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4月17日 certified cap wearerThe IT industry seems second only to the pharmaceutical industy for swag and I have picked up my fair share over the years, including an oversupply of t-shirts and caps. Having quite a few Microsoft certifications I managed to get my hands on quite a few "certified" caps. Not sure that I have a complete set of them (at least the ones that were available when I went looking) but herein I post proof of my status as geek, hero, smart as* and ...
 (thanks again Trika)    4月6日 SharePoint Designer 2007 free!SharePoint Designer 2007 can now be downloaded for free.
This is a pretty good WYSIWYG HTML editor. Primarily aimed at SharePoint web pages it is also great for editting non-MOSS/WSS pages. 3月24日 TLG at Tech.Ed againAccepted as a Technical Learning Guide at Tech.Ed North America again, yay! But no flights or accommodation covered this time, so having to pay my own way there :-( But only need to work 20 hours instead of 40. Will it be worth it, with a significantly reduced show, no attendee party, and smack bang in the middle of LA? Hope so! 1月16日 leaving job securitySo I've left a secure job at KAZ and am looking at trying my hand at being a freelance trainer and consultant.
My differentiator?
I want to be able to provide consultancy advice without the conflict of interest of products or services being on-sold behind me.
I want to be able to cut out the crap of over-complicated solutions and over-engineered solutions by getting back to business basics and assisting organisations to see how IT can facilitate and enable them to meet their business objectives rather than IT becoming an end in and of itself.
I learnt a lot at KAZ. Both how to do things and how not to. That there are both smart people and stupid people making decisions, both inside and outside organisations that affect people both inside and outside the organisation. 11月19日 OneCare changesLooks like Microsoft are finding making headway into the AV market a bit more difficult than they planned.
OneCare will be replaced by a no-cost offering from Microsoft from halfway through 2009 - here for details.
9月8日 Tech.Ed Australia - part 2 The last day of Tech.Ed was weird this year - probably because of the limited amount of time people had to get out of the convention centre. The Hands on Labs closed at 1pm and the vendor stalls were all down well before the locknote began. The Windows Mobile Mobility Smackdown didn't involve any smashing phones this year. There were a lot more people but despite my having dog tags and therefore getting priority seating for the swag being thrown out, the vast majority went way over my head. I did get there late though and the tags did mean that I didn't have to stand at the back. Still - not as much fun as last year's. Despite having lost my voice on Thursday and still not having it back I presented my second (and final) Instructor Led Lab, and despite being on at the same time as a Steve Riley talk, and the lab being on security issues, still managed to pull in a full room - and it ended up being the highest ranked ILL for the week. Go me! The locknote was much much better than the keynote. Miha Kralj, a senior Architect at Microsoft, gave a very interesting talk about the future for IT and it wasn't tainted with the Developer brush that was used so heavily in the keynote. The rain came down for the exit (had been lovely weather all week up until then) and then there was the slow taxi ride to the airport and the wait for the last plane back to Adelaide. All in all, a very busy, very entertaining, and successful week. The biggest success for me? Apart from having two of the three highest ranked ILLs for the week and catching up with people (hi Trika, Tim, Jeffa, Brad, Kyle, Gordo, Kim and the other TLGs), was being certified by Chuck Norris.  9月5日 Tech.Ed AustraliaTech.Ed Australia - only 3 days this year - Wednesday through Friday, with the opening party really being the opening party, on Tuesday evening.
TLG (Technical Learning Guides) orientation was for about an hour on Tuesday afternoon with Brad going through the rules. For those of us who have been TLGs before this was pretty much nothing new, except for those few things that were specific to this year.
The opening party was good with more swag on offer than last year. Lots of stress balls, mini keyring torches, and other competitions going on in the Partner Expo.
Didn't think too much of Wednesday's keynote as it seemed geared towards developers (though so was the ITPro keynote in Orlando, so it should have been expected).
It appears that MS are focussing on developers to the detriment of ITPros (with Kleefy's position not being refilled - how can 6 developer evangelists vs 1 for ITPros in Australia be equivalent considering the number of ITPros is much greater than that of devs?). WA and SA are definitely going to miss out with Jeff Alexander being the only ITPro evangelist left in Oz and he won't be travelling further west than Canberra (except electronically).
