What an amazing keynote oO

I’ll start with this one because it deserves it: the Day-2 keynote was excellent. Not just “good”, not just “solid” — genuinely engaging. Strong presence from the HPE leadership team, clear messages, less overload than Day 1, and a much better flow overall.

And then Rami on stage – sharp, confident, and refreshingly direct. Bonus points for the small Cisco joke that made half the room grin and the other half look very attentive 😄
That keynote hit a sweet spot: vision, strategy, and just enough technical grounding to keep the nerds awake without drowning everyone else.

If Day 1 was “Here’s everything we do”, Day 2 felt much more like “Here’s why it matters”.

Sessions: finally delivering what the title says

Big improvement here. Most of the sessions I attended on Day 2 actually delivered what was promised. No bait-and-switch, no “deep dive” that turns out to be a marketing flight at 30,000 feet.

Were they all ultra-deep, ASIC-register-level insanity? No.
But: solid structure, understandable architecture, clear explanations, and — most importantly — speakers who knew their stuff and didn’t panic when questions went beyond slide 12. That alone already makes a huge difference.

My personal highlight-session of the day: “AI without the Fairy Dust” 🧠✨

Hands down: best session so far.
And honestly? This one felt like a small time machine back to the old TechFest days.

No magic unicorns.
No “AI will solve all your problems by Tuesday”.
No buzzword bingo.

Instead:

real architectures, real constraints, real operational challenges, real customer implementations and a very refreshing amount of “this is where it still hurts” Finally someone talking about what actually runs in production, not what SlideDeck A238 claims should run in theory. This was the kind of session where you sit there nodding quietly because you recognize the pain.

More of this. Much more.

Evening reception: nice… and VERY full – and an equally empty Registration (photo taken at roughly 7PM) 😀

The evening event itself was great — good atmosphere, relaxed conversations, familiar faces everywhere.
But wow… SO. MANY. PEOPLE.

At times it felt like someone accidentally announced free hardware in the room next door. Still: lots of good chats, lots of laughter, and exactly the kind of informal networking that makes TechJam worth attending in the first place. Pro tip: if you ever lose someone at TechJam, just wait 10 minutes – you’ll bump into the next familiar face anyway – who am I kidding – not even 2mins 😉 AWESOME!

Exam update: Redemption arc complete ✅

Now for a very personal highlight.

After getting absolutely slaughtered yesterday by what I still consider a rather unfair Professional Datacenter exam (seriously Aruba folks – way too much “Which exact switch platform ABC supports feature XYZ in port mode 123 with interface Speeds of xyz” stuff… things any sane human just looks up in a datasheet), Day 2 brought redemption.

I’m happy to report:
🎉 HPE Networking Switching Professional — PASSED 🎉

And here’s the key difference:
This exam finally did what exams should do. It asked about: concepts, architectures, protocols, design decisions, operational understanding – and things that actually matter concept wise – Not about memorizing product matrices.

My personal take (just my 2ct):
Switching Pro: challenging, meaningful, actually asking professional questions (although it felt like a Juniper S-Level if I’m being brutally honest)
DC Pro: not worth pursuing (for me) due to the heavy platform-specific focus – was nice to see (did you all take your 2 free exam attempt???) but in my opinion a huge waste of my time sadly. I really hope the DC-Pro would ask less about memorizing Datasheets and more about EVPN, DCI, BGP – concepts that actually matter in a modern DC.

I’ll happily defend that opinion over a beer or in my case a fresh cold cola 😉

Conclusion after Day 2

A very strong day overall:

✔ excellent keynote with a clear message
✔ sessions with noticeably better quality and substance
✔ one outstanding “old-school” technical session
✔ great community vibes (even if slightly overcrowded)
✔ personal victory on the certification front 😎

If Day 1 left me a bit torn, Day 2 clearly tipped the scale in the right direction.
Now let’s see what Day 3 brings — and maybe, just maybe, we’ll dig even a little deeper technically.
And sorry I can’t tell you so much more – a lot of things are under NDA and I will obviously honor that 🙂

Netzwerkonkel is ready. 😉