If you’re a long-time reader of my blog you probably know that I believe in learning the fundamentals before trying to do anything else (like Google-and-Paste spaghetti wall approach), so you could imagine my delight when I got this feedback from an engineer watching (free) Network Programmability 101 webinar:

I was expecting a technical webinar, so I was a little bit disappointed at first with a “meta” webinar, but as I got through I was more than happy; learning such a meta sphere or getting to know other mindsets is very useful for me. The webinar pushed me to think outside of my little world and to open my mind.

That's exactly what I'm trying to achieve with the high-level webinars. So glad to hear it worked ;))

He continued with…

I’m looking forward to see the other webinars as I’m starting to bring network automation to our department.

This is the sequence I would use to go through them:

• Network Automation 101 is another high-level webinar focusing more on network automation concepts, goals and caveats.
• Network Automation Tools is an overview of open-source tools you can use.
• Ansible for Networking Engineer is the real deep-dive into Ansible and its use in network automation.
• Network Automation Use Cases is a collection of real-life use cases, from high-level discussions (how do you automate IPv6 deployments) to hands-on examples (how do you deploy a data center fabric).
• You might also want to know how NETCONF works.
• Also, make sure you listen to Software Gone Wild podcast – you’ll find tons of useful information there.

I guess you already know that you can get all these webinars with ipSpace.net subscription.

Finally, he wrote:

I’m just starting with network automation, but the more I’m working with it, it hurts to see what we could have done already and how much time we have wasted... and are still wasting.

Forget the past and the sunk cost. Focus on what you can do to streamline and automate your operations, and start with small steps ASAP… and joining the Building Network Automation Solutions online course might be the push you need to build your first real-life network automation solution (it worked for dozens of your peers already).