some unboxing videos on uh youtube that's a good point.

Tim: 6:19

Yeah, for the youtube.

Jason: 6:20

Maybe become a youtube okay, hey, somebody send me something so I can unbox it. I don't even care what it is, as long as it doesn't tick or go boom, you know, or?

Tim: 6:31

glitter bomb, yeah Right.

Jason: 6:34

But it was funny because going that's where I started my career was computer. Desktop support helped us build a computer, my A plus certification. All of this is where I got into technology and what was cool was that to see the outline of the blueprint and to make a course for it and to just literally be able to be like alright, this is so awesome because it's all from literal, just things that I've done. Like the whole course is basically just stories of things that I've gone through and of course, you covered the technology right. But why is this important? You know, I remember at a hospital that had an issue they had two switches, whatever it didn't fail over. You lost your config. There's all of these things that come up that that kind of leads you into this direction. So working on that course now and it's just, it's been a lot of fun with the CCNA stuff too.

Tim: 7:25

I gotta, I gotta ask. Ask because I didn't hear. But I had heard about this cert and it's not necessarily. Well, I mean, the agenda that we're going to talk about is basically a cert stuff in general, but, like I know, I kind of have to veer a little bit. This was a CC. You said IST. Is that right?

Jason: 7:36

CCST, so Cisco Certified Support Technician and then there's cybersecurity, networking and now IT support.

Jason: 7:44

So that's what's confusing.

Jason: 7:45

CCST, Cisco Certified Support, Technician IT support. It's like a.

Tim: 7:50

Oh, these are like specializations for this ST bit. They're like three different flavors of this ST bit. It's an actual certification.

Jason: 7:57

Each one of those is a certification, so it's not like a specialization on the CCMP as much as it is.

Tim: 8:04

Well, I guess it kind of is it's a flavor, it's a flavor.

Jason: 8:07

It's a flavor, right, because it's CCST and there's three different ones. But and I think they just recently announced that they're renaming the cyber ops to just cyber security, I believe, or something I think it's just Cisco certified cyber security versus whatever it was Cisco certified cyber ops, ccna cyber ops or whatever.

Jason: 8:26

Yeah, I don't know a lot of things about that, but you can see how there can be a little bit of confusion in some of that, but it's been a lot of fun though. Just looking at some of those older or I wouldn't even say older technologies, just it's just it's very relevant new stuff, just not something I focused on in a long time not something I focused on in a long time, so it's super cool, yeah, no kidding, I think didn't, russ White?

Jason: 8:49

do one of the other books? I think, yeah, he did. I think he did the networking one. Yeah, okay, he wrote the networking book, that's right, I'm doing the official video course.

Jason: 8:54

I don't even actually I don't even know if there's a proposal in or who would be the author for the IT support book, but now, with the CCNA, this is the other thing, as you may be aware, that I'm working on is that there's been a lot of splash about me taking over for Wendell, for the CCNA and everything, and then it's been an exciting and crazy journey to think that the gentleman who started me off I'm reading these books I'm going to be taking over and writing for whoever is starting their career, right, yeah, passing of the torch I mean we're talking about so if there's anybody listening that doesn't know this, uh, we're talking about wendell odom, who is basically like an og in the networking space.

Tim: 9:34

I mean, he wrote most of the ccna level books that I almost everybody uses to get bootstrapped like learn the ccna stuff. I know I did. Um, yeah, no, that that's really cool. I was actually lucky enough to meet Wendell in June last year at Cisco Live. And it was interesting actually, because I was walking around handing out copies of my book to everybody who would take one. Usually I'd have to point finger guns at them to make them take it.

Jason: 10:03

I'm sorry I have to pay you to take my book but uh, wendell was really cool.

Tim: 10:08

Uh, I don't know, we were talking in the cisco store and we were talking about something and I was like, oh, man here like you know, wendell, you did so much to help me get started I'd love to to just give you a copy of my, of my book. And he, he was very gracious, he took a flip through, he said this is awesome, dude. And I ended up talking to some people from Cisco Press about it and stuff. And then they were like, okay, wendell, the Cisco Press people were like, okay, wendell, it's time to take a picture with your new CCNA book.

Jason: 10:33

And he was like, oh, and then he was like hey, come on over here, man. Good I'm good.

Tim: 10:41

Wendell. Wendell's such a class act dude. He's the best, he is the best dude, like straight up.

