Thank you for joining the Carrier Ethernet Group, a preferred venue for discussions on advanced telecom technologies. You’ve joined an elite group of 9,703+ of your peers from 123+ nations, all 6 inhabited continents, and 2,236+ companies around the world!
This Group offers its members a number of resources to advance their knowledge, contribute their experience, develop their expertise and reputation in the industry, and gain recognition for their contributions.
List of Resources Available to Group Members
Here is a list of the various resources that Group Members have access to:
- Reading through/referencing Group Discussions (the most obvious one!
- Participating in Group Discussions (learning from these by contributing thought leadership)
- Posting a Group Discussion on an Issue/Problem You Had – and getting inputs from your peers, colleagues, and experts from around the world! This could be a standards question, an architectural issue, a system/software/chip-related question as it applies to packet networking and Carrier Ethernet, or a network architecture and design question. (Note that there are appropriate channels for asking each of these questions, which are more fully described here http://bit.ly/1RtRna4.)
- Periodic Email Summaries – sent via email to all Group members from the Group Owner (your’s truly!), which provide you a quick synopsis of what occurred in the Group over the past few weeks
- Mindmaps of Discussions/Posts and Handy References – Typically, email summaries have a reference to a clickable Mindmap capturing the key discussions that happened in the Group over a period of time (say, the past week, month, and so on, depending on the frequency of the updat). This provides an excellent way to see all of the discussions organized by topic and sub-topic, and find additional references as well.
- CE Live! (TM) Broadcasts and Video Archives – The CE Live! ™ – All the CE Without the BS! ™ is a signature offering of the Carrier Ethernet Group, and (to the best of our knowledge) unique to all Groups on LinkedIn. The CE Live! ™ philosophy is described here. Over two dozen videos of the CE Live! ™ series or the Network Architecture and Design Series, can be seen here http://bit.ly/1ki6sRE.
- Using the Private Message Feature to Ask Fellow Group Members Qs
- Asking the Group Manager for Help and Inputs – This could include help on how to more effectively use the Group, on a technical topic, guidance on how to formulate or frame a question/issue, inputs on how to contribute to a discussion, and so on
- Pointers to Industry Events, Conferences, Workshops – While the Group does not purport to provide a general industry news service (there are many, many places to get that), we do focus on providing inputs on events that are in some way unique, being held by some of our partners (who represent the most prestigious organizations in the industry, such as the Metro Ethernet Forum, The Telecom Council of Silicon Valley, and leading conference organizers such as Informa, Layer123, and many others), or events that members deem important and worth sharing.
(Note that some amount of discretion and oversight by the Group Owner and Group & Channel Moderators needs to be exercised here, so that we’re not flooded with irrelevant announcements.)
As you can see, there are at least 9 ways for you interact with, and benefit from, the Group and its members!
List of Interesting Materials for Group Members to Check Out!
Now, we invite you to jump right in and look at some of the interesting materials we have:
1) Join/view some representative CE Live! (TM) – “All the CE Without the BS! (TM)” broadcasts to learn about contemporary networking and design issues, and new technologies (SDN, NFV, cloud, orchestration) here! http://linkd.in/1KfRuEF and http://linkd.in/1CpyFIs.
2) View a sample Weekly Roundup http://linkd.in/1zUvtI4, its details http://bit.ly/1Gxcwi7l and it’s podcast http://bit.ly/1J9TDzS to bring you up to speed on how the Group works, and to kick-back, relax, and find your groove! We’re a friendly bunch, intent on learning and helping colleagues do the same, while having fun!
3) Read some interesting and evergreen musings on independence and Carrier Ethernet here http://linkd.in/1n5mUh3.
4) To learn about key developments of the past few years, and to see some of the most valuable discussions of the past few years go here:
2014: http://lnkd.in/bFJMYMe (The pointers within these posts contain links to the most interesting discussions of 2014)
Q1 discussions: http://bit.ly/1pA5Tzt
2013: http://lnkd.in/b98_NT5, Q3 discussions http://bit.ly/1ajxvAg, Q4 discussions: http://bit.ly/1aybj9e
2012: http://lnkd.in/p7u9cg
5) You’re invited to see how we made history with a special, week-long edition of Carrier Ethernet Live! (TM), with discussions on the future (and past!) of Ethernet during the 40th Anniversary of Ethernet!
Check it out here http://lnkd.in/hwKdka, and benefit from this one-of-a-kind discourse by contributing your thoughts on this thread or by starting a new one focused on the specific area you have questions on!
6) Check out the paper that came out of collaborations from carrier members of this very group (a first, as far as we know, on LinkedIn) here http://bit.ly/1Qle56T “Evolving Operator Network Architectures with Carrier Ethernet.”
7) Read about opinions on the value of the MEF’s CECP exam for our industry. Start your journey on our 3-part blog here: http://bit.ly/PpZAQE, and then move to debates/discussions on our Group on the same topic, e.g. here http://lnkd.in/btC8qsM and http://lnkd.in/bVt45nd.
Note that this was written when there were merely a few hundred CECPs. Today, there are 4,000+, and it is my contention that this number should be substantially higher, because many of the professionals in multiple verticals that should take the CECP have not yet done so. Indeed, the CECP is still largely confined to the service providers and vendors, leaving many parts of the networking and telecom eco-system still untouched.
Welcome again to this fine Group, and I’m sure the Group will be richer for having you in it! Of course, no Group can thrive without the active participation and engagement of its members, so I urge you to pledge to do that.
BTW, if you’re in any way contemplating simply being only a fly-on-the-wall (only listening, never contributing) or, worse-yet, if you’re thinking of being what we call a fly-by-night operator (post a link, disappear, or post a random promotional comment, and vamoose, never to be seen again until the time comes to suddenly throw the next publicity piece in everyone’s face, or make claims, post lots of comments, commit to supporting those claims but then disappear because you’re “too busy” – in other words, zero follow-through), please leave the Group now.
The Group and its serious members will be better of without you, and you without them!
Best,
-Vishal
Dr. Vishal Sharma
Moderator and Group Owner, Carrier Ethernet
Principal, Metanoia, Inc.