The Hands on Labs environment had the best view of any I've been in. Looking out over Darling Harbour from the Convention Centre.
Must have been hard for Ted to keep his eyes on the screen with that view behind it. Brad was keeping an eagle eye on the TLGs though.
Wednesday I gave my first ILL (Instructor Led Lab) on Windows Server 2008: Remote Infrastructure. A few minutes before we were due to start there were lots of empty seats but it filled up and overflowed with a few standing along the back wall during the talk. The vast majority of evals were pretty good too.
Wednesday evening I was on duty in the labs and so missed most of the Ask the Experts sessions, but did catch the last round where Gordon Ryan (Server) beat the other contestants (Client, Dev and I forget the other category). Congrats Gordo!
And Wednesday was topped off as a great day because Trika had arrived. No MSL stand this year which meant she was free to flit where she wanted.
Thursday I woke up with almost no voice and duty in the labs in the morning (9 through 12).
Did get to sit in on Trika's Certification 101 session where the slideshow didn't work because of technical difficulties. Trooper that she is she did it on a whiteboard instead.
Closing Party was held in the exhibition centre was a lot better than 2 years ago in Sydney. Last year's was better, but you can't compare a "carnival" in a convention centre with a theme park.
There was a fair amount of smoke being generated and acts going on on the centre stage from time to time (plate spinning in these ones) plus people walking around on stilts and a sideshow alley with knock'em down and laughing clown games.
The smoke wasn't helping me get my voice back so I didn't stay too late.
Tomorrow will be the last day - presenting my second ILL in the morning and then try and get to the Mobility Smackdown before the Locknote in the afternoon.
Just hope my voice decides to come back.
8月31日 Closing out the trivia nightsSo for the last few years I have been running the trivia night at the Australian System Administrators' Conference. While the conference was in Adelaide this year, I couldn't go. Had been to every conference since the last time it was in Adelaide (which I also missed) but c'est la vie. Anyway. 2003 in Hobart I helped mark questions, 2004 in Brisbane I wrote the questions and marked, but someone else MC'd. IIRC we raised around $500 for the charity that year. 2005 in Perth I MC'd and did the questions and had someone else mark questions. We raised about $1800. 2006 in Canberra and 2007 in Sydney I also MC'd and did the questions and someone else marked. We raised around $2400 or so for the selected charities.
This year was the last one that I planned to do the Trivia night. Even though I couldn't get to the rest of the conference.
A really big thanks to the 55 or so people who came along and helped us raise $3775 for the Animal Welfare League.
I've enjoyed running this for the past few years and hope that the tradition of a really great evening with a positive outcome of raising money for charity is able to continue for many many more years. 6月18日 TechEd Day 3 and 4OK, so I'm back home again after the long flight and a very busy few days.
Thursday saw the repeat of my Instructor Led Lab and once again it went well. Not quite as well as Wednesday, but good enough to have it in the top 10 for overall and for presenter scores for Instructor Led Labs. Tried to get in to sit the 70-620 Vista exam but they wouldn't book it for after 2pm since apparantly I needed 4 hours to do it, so I booked it for 12:30 Friday (where I had about 90 minutes free).
Thursday evening was the Attendee party at Universal Studios. This year I stayed with other MCTs instead of doing things myself. Good move. It is much more fun spending time at these events with others. Went on the Revenge of the Mummy and Simpsons ride with James Finley before we bumped in to Shannon, CA and others on their way to the Simpsons, so we went on it again with them. The Men in Black Alien Attack ride experienced "technical difficulties" after we had gotten inside, so after waiting for things to get fixed we gave up and exited - yes - we did the "line ride". Did Disaster Movie (with James being picked to play "Cupcake") and Twister. By that stage the time was 11:30 and they weren't letting people on to any more rides so we headed back to the bus back to the hotel.
Friday was more time in the Hands on Labs until 12:30, then wandered up to the testing centre for 12:45. Sat the exam, which crashed halfway through and had to be restarted on another machine, and was out again by 1:45.