Jason: 10:45

He is. He is so when he little background. He's done 10 editions for 23 years.

Tim: 10:52

I know that's insane.

Jason: 10:54

And probably I mean, unless you went down that other path that we were talking about, right, almost a lot of the people that went ccna used his books. I mean there's no way to not acknowledge that, right. Oh for sure. It's so impactful and so incredibly huge what he's done for the entire community and me personally and everybody I know who's gone for their ccna, I remember once in a while you find a couple folks will get a certification and use alternate methods of study other than the c Press book and everything.

Tim: 11:25

Yeah.

Jason: 11:26

By and large man, almost every CCNA out there, this guy. In addition, they pull a lot of that content from the books and stuff for the Network Academy.

Tim: 11:37

Yeah, for Netacad yeah.

Jason: 11:38

Everybody is going to get Network Academy. I mean, just from a statistic. This is kind of one of the things that is still what makes my mind want to blow up. Right Is I'm sitting at our global sales meeting just this past year or the one before that, right, and they had said they were wanting to expand Network Academy and one of the statistics that they had said was the Network Academy has been around for 25 years. It was the 25 year anniversary of Network Academy. I mean, they said they have certified 17 million people, holy shit, 17 million.

Jason: 12:09

Well, through that, yeah, obviously through netiquette, right yeah, and then this is the part that blew my head off right. It said we expect to certify another 25 million in the next 10 years that's crazy. Just to go from 17 years to get or, I'm sorry, 25 years to get 17 million. They want to do 25 million more in 10 years.

Tim: 12:33

Yeah, so like 8 million more within 10 years.

Jason: 12:36

So I'm sitting there listening to this, and this was shortly after the Cisco Live that they came to me. Cisco Press came to me and asked me if I would be interested in taking over the CCNA, which blew my mind again Right, so this was like a just like a couple months later, cause, like we have Cisco live typically in June and in our global sales meetings usually about the end of August.

Jason: 12:55

So, like two months later, after I found out that I'm going to be doing this, I hear this. Well then I started thinking about well, they use wait a minute, they use all the content to feed the Network Academy.

Tim: 13:06

Yeah dude.

Jason: 13:06

And then he said 10 years and I'm like they're going to be using my stuff to feed 25 million students and even if you cut that down to just a fraction, 1 million students.

Tim: 13:18

Oh yeah.

Jason: 13:20

It's just so and that, to me, makes it just. It makes my heart glow, makes me nervous at the same time, but it just all of those things makes me just smile because I was the kid who's never going to make it anyway, and all the people we can help doing this. Oh my gosh dude.

Tim: 13:35

Yeah, I mean it's a hard thing to think about just because of the scale of it, right, and that's that's the case for think I mean the ccna is ubiquitous, pretty much like people that want to learn networking. I mean you know you have people out there will say like, oh well, you know ccna is too much, just do like network plus or whatever. But the truth is like from a a whole, a total package training curriculum of of networking. It's hard. I don't, I don't know no other vendor I'm aware of puts out the total package training.

Jason: 14:07

And it's also interesting to see the way that people I was going to say it's sought after and the way that people go after certain certifications is. It's an interesting thing because, like I said, I started off I got my A plus certification. I went and I got my CNA, novell 411B For anybody out there who has less hair than me who knows what I just said, you know and I went down that path, did some Microsoft certifications. I kind of just kept down that path. But when I heard about Cisco I didn't know what it was.

Jason: 14:41

And.

Jason: 14:41

I've been on a million podcasts talking about this. My best friend calls me up and he said there's, dude, there's this thing, it's called cisco and they have three certifications and the one is the cisco certified network associate and if you go get that, you'll make over a quarter of a million dollars a year. Now, mind you, I think I was 16 years old, because I got certified and start going through all that when I was 17. 16 years old, he tells me this. I'm like, oh my gosh, that's incredible. And then he says well, no, no, dude, you don't understand. There's a CCNP, which is Cisco Certified Network Professional, and if you get that you make like $375,000 a year. And I'm like, wow, what you know? And I'm like, and he goes dude, but there's one called the CCIE, the Cisco Certified Inter-Network Expert. There's less than 500 of them in the entire world and if you get that certification you will make more than the president. That is exactly what he said.

Tim: 15:41

I think you were already over the president when you got to NP level.

