In this exciting two-parter, the crew sits down with none other than Keith Barker. Yes, that Keith Barker, Mr. CBT Nuggets himself! My “introduction” to Keith was a while back when I was searching the internet for a better understanding of the building blocks of IPSec VPNs. Then, I found it. A three minute video on YouTube from this guy named Keith Barker titled “Remembering the 5 Things to Negotiate in IKE Phase 1“. I learned more about IKE Phase 1 in those three minutes than I had know about it to date. Now, I have the opportunity to leverage CBT Nuggets with Keith and crew to work through the ENCOR curriculum.
So, I’ve known Keith the trainer for a little while now, but had not gotten a good idea of who he is outside of teaching us all how to network. That definitely changed with these two AONE episodes. It was so cool to really hear his backstory. From working on printers in his early days, to network infrastructure at Paramount Pictures (to name a couple), Keith has had quite the career even outside of being a professional IT trainer. My favorite parts of this series were hearing more about Keith as a person and his journey. The amount of time, effort, and training he has put in to become a excellent trainer and teacher is incredible. He shared details of his personal life and revealed, hey, he’s just as human as the rest of us (an incredibly kind, dedicated, and motivated human, but human nonetheless). Things that stick with me (I’m paraphrasing for the most part) from the end of Episode 23:
- Be kind.
- Do more than what you’re paid for.
- Have a good attitude.
These were two great episodes with a true legend of network infrastructure that I encourage you to check out.
Key Off-Topic Takeaway: Dan’s tone shall now be referred to as “Barry White voice”.
Netication 