I’m Heading to Networking Field Day 40

I’m excited to announce that I’ve been selected as a delegate for Networking Field Day 40, taking place April 8–10, 2026 in Silicon Valley.

For those unfamiliar, Tech Field Day brings together a panel of independent IT practitioners and puts them in a room with vendors for deep-dive technical presentations. Not analysts, not journalists. Just people who actually do this stuff for a living. No fluff, no marketing slides about “synergy.” The delegates ask hard questions, and the vendors either have answers or they don’t. It’s one of the best formats in tech for getting past the pitch and into the substance.

This won’t be my first Field Day rodeo, but I’m just as fired up as the first time. Even better, my coworker Ben Story will be on the panel as well. The rest of the delegate lineup is stacked with people I respect too. Phil Gervasi and Scott Robohn from Solutional, Pete Welcher (early CCIE and walking encyclopedia of networking knowledge), Mike Witte bringing 45+ years of experience from WWT, and several others who bring serious real-world perspective to these conversations.

Why I Keep Coming Back

The honest answer? Because it makes me better at my job.

I spend my days deep in the weeds of network infrastructure. Palo Alto firewalls, Cisco switching, optical transport, multi-site integrations. It’s easy to get tunnel vision when you’re heads-down on project work. Field Day forces you to step back and look at where the industry is heading, what problems vendors are actually trying to solve, and whether their solutions hold up under scrutiny from people who’ve been doing this for decades.

The conversations that happen between presentations are just as valuable as the presentations themselves. Getting to compare notes with other practitioners who are dealing with the same kinds of challenges in completely different environments is something you can’t replicate on a Zoom call.

What I’m Watching For

The sponsor lineup is looking solid. We’ve got NetAI, Selector, Lightyear, Netris, Upscale AI, Nokia, Arista, and Cisco on the schedule. A few things I’m keeping my eye on:

Network automation and observability. Recently I’ve been spending some time with tools like NetBrain for network discovery and documentation. Selector and NetAI both play in this space, and I’m curious how they’re approaching the gap between “we automated the easy stuff” and “we can actually handle the messy brownfield reality of enterprise networks.”

The big iron. Arista, Cisco, and Nokia in the same event is going to be fun. I work with Cisco daily and I’m always interested in where they’re taking the Catalyst and Nexus platforms. Arista and Nokia showing up means we’ll probably get some good data center and service provider conversations too.

AI/ML in networking. I know, I know. Everyone’s got an AI story right now. With Upscale AI and NetAI both presenting, plus whatever Cisco and Arista are doing on the AI front, there should be plenty of opportunity to separate real operational value from slide deck buzzwords. Show me the demo, let me poke at it, and we’ll see.

Cloud and infrastructure networking. Lightyear and Netris are interesting picks. Lightyear is tackling the procurement side of network connectivity, and Netris is doing some cool stuff with cloud-native networking and automation. Both are solving problems I see regularly in multi-site healthcare environments.

Follow Along

I’ll be posting thoughts and takeaways during the event using the #NFD40 hashtag, and I’ll do my best to write up deeper posts here on RouterJockey after the event covering the presentations that stood out.

All of the presentations are live-streamed on the Tech Field Day website and on their LinkedIn page, and the recordings get posted to the Tech Field Day YouTube channel afterwards. If any of the sponsors or topics catch your eye, it’s worth tuning in.

See you in April.

Disclaimer: As a Tech Field Day delegate, my travel and accommodations are covered by the event. However, I am not compensated for my participation, and I am under no obligation to write about any vendor or product. All opinions on this blog are my own. For more, please read my full disclaimer.