Jason: 15:45

I'm over here like I'm going to go get my ccie and go work at cisco one day and and this I just said this it just like something I just said I hadn't even seen, experienced, touched or knew what the heck cisco was.

Tim: 15:58

Dude, I'm in my mind I was like I wanted to be more than the president you know, I was like that's where I was with it and.

Jason: 16:04

And I figured I was already doing Novell networking and I really saw that I loved networking and an NT Windows NT 3.1, 3.1.1.4.

Jason: 16:10

Yeah, yeah yeah, right, I'm old. And then I realized that that was something that I was like dude, I think I want to get into this. And I started, believe it or not, looking at these books and stuff. And there was also a router simulator. It might have been Boson, but it was either Boson or there was something eSIM or router. I think it might have been Boson. There was a virtual simulator for routers and stuff back then.

Tim: 16:36

Like NetSim. I think there was one called NetSim, it might have been NetSim.

Jason: 16:40

Basically it's like software you double-click it and it's like you're on routers, so but you know, basically it's like software.

Tim: 16:43

You double click it and it's like you're on routers. But like packet tracer.

Jason: 16:44

Yes, it was like package pre packet tracer, yeah, exactly. So I was using that and just going and stuff and I just I fell in love with it. And I remember, you know, just going through all these different books and things and trying to figure out what it was, and convincing my dad to buy me a CCNA study kit off of eBay. Study kit off of eBay and you're talking like 97. Oh, yeah, that's money. So it was like 5,500 bucks, if I remember right, and it was all it was. Well, all it was now right, back then it was big deal Two 2501 routers right, a 1924 switch. They had an AdTrans CSU DSU external mux. You had all the V35 cables and the modems and all the stuff that came with it and your 60-pin serial and your AUI adapter to go your 10 meg and all this and that was it. I think it was running iOS 10, dude, that was all it was. They didn't give you labs, they just sold you this kit of gear and you're like, okay.

Tim: 17:39

Go figure out what to do with it Right.

Jason: 17:42

So like you're trying to build stuff and it to do with it Right. So like I haven't, like you're you're trying to build stuff and it was kind of cool, right, because you're you're looking at what you've studied from a book perspective. And I'm a I'm a bad learner from from reading. I am very much a visual or touchy guy, you know. So I'm like I was sitting there, I was like, well, you know, I've got to start getting some hands-on experience with this. So I started copying. There's no copy paste. I'm like typing in what I'm reading and doing in the book in here and trying to make stuff work, right. And then that was when you started like that's what I think when my hair loss started, originally, because that'll do it.

Jason: 18:14

All of a sudden you're, you're, you're plugging stuff in and you're not sure that it's some stupid encapsulation thing on a V35 or some. It's some oddball twisted thing. It's not in the CCNA book, right. It's more of a transport issue or a clocking or a timing or a signaling thing or something like that. That was just like you never knew what was going on and why it wouldn't work. But then every once in a while you can duplicate an exact thing from the book, like oh, I can do two routers back-to-back using this one cable crossover cable with the AUI adapters, and do RIP, right.

Tim: 18:52

Yeah, so, yeah. So I think what we should talk about is I mean, you've written God, how many books do you have now? Is it your name, before Is it?

Jason: 19:04

eight. I was going to say we haven't reached ten yet it's like eight or it's eight and then. But it's so weird because it sprawls out the way that when you get published it, you get this isbn number that tells you what your library, I had to buy mine. But yep, I know it's the coolest feeling in the world, and one day I'll actually make it to dc.

Jason: 19:21

I've never been there to look library congress yeah, I wrote I think it'd be cool, uh, but when they bundle things like the en core and an rc together, that's a third isbn or isb yeah, that's, yeah, that's right. So now technically with my video courses, have isbns and all this.

Tim: 19:37

I have like 19 publications or something, but there's really only like eight books like physical books, yeah five or six, I don't know, something like that so so chris and I just finished and and a third author, steve, who's a friend of the podcast. He's been on. We haven't had him on in a while. Actually we need to have him on again. Um, we just finished a uh, a book, a certification book for, for publishing. Uh, for aws, the advanced networking specialty, and what I wanted to talk about a little bit was and you're perfect guy to talk about it it's kind of like how do you feel differently about cause I've got, I've got one book which is like the hybrid cloud handbook, which is not a certification book, it's like a teaching network engineers how to work in the cloud book, but then we have this cert book and so like how do you feel differently about writing a book that's not specifically certification-based versus one that's meant to pass a?