The last part of the show was spent supporting Corey Hynes' ILL on Hyper-V. I think he was hoping that by having back-to-back ILLs at the end of the show that no-one would turn up for the last session and we'd get off early. No such luck. 15 or so rocked up. Both sessions went well and Corey's sessions were the only other ILL that had all sessions ranking in the overall and presenter scores in the top ten for ILLs.
Friday evening finished up with some of us having pizza back at the hotel and then sitting around the spa talking about all sorts of things. And I got rid of all the biscuits that I had taken over (still brought the Vegemite back with me).
So what did I get out of TechEd?
Another year of putting faces to names - priceless.
Renewing contact with people from last year - priceless.
Getting to present ILLs at TechEd North America (and getting excellent evals) - well worth the extra effort required.
A good (imho) sense of the direction of IT services and what technologies to focus on moving forwards.
Less time to spend talking with Product teams - maybe next time - if I get to go again.
And another certification ;-)
- pictures will be added when I have size adjusted them
6月12日 TechEd Day 2Long day today on duty with a 7:30am start and a 6pm finish.
During that time I had my own Instructor Led Lab before supporting the repeat of Bob Reinsch's.
Will add some pictures later but nothing more to really report on how Tech Ed is going as between ILL and HOL duty I didn't get time to look.
Checked out the Study Hall and Cram4Exam session at the end of the day but no chance of me doing any study there myself.
Feet are really sore from so much walking and with virtually no sleep last night I decided to skip the Cluster-Funk party at Margaritaville to be in better shape for my repeat ILL and the Attendee party tomorrow. 6月11日 TechEd Day 1Day 1 of TechEd and the keynote with Bob Muglia started at 8:30 with African drums. While it was high energy and well received by the crowd I got the sense that budget cuts had hit hard and hoped that Bob might have something interesting enough to make the ITPros not too jealous that the Developers had gotten Bill Gates for their Keynote. His speech is available here as mentioned in Redmond Report eNewsletter. Admittedly, I stayed only for the first half hour which made a fairly weak attempt (in my opinion) to say that IT Pros were heroes (as distinct from Bill's message last week that Developers were the foundation and future of MS), and then went on to talk about Dynamic IT, a beta of Identity Lifecycle Manager 2 followed by interoperability and distributed apps. It was (imho) a thinly veiled "I believe that you should all be more like Developers" talk and missed the mark by a long way in giving IT Pros something useful regarding the direction Microsoft is taking (except that they love Developers).
Straight after the keynote had finished I helped out in Bob Reinsch's Instructor Led Lab on malware (there is a repeat tomorrow) and then with a quick break for lunch it was in the HoLs for the rest of the afternoon, finishing later than I should have.
I did a quick round of the vendor stalls during the Partner Expo reception, but it was pretty much only T-shirts on offer with the odd pen and other trinkets. I'll see if there is more at the MS Product booths tomorrow and the rest of the week. What did strike me though was the HUGE number of vendors that were offering Sharepoint solutions, including BCP, offline access, mobile access, partner and extranet access (without provisioning AD accounts for external parties). I reckon fully 25% of the stands were Sharepoint related, possibly more. I didn't just pick up T-shirts either but spent time talking to a lot of the vendors. The Sharepoint ones are pretty much all interested in forming partnerships with resellers and enablers. Virtualisation was there but in no great numbers and the usual suspects (HP, Dell, EMC, Quest etc) were all there as well. Focus is off the hardware and platform and in to the data and how to make it available.
From the Partner Expo Reception we left (thanks Bob Lawler for the car ride) for the All-Star Community Pit Stop party at Destiny nightclub that was being run by TechNet Plus and MS Learning. It was a great event with lots of giveaways halfway through (managed to snag a cap) and catch up with Trika for the first time this year.
I decided to walk back to the hotel (really just wanted to see how far it really was) and it took about 75 minutes - so quite a way. With an early start and my ILL tomorrow (and the lab machines weren't working when I checked late this afternoon) I figured I couldn't really justify staying out too late this evening, even though we were all having a blast.
