Well, I was there from the beginning when the site was launched on Area 51.
My first email received regarding this site was this:
From: Stack Exchange Area 51 <[email protected]>
To: (ME)
Subject: Private beta invitation for Network Engineering Q&A site - Area 51 - Stack Exchange
Date: Tue, 07 May 2013 20:04:56 +0000
Good news everyone!
The proposal to create a Network Engineering Stack Exchange site has moved on to private beta!
This is a site for network engineers.
I don't remember that much from these early days, only that it was REALLY REALLY hard to convince StackExchange and some users from ServerFault that Network Engineering is NOT AT ALL like server administration and that ServerFault is not a good home for network related questions. Thankfully in the end people agreed or at least stopped complaining enough for the site to start. :)
Also the current design was the second attempt, we didn't particularly like the first one and suggested to use a somewhat abstract router stencil which became the O in NetwOrk Engineering.
I'm happy that we're still here (and can't believe it has been 10 years already). On to the next decade.