This week I was elected by the WiFi community to be the WiFi Awards Rookie of the Year 2020. I am very thankful to all the people who have voted for me and the WiFi Award committee to be one of the finalists.
The WiFi Award has been one of the main factors and motivation for all I have done in the last years. Why?

Background
I discovered WiFi and 802.11 when I looked through the Cisco WiFi Fundamental videocourse by Keith Barker at cbtnuggets.com back in 2016. Later I attended the ECSE course by Keith Parsons in Oslo in 2017. As usual, he encouraged us the engage in the WiFi community at Twitter and also start blogging. Further on I passed the CWDP, CWNA, CWAP, and CWSP. And my first blog article was released in May 2018. The first ones was on Fast Secure Roaming and how to make RRM/TPC work.

But what should I do when those certifications were done. CWNE is the next level, but that certification has some requirements that I did not have at that time. So the next for me was to gain more 802.11 knowledge and the book “The Next Generation Wireless LANs” by Eldad Perahia and Robert Stacey gave me an interest for a deeper knowledge into the 802.11 protocol.

The WiFi Awards
In February 2019 Keith Parsons, Sam Clements, and Jonathan Davis launched the WiFi Awards during WLPC_US. And one of the categories was the Rookie of the Year. And JD said: “looking for a person who comes from nowhere and “bang” they there and they are participating and contributing to the community”.
At that moment I decided to go all in and do everything in my power to try to win this award.

WLPC_EU and Call for presentation
In April/May 2019 Keith sends out the Call for Presentation for the WLPC_EU in Prague later that year. After a lot of consideration, I decided to send in my proposal for a presentation. From the moment I pressed submit my mood changed between anxiety and excitement almost minute to minute for the next 6 months.

What to do?
I knew that I had to do something extraordinary and unique to be considered as a candidate for this award and I decided to dig deep into the 802.11ax protocol and especially OFDMA. At that time there were not many who talked or blogged about it at a deep level, so I looked at it as an opportunity to be somehow “unique” in that area. To learn about it, the only choice I had was to buy the IEEE 802.11ax draft 4.0.

My journey into the 802.11ax and OFDMA
My first blog regarding 802.11ax and OFDMA was released in July 2019. It was a deep-dive into the HE MU PPDU and DL OFDMA bit-by-bit. At that time the only help I had was the draft. Later I did a deep dive into the MU-RTS/CTS process. Those two blogs and all the preparation I did for those articles gave me a good foundation.
During August both the Clear To Send guys and the WiFi Ninja guys start to dig into the same topics and also how to set up a network. And Cisco Norway was kind and borrowed me two Cisco 9115-APs. Later on, the WiFI community developed methods for capturing OFDMA frames and for me the article from John Kilpatrick, and the Jetson Nano kickstarted my ODFMA capturing career.

The WiFi Award 2019
WLPC_EU was held in Prague in Oct 2019 and one week later the submissions/nominations for the WiFI Awards 2019 were opened. I admit that I submitted myself for the Rookie of Year category to be sure I was considered.
The next period, till the end of voting period, I published a series of blog articles to set myself in the best position to win. Even the period till the WLPC_US last year I published a lot of articles.
But there were four other extremely strong candidates; Lariana Luy, Landon Foster, John Deegan, Leonid Tekanov, and me. And as we all know, Lariana won it well earned.

The next period
Even I did not win the 2019 contest I knew I maybe could have a possibility for the 2020 Awards too. So I kept on blogging. Now the blog articles were about more general items in the protocol. Still at a very technical level and mostly regarding the Physical layer, PPDUs and wireless capturing, often related to 802.11ax and OFDMA.
I have held an online presentation/webinar for the Mobility Brazil Conference and 7Signal.
I have also contributed to the WiFi community either by answering questions other people have on Twitter or Slack, or contributed to online discussions. And send questions to different podcasts or webinars. Especially the Wireless Pubcast guys have had to answer a lot of them

The WiFi Award 2020
Luckily I was nominated as one of the finalists for the WiFi Award Rookie of the Year 2020. This time some others have nominated me and I don’t know who he/she is. Again there were strong finalists: John Deegan, Landon Foster, Kori Younger, Michael Hilton, and me.
There were some critics on why three of us was the finalist again, but all three of us fulfill the criteria for the award
And this time I got the most votes and won this category

I am thankful for all the people who voted for me and all the gratulations I have received on Twitter. It warms my heart.

WiFi Award, You Were My Motivation
As I have tried to describe, the WiFI Awards have been in my mind the last two years and it has been one of the big motivations to keep on studying and blogging. I don’t think I had been where I am now without the WiFi Awards as a motivation and as a goal to win the Rookie of the Year category


From JD: “looking for a person who comes from nowhere and “bang” they there and they are participating and contributing to the community”
I really think I fulfill the statement JD said two years ago and I will from the bottom of my heart say a warm THANK YOU to the WiFi community for welcoming me and given me very good feedback for all I have done and how my AirTime Calculator and my blog articles has helpt them to better understand the 802.11 protocol

And this is not farewell, I will keep on participating in the WiFi community

I’ll be back