Oh - and the afternoon rainstorm in Orlando? Got through the roof today and leaked on to some of the machines in the HoLs as well as there being a tornado warning around 5pm. Nothing like Adelaide weather! 6月10日 Pre-Con dayEven though the conference isn't due to start until tomorrow, the Hands on Labs were open today and lots of people coming through registering and visiting the HoLs (not much else to do apart from site-seeing). Met some more MCTs for the first time (Thomas Lee and Rosie Appelbaum among them) and finished the day with 5 1/2 hours in the labs before heading out with John Miller to the GLO lounge where Party with the Pros was taking place. Got there just as a raffle was taking place with lots of prizes being given away. Picked up a T-shirt just for being from Australia, and a Powershell pocket reference guide - which I gave to John as I felt sorry for him missing out on anything other than drink vouchers. First Instructor Led Lab (ILL) tomorrow (supporting Bob Reinsch), Partner Expo will be open and another party in the evening, so another full day (as usual).
Took a picture of Wonderworks on my walk back from the GLO to the hotel. It is one weird looking building. Yes - it is built to look upside down.
6月9日 TLG Training dayToday was an early start (in the hotel lobby by 7:15am) and all day at the convention centre meeting other MCTs and going through what was required for the week, then going through some of the labs. Apparantly last week the convention centre still looked empty even when all the dev folk were there (well, most of the time). Things shoud ramp up for ITPro precon tomorrow and then more-so for the rest of the week. The show floor area is 2.2 million square feet.
looking back across the product areas to the HOLs
Hands on Labs environment
area for meals (well, part of it)
arrive in OrlandoBought some Jabra C820 noise cancelling HeadPhones and they arrived a couple of days before I left, and I was glad they did. They did a good job of really keeping the noise of the airplane down.
Still couldn't get to sleep, but at least I didn't get the awful headache from the engine noise. Arrived in Orlando at just after 6pm local time then took a taxi to the Renaissance Hotel and managed to catch up with some of the other MCTs before they headed out to dinner at Sam Seltzer's Steakhouse - Altamonte Springs. Already knew Bob Lawler and Richard Civil from last year but could now put faces to names of Stephen Charles Rea ("rev") and Callahan ("CA").
(left to right - Bob, rev, CA and Richard - and yes, those two steaks in front of CA are hers - at last a woman who knows how to eat like a human instead of a rabbit!)
and in follow-up news - this restaurant has now been closed! "Nation's Restaurant News" article here.
Bob headed home and the rest of us tried to find Destiny nightclub where there was a party in progress. I was pretty tired though so shared a cab back to the
hotel with two more MCTs - John Miller and Amber Mitchell. 6月5日 TechEd T-4 daysI'm off to TechEd in Orlando again as a TLG, this time also presenting one of the Instructor Led Labs.
Hopefully I'll be able to squeeze in some time to keep a reasonable up to date account of what is happening.
Flying out 7AM Saturday morning and arriving in Orlando just before 6PM (assuming everything goes according to schedule). 4月2日 GUI for Server CoreI have no qualms in telling people that Server Core has a GUI. After all, you can use the mouse, move the command prompt window around on the screen and then there are the few things that appear the same as normal Windows (notepad, Task Manager, date/time and international settings). If you just can't handle the command prompt then you might want to try this: Server Core GUI by Guy Teverovsky. 4月1日 RPG related posters In memoriam for Gary Gygax, who passed away in early March. RPG related mock "inspiration" type posters may not all be considered worksafe, but most more than worth the look. Here are just four of many - and these are worksafe. 3月28日 TLG @ TechEd US W00t! I applied for a Technical Learning Guide position at TechEd US again and made it to the "alternate" list. Too bad I thought, consolation prize, but I'm sure that those who were chosen would have a fantastic time. Well, the alternate list is not just a consolation prize. I found out today that I made it on to the main team. Now - where did I stash my passport... 3月26日 Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT) for Vista SP1 available From the "Ask the Directory Services Team" blog. Now you can manage Win2K, Win2K3 and Win2K8 from Vista desktops. Versions available for both x86 and x64 based systems. After installing, open Control Panel and start Programs and Features. Click Turn Windows Features on or off then scroll down to the Remote Server Administration Tools. Then you can turn them all on, some on, or none (though if so why install in the first place). 1月24日 Windows Home Server Children's book Windows Home Server advertising as a children's book. Well, I found it funny. |
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