NAN130: Network Automation Forum: From Simple Survey to Global Community

This crossover episode of Network Automation Nerds and Cloud Gambit features hosts Eric Cho and William Collins interviewing NAF co-founders Scott Robon and Chris Grunman about the organization's three-year journey. Chris Grunman initiated the conversation by running a survey in 2022 asking why network automation adoption remained low despite decades of discussion, revealing that most network engineers still rely on CLI rather than automation tools. This survey revealed a significant gap between industry evangelism and actual adoption, prompting the question: why is networking uniquely resistant to software tools compared to other IT disciplines? Scott and Chris connected through a mutual contact and decided to validate the concept by consulting with industry advisors in Seattle, receiving unanimous support. This led to AutoCon Zero in Denver in November 2023, which unexpectedly attracted nearly 350 attendees instead of the anticipated 200, immediately validating the community's need.

The hosts discuss the historical context that contributed to networking's resistance to automation, tracing it back to certification programs like Cisco's CCNA and CCNP in the late 1990s and early 2000s, which created a cult of CLI expertise. During the dot-com era, Cisco's market cap dropped from $500 billion to $132 billion, yet the CLI-focused certification model became entrenched as the primary way network engineers built their identity and value. Unlike other IT disciplines, network engineering conflated mastery of the CLI with being a network engineer itself, creating a psychological barrier to automation adoption. Scott argues that the CLI itself was necessary and well-designed for accessing complex networking protocols, but became a market stickiness factor that locked engineers into vendor-specific expertise rather than building portable engineering skills.

The organization has grown from a single US event to a global series: AutoCon Zero (Denver), One (Amsterdam), Two (Prague), Three (Austin), Four (Amsterdam again), Five (Munich), and upcoming Six (Tucson). The European events show distinct characteristics compared to US events, with European attendees demonstrating greater skepticism, preference for open-source solutions, and lower tolerance for vendor marketing pitches. Attendance has grown from 345 to over 700 at peak events, though not in a linear curve. The founders emphasize that the "forum" name was intentional—it's designed to be a place where practitioners can sit and talk, not a vendor-sponsored conference.

Key foundational principles that the organizers protect fiercely are: practitioner-led content (people doing production work sharing real experiences), vendor neutrality, light-touch community moderation, and inclusion of diverse perspectives. The organization has experimented with innovations like workshops, leadership tracks, and a zero-to-hero learning path, carefully evaluating which experiments to institutionalize and which to retire. A significant organic development has been the NAF Automation Framework, which emerged grassroots from community discussions rather than top-down direction. This framework provides shared language and mental models for discussing network automation system components and has since been presented at other industry events without NAF sponsorship.

Regarding monetization and vendor relations, the founders maintain careful boundaries by having explicit conversations with sponsors about the community-first ethos. They acknowledge that money inherently attracts toward the microphone, and they work to prevent vendor takeover by educating sponsors about the value proposition of maintaining neutrality. Community members themselves help police this by pushing back against perceived marketing pitches. The founders note that diversity in sponsorship sources beyond traditional networking vendors (including IT automation, cloud, and AI companies) is part of their strategy to maintain independence.

Eric Cho shares that he initially felt skeptical about network automation's viability given the polarization between hyperscalers doing extensive automation and enterprise networks still using manual CLI management. However, the energy and community bonds formed at AutoCon Zero renewed his faith in the movement. William Collins notes the challenge of top-down organizational resistance to automation initiatives, suggesting that unless security and budget stakeholders buy in, individual engineers struggle to implement automation at scale. The founders acknowledge listening to community feedback and iterating accordingly—for example, creating advanced content tracks in response to demand, though they struggle to define what "advanced" means consistently across their audience.