How acquiring 200 Cisco Academies was prompted by a Dead Parrot!

Now that we are at 200 Cisco Academies, supported by the OU Cisco ASC. Time to reflect – well, maybe for the briefest of moments. This is because our job is by no means anywhere close to being accomplished. When we commenced in 2014, we gathered, collected our years of experience running Cisco Regional Academies and promptly binned that in favour of a new model.

Many others were fixated on the late 90’s early 00’s model of NetAcad – this was already long dead, dying and enduring the same morbidity as a python’esque dead parrot. Yet, some out there are still believing that there may be life in the deceased avian.

Free brings many opportunities, for the Cisco Academies, our wider community and also the team at the OU Cisco ASC. Every time we consider a new venture, we also assess its actual value and impact. The trouble is – there are many ventures to consider, plenty of ideas and people wanting us to try them. Yet, the burden of offering for free is that we have many who believe that we do this all for them – for free!

When we reimagined our model – we understood the power of scale. Our cost recovery needs are slight – however they do exist. Take each free instructor course as an example – they cost ￡XXXX.YY to run. Our ITQ’s are not doing it for love, they love to do it for a reasonable remuneration.

What this means - is that we are already rethinking our model. While we know that our model is impactful. We do not intend to create our own dead bird in the process.