Booking a lab seat

 | 13 Aug 2007 09:58

As many people have found it’s rather hard to book a lab seat these days. All locations are fully booked. The occasional cancellations are snapped up in minutes.

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I did manage to book a seat but it’s one of the seats that became available last Saturday, Cisco gives seats out 6 months ahead of time. They are snapped up within hours if not minutes. Many people just book anywhere in the hope they can swap later on, or figure out how to pay for the travel. Mails about swapping lab seats are becoming more and more frequent on Groupstudy.

I must admit that I’ve joined the ranks here. I’m looking for a seat on Sept 10th. Need to call Cisco today, hoping to be able to safely swap seats with someone who is willing to swap Sept 14th for my day in Feb. So my advice to anyone planning to take their lab in the next year: Plan your lab carefully.

[edit, 15 Aug 2007] Well I called Cisco (see this link) and as expected they refuse to swap lab dates. No manual database work will be done. When I argued that seats are booked within minutes after becoming available, their advise was to swap seats during off peak hours. My goodness even I considered flying out to Sao Paulo, this is a global struggle for CCIE lab seats. There are no off peak hours!

So for those planning to swap dates. My advice is get on the phone, MSN, IRC or whatever other low delay medium (this means no e-mail) and make sure you pick each others dropped seats up asap. Sadly there is no safe was of swapping seats.

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