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Vivien Chia
Ask Me Anything Event
Welcome to the Cisco Community Ask Me Anything conversation. Submit your questions from Wednesday, April 10, 2024 through Wednesday, April 24, 2024. Our Community VIPs, Kathy New and Maren Mahoney will be waiting to assist you and resolve any questions that have not been clarified, or answer and new questions that you may have.
More about this event:
Join us for an Ask Me Anything (AMA) event where you can get to know our Community VIPs Kathy New and Maren Mahoney. They talk about their experiences as women in tech, being a Community VIP, role models in the industry and so much more! This AMA session is your chance to ask them any questions you might have about their expertise and experiences.
Tell us a bit about yourself...
Kathy: I have been supporting Telecomm and Communication Services for a School District in Colorado for over 25 years. My career began as a software support tech but I moved into Telecomm Support and became the lead Telecomm Engineer. We installed Cisco Call Manager in 2019 and fully deployed Webex during the pandemic. My job has changed from traditional analog phone services to VoIP and added all our Cisco collaboration services and devices administration. I enjoy helping staff to be more effective in their jobs and networking with other customers to enhance my knowledge of the Cisco systems.
Maren: I have been in the IT industry for over 30 years, starting with a Help Desk and moving into Systems Administration, then Network Administration, and then got started in Collaboration (then AVVID) in 2000 as Cisco was just moving into that arena. My first version of CallManager was 3.0.5 and Unity 4 and I was hooked. I earned a CCIE in Collaboration in 2015. In addition to collaboration engineering, I taught Cisco Collaboration certification courses for almost 15 years and consider teaching one of the most important things I will have done in my life. I'm honored to have had the opportunity to help grow people! I am currently back in the field working for a large integrator designing, deploying, and maintaining Cisco Collaboration systems. I am also a US Army Veteran, musical theater buff, and proud wife and mother.
Your career and community VIP journey?
Kathy: I’ve always been active in user groups and found that networking with other users and customers are often the best way to find solutions to problems and proactively identify future solutions for my District. I found the Cisco User Group early in 2020 as we were supporting Webex Meetings for Education during the pandemic. While I found many answers for my questions, I realized that I also had answer for others and began posting replies. I hadn’t heard of the Cisco Designated VIP program until I was selected as one of the first women in the group in 2022 so I was surprised when I was notified.
Maren: I am lucky enough to have entered the IT field when it was smaller and less complicated, and have been able to grow along with it. It's been 30 years and you'd think I'd be settled, but instead I have recently started down the programming and automation path so I am a beginner again. The Cisco Community and Cisco Learning Space have been invaluable resources to me in my original journey in Collaboration, and I am relying on them again in my new journey. I have tried to help along the way, too, and am honored that my contributions have led me to being named a VIP.
Your role model(s)?
Kathy: I typically look at what others do well and try to emulate them but I do have one person that truly helped me during my career. Years ago I worked in the Marketing Department for US Swimming. The Marketing Director had been an entrepreneur starting her own business before working at US Swimming and eventually became the CEO of Running USA. She helped me to improve my interpersonal skills and provided guidance on how to be an effective employee and leader. Her personal drive and expectation to be judged based on who she is and her business acumen has guided me to never use gender, age, race or other physical attribute to judge others or assume that others are judging me based on them. While a lot of my job is working with computers and software, she taught me that no one can work alone and we should always treat others the same way we expect to be treated.
Maren: Generally speaking, my role models are women who forge ahead despite obstacles, take no grief, and are willing to speak out for themselves and others. In tech these ladies are: Radia Perlman, Hedy Lamarr, Ada Lovelace, and Katherine Johnson to name a few. (And if you don't know who those four are, look them up...they are inspiring!)
Your top Cisco and Cisco Community (community.cisco.com) resources?
Kathy: Since I have transitioned to being the primary collaboration administrator in our School District and it is a new technology for our organization, I focus most of my time in the Webex community. The new Webex Academy is a great place to get training on all things Webex. I began using it just for the Meeting Collab resources but we will be migrating to Webex Calling and it has great resources for learning more about migration from on-prem calling to the cloud. The Webex Help center at help.webex.com is another great resource for administrators and end users.