Jason: 20:31

certification. It's a totally different opinion. Yeah, it's a different expectation for the reader too.

Tim: 20:38

Yeah, for sure.

Jason: 20:40

I think that's the one thing I noticed. Here's the best two examples of specifically that right. The first book I ever did was Programming and Automating Cisco Networks right, and that book became the unofficial certification guide for the see. If I remember this one again, it's like my title right, cisco Certified Enterprise Networking Programmability Specialist or oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, empre or whatever, it was specialist exam yeah, npre or npre or something right, but it was focused on enterprise networking in it apic em and stuff like that.

Jason: 21:19

That was the book for that exam. I that's how I got the relationship with devnet and the godfather thing, and all that was because writing that book and partnering with Susie Wee and the DevNet team and going all over and really getting the word out about DevNet and programmability and using the examples from that for training became this whole thing right. It was unofficial, so when we first wrote it we weren't thinking that you were going to pass an exam right, it was just.

Tim: 21:47

It was just data or info, just like you mentioned, you're teaching the cloud thing.

Jason: 21:51

I'm like. You're like, how do you make a peanut butter? It was like one really cool example from the book was was like deconstructing a peanut butter jelly sandwich. This is bread like. This is peanut butter, this is jelly. Cool, a computer's like great, I don't care. Now you have to say take peanut butter, apply. You know like you have to build it right automatic props right to get it to work. It's a totally different and I learned a lot from that book because when I I I did not know a lot of network programmability and engine, I didn't know it at all. When, when I first got approached to write that book from from ryan there and cisco press and one of the things that that had said was I have to learn a lot of this to write it and so I wrote the way that I learned.

Jason: 22:32

So I cut out all the middle, all the junk in the middle, just to get right to the point, and everybody said they liked that concept. So then when I went to another example Software Defined WAN, the SD-WAN book right that we wrote that one is specifically for EN SD-WAN implementation exam. So we wrote it to that thing. Yeah to a blueprint, basically, but it does not say official certification guide on it.

Tim: 22:57

Yeah, I was going to say I actually don't think it said cert guide on it.

Jason: 23:00

It does, and it was just one of those things that just I think it was just like a miss really, Because it is. We had that blueprint to write it to, so we wrote it to specifically that blueprint.

Tim: 23:12

So you would ask the test and end some right. Yeah, I remember talking to Dustin about this.

Jason: 23:16

Dustin.

Tim: 23:16

Schumann, one of the authors. Yeah, we just happen to both be. We know him as a good friend of ours and yeah, I remember that there was a lot of back and forth at the time about is this going to be a certification guide or is this going to be a kind of like the one you're talking about? Is this going to be more of an instructional usable usability, if you will guide?

Jason: 23:34

Well then, here's, here's, so here's how that all sussed out. So I gave him over lead author for the second edition for that book because I have to focus on CCNA. I just don, just don't. Yeah, I had to get, I had to give up ENCORE and and DevNet Associate and and all of these other things because, like, there's just no way, like I, it was insane that I wrote those four that one year. I that's. It was like I was dying literally mentally, physically, trying to get that stuff done because I didn't want to let anybody down. So Dustin was the obvious, obvious, logical choice, right, yeah?

Jason: 24:04

I kicked it over to him and he got some amazing new authors who I know very well and they're great, and they wrote a second edition. Again, it did not come out as an OCG, although it is written again to pass the EN specialization exam right. So it is very much a mixture of what we were talking about, because now it is a with the intent you're going to pass.

Jason: 24:29

But we want you to pick this book up and you just know, and you can go implement it right, so that became a hybrid version.

Jason: 24:31

And then the reason I'm bringing this up is when you start talking about now being on like the, the en core. Um, I was on the cci, ccd, uh, evolving technology study guide, which was just an ebook that had like three chapters. That was an official study guide, but that section of the exam is dead and gone. So they, that's a way. So ccna and ccnp, it's a different feel and I'm sure you get this. But you, you're going through and in the same sense, you're like I've got to be able to try to figure out how to technically explain this so you can follow along and give you the steps oh yeah, 100 at the same time.

