Developer|portals|are a complicated endeavor. Not only do you have to reach out to super technical, detail-oriented audiences, but you also need to make the journey and experience meaningful. Plus, the business reasons for developer portals are many, and varied. All these factors add up to a possibly complex solution -a developer portal containing documentation, tutorials, sample code, community outreach, event information, how to get started, how to dive deep, and the best business models available to developers.

So those of us who work hard on developer portal experience and design everyday were elated to hear of a new DevPortal Awards opportunity brought to life by Pronovix as a post-event gala after the API The Docs London 2018 conference.

We were even more excited to learn that our own developer portal (developer.cisco.com) was being recognized with the awards for Community Spotlight and Outreach and Best DX Innovation categories. And we are completely elated to win Best Overall Developer Portal! Tom Davies ironed up his tuxedo to accept the awards on behalf of Cisco DevNet. (Okay, no tuxedo -this time.) See the full list of winners here.

DevNet's Tom Davies accepts three DevPortal awards, 
including "Best Overall Developer Portal"

For Community Spotlight and Outreach, the category looked for developer portals with creative solutions or initiatives to show developers that their work is appreciated. Jury members noticed our DevNet Express events and educational opportunities, the large community section of DevNet, the opportunity to highlight community work through Code Exchange, and a very engaging start page with many, many options for different stakeholders in our community. Our DevNet developer community is at the heart of all that we do, so this recognition is particularly exciting for us because it also recognizes all the contributions from our wonderful community members.

Serving both infrastructure developers and application developers

For Best DX (Developer Experience) Innovation, the Code Exchange and Sandbox elements of DevNet were recognized due to offering great developer tools and integration with GitHub, where developers already do their work. This category looked for DevPortals that lead the way in boosting developer experience, either as a whole or for subgroups of developers. The jury also noticed and appreciated that the DevNet portal provides pathways for both infrastructure developers and application developers.

Cisco DevNet covers technology and products from across the entire Cisco portfolio - including IoT, Networking, Data Center, Security and Collaboration. Even in all that complexity, the DevNet team strives to present the many exciting developer and infrastructure tools offered by a large number of Cisco platforms while creating a simple developer journey and easy to discover resources, sandboxes, tutorials, and encouragement through outreach and events, all housed in our portal at developer.cisco.com.

We raise a toast to the hardworking team members putting together developer portals every day, and give many thanks to the people who made this award a reality. We also want to thank every member of the Cisco DevNet team and everyone at Cisco who is working to build great APIs and developer experience everyday. And, thank you, thank you, thank you to our DevNet members.

Thank you,
Amanda Whaley and Edwin Zhang

Please do reach out to us with any input you have to help us improve! And do check out our DevNet Sandboxes, Code Exchange, and educational events going on year-round. And if you're not yet a DevNet member... Join Us!

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