I also keep up to date with posts from the Insiders Group. Posts are available for all things Cisco and include unique opportunities to do challenges to learn more about Cisco products and services as well as participate in member only activities
Maren: Cisco documentation first and foremost. Everything you ever wanted to know is there. Cisco blog and articles on both the Cisco Learning Space and on the Cisco Community Forums. Google is your friend. You are likely not the first person to need a particular piece of information, so search and read and search some more. You'll learn things along the way.
Your recommended resources for aspiring girls in ICT?
Kathy: Find the learning environment that works best for you. Take advantage of tech social groups where you can network with others in addition to the more traditional college and online courses.
Maren: Girls: Girls who Code, STEM like a Girl, SciGirl on PBS. Go find a teacher that you respect and ask them to help you find resources, too. Women: Take advantage of places you can learn like Cisco U, Microsoft Learn, and the like. YouTube videos are awesome, but you will learn more if you read and do rather than just watch! (And when it feels overwhelming remember: "How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time!") And, whatever you do, VOTE!
Your advice/message for young women considering STEM or tech career advancement?
Kathy: Women can excel in STEM and tech as easily as men. If possible find other successful women and men that don’t believe gender should define what someone can do. Learn how they interact and manage other people, work and projects and emulate those traits that make them successful and resonate with you.
Maren: Don't underestimate or under-value yourself. Women are often the first to discount themselves, when the reality is they are usually among the smartest and hardest working in the room. If you are there you belong. Own that.
Thank you for all this great insight!
Now take the opportunity to interact with Kathy and Maren!
Note: Please post your question or comment no later than April 24, 2024.
Post your question/comment below by clicking "Reply"
(Answers will be processed depending on the availability of the experts)
Don't forget to thank the expert by giving it a helpful vote!
I actually have 2 projects I'm working on @Vivien Chia. I am working with our high schools, Career & Technical Education and Concurrent Eduction Departments to add more hybrid learning opportunities to our curriculum. We are purchasing Webex Room Bars and Desktops to support this initiative. Next year will be our first year with hybrid learning where students at one high school will be able to attend classes in another high school virtually with plans to increase these opportunities in the future. Our Professional Development Building is also getting Webex Equipment installed so staff will have virtual learning and remote guest speakers available for trainings.
My other project is to integrate the Singlewire Informacast System with our school speakers and building safety systems so communication during emergencies can be automated. We already have Informacast integrated with Cisco desk phones and sending alerts to key staff but need the speakers added so announcements are loud enough for everyone to hear. We also want to integrate it with the fire alarm system so it sends alerts to our security department when it's activated.
@davidpeck, I'm looking forward to moving over to Webex Calling as it's programming interface is designed to be more user centric so day to day tasks won't be as labor intensive. Prior to using Cisco, we had an Avaya phone system which was a very easy system to administer and program. It had a user centric design which made it simpler to manage accounts as you just added services and devices to users. Switching to Cisco was a big change and originally required a lot more administration because it was more device centric so any changes for users had to be made on each device that user had.
With that said, in both cases, I will miss some of the command line interfaces. The gui's are nice but sometimes it's helpful to see the context of where you're working to fully understand the programming and reasoning for that specific line of code so I will miss having that direct interaction with devices.
Another thing I miss is analog phone services. We had our own phone network and other than the gateway at each location, troubleshooting issues often boiled down to tracing out wiring. Moving to IP phones added a new layer of complexity with the addition of all the codecs, quality of service settings, routing, etc. I love all the new features and services but miss the simplicity of having a separate telephone network.
Good question @mike.newton. I subscribe to several industry journals and organization emails for "headline" type information and use those articles to do additional online research myself. Since I'm primarily a voice/collab administrator, the No Jitter Weekly, Information Week and Enterprise Connect publications are ones that I recommend. I also foster relationships with staff from similar organizations to get information on what they're doing to innovate new solutions and support existing technology.
Webinars are another source for me to get information. I then use that to go directly to other websites for additional information and I tend to attend more from the manufacturer so I can avoid the sales calls afterwards.
Another source is monitoring posts in the Cisco Community. While not all of its pertinent to me, it helps me to learn challenges other customers are facing and I use it as a knowledge base to help with issues at my organization.
For specific training, I use Cisco Learning and Webex Academy. While we are investigating the migration to Webex Calling, the Webex Academy's courses have been invaluable with providing information for anyone from a beginner in the field to the more advanced.