Jason: 25:05

I've been in sales for a very long time now, but I'm an engineer. You know what I mean. But what I've learned in a lot of that meeting with freaking thousands and thousands of customers they don't care unless you make it relevant to them of why you're trying to do something. So when I write these books now, I'm trying to put in there, like if you're doing spanning tree versus layer three routing, this is the reason why you would look at that from a design perspective. I'm not trying to recreate Zig's book for CCDE or anything. I'm just trying to say, hey look, dude, this is why you want to do this and this is why you want to take through it. And here's where I think it will help you if you do these steps. But also look at these things as an option or whatever I tried to give the rounded out.

Jason: 25:45

pick it up, I could go implement it. Pick it up, I can go pass an exam. Pick it up, I can teach it to somebody else.

Tim: 25:51

What's interesting, Something you said I don't want to lose. It is this idea of you know, because we're engineers, we need to understand, like, why we'd want to do it, and I feel like a lot of times with certification exams you don't have to explain that, right, Because it's an implied like.

Jason: 26:08

obviously the answer you want is you want to pass the damn exam right, but like For whatever that financial or-.

Tim: 26:12

Whatever the thing is right, Whatever the reason is the carrot.

Tim: 26:15

But yeah. So like when we did this pact book for the AWS ANS, we set out to give more information than you needed to pass the exam. We went beyond it to like it is a cert exam and so, but what we found actually and this is kind of funny we set out to be like not only is this going to help you pass the exam, but like, if you're doing this work, this is all the stuff you would want to know and actually had to pull actually were instructed actually to kind of pull back on that a little bit, because you know the goal of the book itself is still to pass the exam. So you can't give them too much or they'll think they have to memorize like everything in the book to pass the exam right, paralyzing right.

Jason: 26:55

So I mean our books. These books are not. Some of these books are not thin right? Um, and, and going back to your point, I think that you know when you're, when you're talking about writing a book or education or something, you you have to put yourself into the learner's mindset and and it's hard sometimes for us and I'm going to explain exactly why we've been doing it for so- long, oh God.

Tim: 27:17

That's the hardest part, dude, the hardest part of writing these books.

Jason: 27:21

They're like I, you know, key point. I'm on right I'm teaching the ENCORE class yesterday, the live lesson one for Pearson. Right, I'm on there teaching a class. I did two things that were just like. I was like I couldn't figure out why this one thing wasn't working. I'm like why is this not working? Why is this not working? I'm like this doesn't make sense.

Jason: 27:50

I've used this same CML lab a million and a half times for this class and why isn't it working? So in secure crt, you know, you have the session manager where you have all your routers and stuff, right. Well, with cml there's something called a breakout tool and I don't know if you're familiar with that. But what the breakout tool does is it says you can map all the nodes in your topology to a reverse telnet line so you can actually just use uh telnet from your computer, ssh, your computer, or like a client or something like security. Well, I had two labs, one's a four-router topology, one's a six-router topology, and they both have routers, one through six, whatever. So I'm working on teaching EIGRP, ospf and BGP all in one day, which is not easy. I'm going through all this. Everything's working flawless. I'm thinking everything is great.

Jason: 28:23

I get to BGP and nothing is working. None of the neighbors are coming up, interfaces are up. I'm like what's going on? I can't ping the, I can't ping the other hop. I'm like, yeah, I don't really know what's going on here yet and we had like 14 minutes left of class and I'm like I'm not going to burn this 14 minutes to to figure it out. I go. What I'll do is let's talk exam strategy for the next 15 minutes. Well, I'll figure this out right after this, and then the next day, which was yesterday, we'll come back first thing in the morning and we'll talk about BGP. We'll do BGP and then we'll dump it into programmability, automation and all this stuff. Right, and it was perfect. It went great. I clicked the wrong set of routers. It was pointing to a different breakout port number that was in a different lab.

Jason: 29:06

So when you get to those center lat center routers. They got the wrong ip addresses. So when I paste the configuration in, nothing works. The interfaces aren't even. I mean everything's all jacked up, it's all maps wrong and everything yeah right.

Jason: 29:17

And then and then the other one that was that was obvious to me, that I didn't realize was show run pipe, se blah right. I'm looking at a section of something from the configuration running config, right. Well, you can't assume that a lot of the folks on the other end of my training class know what all these little two-letter things mean and I'm doing like show run pipe, se face pipe uh uh, you know mpls, pipe router, pipe this, pipe that, and it's this long string of just throw up because I've been doing it for so long.

