CTS 058: 2016 Year In Review

This is a pre-recorded episode. I’m off for Christmas 🙂 I hope you enjoy the rest of your year. I will see you in 2017! After this episode was recorded I found out I had become CWNE #210. It was a great gift to receive right before Christmas. I’ll discuss my journey to CWNE in an upcoming episode in 2017. 2016 started off on the wrong foot for me. Personally, I went to the hospital on Jan 1st, 2016 because of my gallbladder. Then continued to have issues with it until March – when I had it finally resolved. But when it came to Podcasting and Wi-Fi I saw great growth. Podcast stats: * 34566 total downloads as of December 16th. * August 2016 was the best month with 4,157 downloads * There will be 40 published episodes in 2016. Not quite every week but I try to manage and I hope I haven’t disappointed you * Popular Episodes of 2016 * CTS 043: Don’t Skip On Planning – 1243 downloads * CTS 047: Troubleshooting Wi-Fi with Wireshark – 903 downloads * CTS 052: How To Validate Wi-Fi Infrastructure – 889 downloads * CTS 027: Josh Gerst On Outdoor Wireless and DAS – 857 downloads * CTS 021: WiFi With Keith Parsons – 850 downloads If you enjoy the podcast, help me out by filling out a one question survey on what topics you want to hear in 2017. Just takes a minute or two – www.cleartosend.net/survey Not just with me but in the community as well. Marketing has never been short of exciting. We started seeing Wi-Fi being described as switch-like. Come on guys. But the community banded together to shame the group of people spreading misinformation. Unfortunately, we still continue to see poor installations as noted in popular Wi-Fi forums – I shall not name them here for your own sake. You don’t want to rage quit at the end of the year. If you want to check out the photos just head over to Bad-Fi – https://badfi.com/bad-fi/. At my own workplace I’ve had to facepalm a few times coming across Bad-Fi but those were quickly resolved. This year was the first time I attended Cisco Live and it was fitting to be in-person in Las Vegas of all places. Being able to put names to Twitter handles was fantastic. Meeting with industry peers is the best part of these conferences and I hope to attend more in the future. I’ve been fortunate to be part of Mobility Field Day – not just one but two events. Mobility Field Day  was fantastic and it’s mindblowing to be around so many smart people. 2016 was the year of exams for me. At the beginning of the year I had decided to get off my butt and put my head in the books. It began with tackling CWAP as I was knee deep in frame captures and analysis. Easily the hardest one for me of all the exams. In October I set my sights on CWDP and was successful. Came natural for me as I am designing often. CWSP was fresh and with the right amount of reading, studying, and labbing – I overcame that as well. Then before December I submitted my CWNE application and as of this recording I am waiting for the results – crossing fingers. Speaking of CWNE, CWNP reached 200 CWNE’s worldwide before December 2016. Big achievement!