I’m very grateful and proud to find myself and several other members of the NetApp family designated as Cisco Champions for 2015. Cisco Champion(s) is a program similar to the VMware vExpert program in recognizing and rewarding the pursuit of relevant technical achievement and, even more importantly, active participation within the technical community. There can be many areas for that involvement to occur – Twitter, Facebook, Cisco Communities, blogs, and much more – but it’s centered around passion, collaboration, support, and “spreading the wealth” by sharing the knowledge that you’ve gained with other people.

The program is now starting its second year (membership is designated annually) and it’s great to see a good size contingent from the NetApp family as Cisco Champions:

• Jesse Anderson (@sockeyes51 and storagedeconstructed.com) of Accenture: Network/Storage Administrator and a NetApp A-Team member

• Michael Cade (@MichaelCade1 and vzilla.co.uk) of Avnet Technology Solutions: Senior Technical Consultant and a NetApp A-Team member

• Dave Cain (@thedavecain) of NetApp: Technical Marketing Engineer for Integrated Infrastructures

• Nick Howell (@datacenterdude and datacenterdude.com) of NetApp: Virtualization Solutions Architect, host of the NetApp Communities Podcast and a VMware vExpert

• David Klem (@davidklem and davidklem.com) of NetApp: Principal Architect on the FlexPod team and a VMware vExpert

• Jarett Kulm (@JK47theweapon and jk-47.com) of HA Storage Systems: Principal Technologist and a NetApp A-Team member

• Ed Morgan (@mo6020 and edmorgan.info) of ANS Group: Technical Consultant and a NetApp A-Team member

• Melissa Palmer (@vmiss33 and vmiss.net) of NetApp: Systems Engineer, and a VMware vExpert

• Justin Parisi (@NFSDudeAbides and whyistheinternetbroken.wordpress.com) of NetApp: Technical Marketing Engineer for NFS

• Henry Vail of NetApp: Senior Architect for Integrated Infrastructures

• Emad Younis (@Emad_Younis and emadyounis.com) of General Datatech: Network Systems Engineer, a VMware vExpert, and a NetApp A-Team member

If I’ve managed to miss anyone from this list, please just let me know and I’ll be happy to update it.

Congratulations to everyone who was chosen as a Cisco Champion this year: communities are defined by their members, and a great community depends on having great people actively involved.  And a special congratulations to my friend Bob Elwertowski (@BElwertowski) of SMP for also being recognized this year as both Cisco Champion and VMware vExpert – and likely a third on its way.

Huge thanks and gratitude to Rachel Bakker (@RBakker), Amy Lewis (@CommsNinja) and the rest of the social media team at Cisco, without whom this program wouldn’t exist.