Jason: 29:48

Yeah, it doesn't mean anything to the learners. You literally sometimes have to really reel yourself back to be like, oh my gosh, I'm assuming that you all know how to do all these shortcuts and understanding what route maps are and all this Like as I was teaching about, like BGP, weight and local preference, and when you paste a config in, yes, you have your route map. To set your route maps was not in the course, the crash course piece, because that you know. So I had to play route maps right. So there's things that you just have to think about and it's tough, it's it's worse in writing. It's worse in writing because you know if you forget something like oh yeah, and then you remember later on, you might have misreferenced in a, in a paragraph, like in the beginning of the chapter, and you thought of something and you added it, but the two don't. You didn't connect the two.

Tim: 30:33

Actually yeah, so I wanted to ask. I didn't get a chance to ask you this while we were writing the book, chris, but now you got what you had just said has me curious. This is your first book. Did you run into that a lot? Cause I has me curious, this is your first book. Did you run into that a lot? Because I know I, when I first started writing, I would, I was, I was a bull in a china shop with with that stuff, like with just getting, yeah, putting stuff in and then adding extra stuff. I'm going to go back and like change stuff and having it all line up. That was hard for sure.

Jason: 30:58

Yeah I think it was like the thing is unique with our exam guide that we were putting out is also it was it was cloud focused, it was an AWS networking exam, right.

Jason: 31:08

So there's one thing that I and I don't know if Tim you've noticed this in particularly in the AWS community type thing a lot of people when they have to go for this cert, they complain about how hard it is to learn networking because typically a lot of people are getting into cloud.

Jason: 31:26

You know, maybe they're taking the cloud practitioner certifications and learning you know other things that are much easier to digest, but the networking stuff was just seemed like such a hurdle for people. So when I built this, like it was so hard, like to not boil the ocean type thing, which I know is really difficult, but like I'm I'm a person that needs so much context to learn stuff properly, like I need to know every factor that goes into things, um. So I worked really hard on making these chapters for network fundamentals, um, built in there, and then it just like grew and grew and it got so long. And you know we're going, we're talking with the publisher and they're like, hey, man, you need to trim this down, there's too much in here, and they broke it up, didn't they.

Jason: 32:07

I know they did. They did, they broke it up and even put that stuff in the appendix for kind of the the reasons you're talking about now. You don't want to scare, you know, the reader. I don't want people to open this up and think like, oh my god, if I have to learn this much like it's, it's not worth it. But at the same time, you know, I don't know how do you deal with that Guli? Like, how do you focus on not boiling the ocean and making sure to stay within your realm of the certification as well?

Jason: 32:32

I think I'm going to answer that with two pronged, because one of the things that you had said was that you know, like we're talking about having to teach fundamentals Cloud first person, the fundamentals of networking would be, would be difficult. This is literally five, five years ago. Automation the folks who know software development, learning, the network, fundamentals is very that's so true.

Tim: 32:56

It's a great point, it's the same thing.

Jason: 32:57

And then now your cloud on-prem right, you're, we're talking, so these things. It's like it's such a weird scenario because you cannot just, like you said, you're writing a book about a cloud certification, you might not know what an ether channel is, which might be something that's like necessary in that environment. Right, for just redundancy, resiliency, whatever it is Right. Going back to the question now that you asked me is how do you know where that slider is and when do you have to actually stop? What I've noticed is and this is just based on asking a lot of the folks who read my I talk to a lot of people who read my books.

Jason: 33:47

I try really, really hard to ask as much and have folks message me on LinkedIn and X and all own analytics right is that the majority of the people that I talk to would much rather know the relevance, a story and enough to get them to whatever that goal for official certification guy would be enough to pass that section on the exam.

Jason: 34:00

That's a very hard thing to do because you know you want the. You almost have to rip apart everything. You're trying to get them to note or to pass to succeed on right, because then that's the only way to. You're gonna know the level of depth. So for me, one of the things that seems to come naturally, and I don't even know how, and it comes out when I'm talking. And it comes out when I'm writing, because when I write, for some reason, it feels like I'm talking, if that makes any sense to anybody, if you're an author or if you've written anything, you know. It feels like in my mind when I'm writing, I'm explaining it to Chris, like specifically, like I am actually writing, like I'm writing to some specific person, like I'm writing to a person.

Tim: 34:43

It's communication. You're communicating Right person.

