With Cisco reminding us this week about all the great perks of joining the DevNet Class of 2020 (link), I see many people on Twitter and Discord re-focusing their attention on obtaining a DevNet certification in the remaining weeks of this year.

I can tell you that being part of a study group/community that shares common interests and goals can really help you excel personally. Humans are naturally social beings and want to relate to one another. When I was first beginning my journey in networking, I was looking all over the place (YouTube, Twitter, IG, etc.) to find someone or some group of people I could relate to when it came to networking. To be more clear, I wasn’t looking for training, I was looking for people casually discussing networking and the problems they ran into on a daily basis – a true, enthusiastic community. It was easy to find content about PC building, hacking, and other tech, but I had issues finding content specifically about networking (besides formal training videos). At the time, I found connections to YouTubers such as NetworkChuck and David Bombal. They were informative, enthusiastic, and overall motivating to chase your next IT goals. As the years have gone by, I’ve found many more YouTubers, relatable video trainers, and, most recently, Discord servers that have helped push me. I joined the “It’s All About the Journey” (IAATJ) Discord server because of the group’s phenomenal podcast, The Art of Network Engineering. If you’ve never considered joining an IT community or are on the fence about it, I’d encourage you to listen to one of their podcasts. After listening, I can guarantee the choice will be clear for you. These guys are very relatable and provide genuine content. There’s no fluff to it – it’s honest conversations about real experiences in the IT field. After listening to a couple podcasts, I joined their Discord and quickly became involved. Along with feeling like I was part of a great community, their podcast about personal branding helped me decide to begin this blog. With so many people on the server in different parts of their journeys and being able to personally relate, the community pushes you to continue with your goals and helps you understand that it really is “all about the the journey”.

This past week, we started a DevNet study group in the “It’s All About the Journey” Discord server. Originally, I was going to host a study group particularly for the ENAUTO exam, but soon realized that many people were at different parts of their network automation journey: some beginning their DevNet Associate studies, some progressing through their ENAUTO studies, and some were studying for other exams: DEVCOR, CLAUTO, etc. With everyone at various levels in their studies and many of the exam topics overlapping (i.e. git, understanding REST APIs, etc.), I figured it would be best to just make it more of a general DevNet study group, with the idea of going over one major topic per week. For example, in this week’s session, we will be discussing git and practicing git operations. Beyond covering the exam topics in each session, any further depth on the weekly topic will be dictated by the group.

With not much time left to join the DevNet Class of 2020, I highly suggest joining a study group to help push you and keep you on pace to obtain that DevNet certification!

The DevNet study group on the IAATJ Discord server will be Wednesday nights at 8:30pm EST. If you are interested in joining this study group or have additional questions, join the Discord server using this link. Also, you should check out The Art of Network Engineering on Twitter (@artofneteng) to get the latest updates about the community!

Beginning next week, I’ll be writing more technical posts starting with Python! Stay tuned!