Some will say that DevNet started at Cisco Live! in May of 2014 when the event itself was celebrating its 25th anniversary.The 2nd floor of Moscone Center South provided the space for the very first DevNet Zone where the ragtag group of DevNet staff found themselves immersed in a sea of automation neophytes from the minute the doors opened.After scrambling for two months to prepare and a sleepless weekend hosting the very first DevNet hackathon,promoting Cisco technologies like MSE, Jabber, and Cisco Prime, the already exhausted staff was energized to find so many people excited to learn about APIs and coding.The energy was high, the vibe was palpable, and John Chambers was in the room. DevNet had arrived.

In the beginning...

Some may also say thatDevNetstarted in December of 2013, when, after months of an intense effort by an inspired group of doc writers, developers, QA, DBAs, systems architects, andBDMs, developer.cisco.comlaunched. Introducing the world to Cisco docs thatweren'tPDFs and a clever innovation called the Sandbox.DevNet was Cisco's foray into the software world from its hardware roots. Now, those ISVs andSIs who wanted to build solutions could test out Cisco's programmability opportunities without building their own labs and spending tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars.  

But the truth is DevNet started 10 years ago, this week, in a handful of meetings held in Round Rock, TX, and I had the fortune of being there. The precursor to DevNet was called Cisco Developer Network (CDN) and prior to that it was Cisco Technology Developer Program (CTDP). Both of these programs were successful in their own right, but the focus was always only on partners. DevNet was intended to be a "startup inside of a company" that provided a true enablement program for all developers. The primary goal was to remove the barriers to entry that lay in front of those wanting to build solutions on top of Cisco platforms. At that t