Peer knowledge sharing
The configs, the gotchas, the upgrade that went sideways at 2 a.m. Real deployments from the people who run them, and the fixes you only hear about from someone who already hit the bug.
First Event
Tue, Sept 15
5:30 PM PT
Virtual
FortiPNW
A community-led Fortinet user group for Pacific Northwest practitioners.
By engineers, for engineers.
Join the Community
Free to join. Open to every Fortinet practitioner in the PNW.
What This Is
A practitioner community for people who run Fortinet.
Access to Fortinet product teams
A direct line to Fortinet product and engineering teams — roadmap conversations, early context on what's coming, and a channel to send feedback that reaches the people building the product.
Practitioner-run agenda
A steering committee of practitioners picks the topics and the speakers. Sessions are technical, not sales pitches — the agenda answers to the members, not to a quota. Who runs it →
Who It's For
Practitioners.
If you touch a FortiGate, a FortiAnalyzer, or a support ticket about one — you're in the right place.
- Network engineers Running FortiGate at the edge, in the data center, or across a sprawl of branch sites.
- Security architects Designing segmentation, SD-WAN, and Fabric integrations that have to survive an audit.
- MSP & MSSP engineers Managing dozens of tenants and every firmware version that ever shipped.
- Cert candidates Working the NSE / Fortinet Certified tracks and looking for study partners who've done the labs.
- IT directors & managers Running Fortinet environments and the teams that keep them up — here for roadmap, staffing, and what's coming next.
Events
Monthly online. Quarterly in the room.
A cadence tight enough to stay useful, light enough that nobody burns out running it.
Virtual
Every month · 60 minThe backbone. One hour, one topic, screen shares and real configs. Keeps the community warm between the in-person nights.
- WhenTuesday or Wednesday
- Start5:30 PM Pacific
- Length60 minutes
In‑person
4× a year · EveningWhere the relationships actually get built. We rotate between Tacoma and Seattle so nobody is always the one driving.
- Doors5:30 · Session 6:00 · Networking 7:00
Q1 Tacoma
Q2 Seattle
Q3 Tacoma
Q4 Seattle
16 touchpoints a year — 12 virtual, 4 in‑person.
Sep
15
Tue
Next up — Inaugural
FortiPNW Kickoff — Virtual
The first one. What the group is, what it isn't, and what you want out of it — then we pick the topics for the rest of the year together.
Register on LumaAn annual PNW summit Someday — not scheduled
A full-day regional event is the long-term goal, once the group is big enough to fill a room and deep enough to fill an agenda. We'd rather earn it than announce it.
First in‑person meetup targeted for January or February, once the community has momentum. Dates and venues go out to the list first.
About
Started because the room didn't exist yet.
FortiPNW was started by a Fortinet Sales Engineer and a local practitioner who wanted a real peer community for the people running this gear across the Pacific Northwest — the kind of technical, vendor-neutral conversation that didn't have a home here yet.
Fortinet supports the group by funding in‑person events and providing access to speakers, product teams, and resources. The steering committee — made up of practitioners — runs the agenda, picks the topics, and chooses the speakers.
It's free to attend and open to anyone working with Fortinet in the region. Want the specifics on how a meeting runs? Here's how meetings work →