Jason: 34:48

Like I'm writing it's communication, you're communicating right, but at the same time the the mindset there is also that you know when I when I do that, writing it in more of a conversational flow than a technical manual that is absolutely dry and you want to take the paper and just double paper cut to the eyes because you can't take the dryness of that book right. So I try to inject a little humor, I try to inject funny things and I think that's basically it. Once I get to a section and this is something my wife helped me with my wife is a preschool teacher but she's got her master's in early childhood and all this other good stuff I was getting severe writer's block. I'd stare at this thing. Like I put the title into the section of the paragraph that I was going to do. Maybe I'll get a sentence and I would stare at it. But I knew what I wanted to say. I couldn't formulate it down to paper and she said go in there and throw up everything that you have in your mind.

Jason: 35:37

For sure, with no punctuations, don't worry about a period, don't worry about a comma, don't worry about capital letters, and just type what's in your mind. And I said, okay, so I just started going, and then I realized that like very fast, like this goes really fast, like all of a sudden, you know, because you also have to try to keep the page count to a reasonable level, just like we're talking about here, right, Per like we're talking about here right Per chapter. You don't want a 50 page chapter and a 20 page chapter, right?

Jason: 36:02

So you got to kind of do that too, and you can continue if you need to, but, you know, continue in another chapter. But so in that whole process of breaking that stuff down and kind of splitting it all up, you know, it kind of came to me that the way that I write is very much like the way I present and I try. I try to do it Like I'm showing, like I'm showing you or I'm telling you a story about whatever it is. I don't know why, I don't even know how to explain that, but when you read the books it comes through a lot more than the. The super um, I don't want to dry, is the only word I could think of where they're really I get it.

Tim: 36:37

Very wordy, very technical, like like you're reading Like reading an O'Reilly book or something, or an RFC.

Jason: 36:45

Reading an RFC.

Tim: 36:46

Or an RFC yeah even better.

Jason: 36:48

I'd tell you RFC, yeah, RFC, because you're just reading it and you're just like it's just factual statements, one after the other, basically.

Jason: 36:55

And you're just like. That's not exciting. I want to know how to have fun with this too. It would be cool to turn my lights off and on or open my garage door or something that's low hanging fruit that I can use, and that's the other thing when you're this is a great point to Chris too, right. And the other thing I noticed is that when you're giving examples and you're teaching things, you have to inject something that is relevant to them, or fun, or something that they have access to something that is relevant to them, or fun, or something that they have access to.

Jason: 37:28

So one of the things that I talk about in all these things is, in simplicity, is you get to repurpose your skill set. If you're an auto mechanic and you have to troubleshoot and you have the thing that plugs in and you're troubleshooting, trying to figure out what's going on, and even if you don't have a diagnostic tool in your old school troubleshooting, I'm not getting enough, or I'm not getting enough flu or fuel or you know whatever, it is right that mindset can be applied to tech. Similarly to you know. You know the folks who are learning software development. You can take software development and there's a very good bridge into some of the technology side of it. Right, there's all of these different things, but there's a way to bring them in so your skillset can be applied to another thing.

Jason: 38:07

And the reason I bring that up so many people are moving into IT. I'm not gonna say jumping into IT or diving into IT, but there's a lot of folks switching into IT. And I'm not trying to talk about oversaturation or anything like that, because I think anytime anybody says oversaturation you know talk about oversaturation or anything like that, because I think anytime anybody says oversaturation, they're losing their minds. Because we need a lot more CCIEs, a lot more automation experts. We need a lot more every person. You know there's a company in every corner of this world.

Tim: 38:34

It says the guy selling the books.

Jason: 38:39

Buy the books. Buy the book 60, 60.

Jason: 38:40

K in 60 days. Buy the books.

Jason: 38:42

Buy the book, right no 60 60k in 60 days you heard it here or your money back for the book, otherwise, otherwise I don't want you to sue. I don't want you to sue me. If in 60 days you're not making 60k, I'll give you the 12 cents back that I got right yeah, remit remit your um uh, royalty, there you go.

Jason: 39:08

The cost of the go will cost from zero to your shipping, like I don't know, from zero to more than that's the thing you know.

Jason: 39:14

It's like that's the other thing. It's so funny that you just mentioned that and we're laughing, but at the same time, when you're building a certification book, you got to be careful what you promise oh, yeah, yeah, for sure it's so weird because I always feel like it's like all the police shows we're like you can't promise we're gonna find their kids. You can't promise, right, that they're gonna survive or whatever. So I'm like you can't promise because I don't control it you can't control it.

