Over the last year, I haven’t been writing many new blog posts. I have been pretty busy with a new job, but also starting a new networking group called the Chicago Network Operators Group (CHI-NOG). The idea behind it is that there aren’t that many places where network engineers can meet to talk about technology, learn something new and network with each other. The communities are mostly virtual and that’s something I wanted to change by creating CHI-NOG.
Last year Brian McGahan, Jason Craft and I met to talk about the void of the networking community. A lot of times people only know each other from email or forum exchanges. We wanted to bring in the Chicago community together and have a place to met and discuss the topics that interests us and learn from each other.
We try to host CHI-NOG events 3 times a year. So far our events have been in the evenings for few hours. For each event we have a number of guest speakers. They present on any topic relating to networking, which is a good way to spark conversation for the social hours that start right after.
This October we will be hosting the CHI-NOG-04. We have some amazing guest speakers coming in from San Francisco and Amsterdam, talking about interconnecting networks/peering and methods for network troubleshooting. They are truly experts within the industry and we are very honored to have them come and support the CHI-NOG community. You can find more information along with free registration at http://chinog.org/meetings/chi-nog-04/.
One of the other things we just announced is community blogging. We would like to encourage more and more engineers to write and share their experience with the local community. Instead of starting your own blog and working really hard to attract the traffic, be a guest blogger at chinog.org (please see CHI-NOG Community Blog for more info).
If you live in Chicago or surrounding areas check the group out.
Website: http://chinog.org
Twitter: @_chinog_
YouTube: CHI-NOG YouTube Channel
CHI-NOG-04 Registration: http://chinog04.eventbrite.com/
Hope to meet you in person at the next CHI-NOG event.