CERTIFICATION
• Relates to: CDIA+ | CCNA | CCDA | CCNP | CCDP | CCIP | CCSP | CCIE | CCSA | CCSE
On September 14, Cisco announced that its Certification Community had topped the 50,000-member mark in a scant 10 months of general access to Cisco certified professionals. (Though the program went into pilot test in May/June 2003, at the cutoff date for the reported total, it had been publicly available for only 10 months.) The Cisco Certification Community is a special, members-only Web site accessible solely to Cisco certified professionals (CCNA and up) who want to interact with one another, and gain access to a premium channel for Cisco certification information, updates, and news.
That said, Cisco representatives were quick to point out that the site doesn't deliver learning content directly, though it does often provide pointers to such content elsewhere in the Cisco online content libraries. What visitors will find is a lively set of message forums on all kinds of technology and certification-related topics, as well as personalized reminders 90 days before current certifications reach their expiration dates (which supplement e-mails that Cisco sends out to all certified professionals, whether or not they join the Certification Community).
One offering that has proved extremely popular with members is a featured game that encourages members to use technical skills and knowledge to handle specific scenarios or solve particular problems. The Cisco Network Defender game, which was made available earlier, proved wildly successful. The current offering is called the Cisco Sand Rover, which challenges individuals to use knowledge of Cisco networking products and solutions to help assemble and guide a remotely piloted vehicle on the surface of the planet Mars.
On a more serious note, the Cisco Certification Community is also a regular stopping off point for top CCIEs, Cisco program managers and executives, and technology leaders eager to interact with the company's best-educated, most interested technical audience. Thus, it's possible you could run into heavy hitters on this site from time and time, and possibly even bend some influential ears.
If you've got a Cisco cert under your belt, please visit the Certification Community site, where you can register and join in the activity, fun, and games, as well as gain a prime conduit for interaction and information.
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