Jason: 39:39

But even at the same time somebody gets sick and they go take an exam, they have a bad experience right. There's a million different variations of what can happen as to you passing that exam right all we can do is say we have aligned this with the blueprint.

Jason: 39:51

The best is best as humanly possible at least humanly meaning anything I've written. I'm doing it the best I can do, right, I other people are definitely probably better at these, some of these things and that you're on, but so from the best of my ability right, I have to try to make sure that I give you enough but not scare you away, and I think that was my other niche was with the programmability books and all these videos. I'm really, really, really blessed that I'm good at getting people started and excited about it, like, yeah, and then from there there's a million experts out there who know the stuff better than me. Damn that experts, even my buddy stewart clark, we all know, we all know, yeah, stewart, I know my brother's friend.

Jason: 40:28

Oh yeah, big good friend great, love him and you know. But that's the thing it's like there's there's always somewhere else you can go to get more, and I think that's the thing is that almost slides into that mental health thing, right, because it's like there's always another place to go and get more.

Tim: 40:46

Oh yeah, that's what I'm talking about the treadmill.

Jason: 40:48

Technology is a train. Call it AI right. Ai is the new train. Technology is a train.

Tim: 40:53

Treadmill yeah.

Jason: 40:54

This is moving so fast. I just don't know that I could get on this train. Get on this train. It was programmed five years ago.

Tim: 41:02

Well-documented, I call it the treadmill, but it's the same thing. You just can never get off the damn thing.

Jason: 41:07

The second you step on that train. You are now moving with the technology. What are you doing while you're moving? Well, you're looking out the window at the people standing there, and then what you do is you start learning, you take your AWS certification, you do this and now you're moving ahead in cars, and then you get to the front and you're John Capobianco. You know what I mean.

Tim: 41:24

He's the conductor.

Jason: 41:26

Actually that would be hilarious, but think about what he's done in AI already right In our networking realm, right.

Tim: 41:34

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we just had him on. Actually, it hasn't come out yet, but we just had him on a couple of weeks ago, I know, I was chatting with him.

Jason: 41:39

So I am super excited at the fact that we have a way to explain and teach people. Don't be afraid to get on the train. Programmability was just start. Just do hello me. Just get a raspberry pi. Yeah, just do anything use alexa to turn off your lights or something. Just start right and guess what. Five years ago before that, so call it 10 years ago. What was?

Jason: 42:00

it was iot, yeah oh, for a short period of time I remember the iot craze for a little bit and it's actually starting to come back now that we're getting into like everything's connected right, but it's just one of those things where it's like, in order to talk about iot, you have to go talk to somebody in the business who cares about it yeah, for sure most of the it, people don't care. Same thing with programmability automation. Same thing with you know yeah, yeah, anyway.

Tim: 42:23

No, this is great. You go down that path for an hour. Oh yeah, absolutely. Uh. Unfortunately, I think we're just about out of time, so we'll go ahead and wrap up here. Uh, where can people uh find you online, jason?

Jason: 42:33

yeah, uh, at jason underscore ghoulie on all social platforms. Or, uh, if you want to find me on metal dev ops, metal dev opscom or MetalDevOps on YouTube and all social platforms as well.

Tim: 42:46

Awesome, and we'll get that in the show notes as well. Thanks for finally being able to come on the pod. We've been, you know, not, of course, no one knows about this, but we've tried like three or four times already to record, so we finally were able to make it all line up. Yes, and it wasn't all my fault. Okay, it was not all.

Jason: 43:04

It was not all Jason's fault, I was busy for you, I just you know. I want to make sure that I I care about you guys. No, no, no.

Tim: 43:09

Three way.

Jason: 43:10

fault for sure, yep.

Tim: 43:11

And we were, and we were very happy to finally make it all line up, and soon. And so to everyone else, thanks for watching or listening, or actually I don't know. I think pretty sure you can only be watching or listening. I'm not sure of a third way to consume this at this point Some type of wavelength.

Tim: 43:30

Yeah, if you're using an AI chatbot to summarize this episode for you, then thank you for listening. I hope that makes it in the summary and we'll see you again on another episode of the Cable Scout podcast. Take care, thank you.