Apr 5, 2007 | blog
Sorry for being a day late, I ran out of time yesterday!
Today was the wrap-up of the main conference, as only the post-con sessions are left. It’s always kind of a let-down because you know that its almost over. Alright, there actually were several good sessions today. Here’s my recap.
Session one was The File Server Is Dead: Implementing Windows SharePoint Services Document Libraries with Dan Holme of Intelliem. Obviously, the main point of Document Libraries is to store documents from the Office Suite since Office 2003/2007 can publish directly to the DL. Other uses are searching documents, wikis, lists, RSS feeds, email notification, email publishing, collaboration, document visioning, the list can seem endless if you want to add 3rd party extensions. Very good session.
Session two called Goodbye RIS, Hello WDS presented by Jeremy Moskowitz of Moskowitz, Inc. covered Windows Deployment Services. Jeremy delivered a heck of a session diving into the differences of RIS to WDS, and how to leverage WDS for not only Vista and Longhorn, but also XP and 2003. Topics covered ranged from creating and managing boot images, to images, image groups, post install configuration, answer files, WinPE, BDD, and a smattering of useful tools for the enterprising admin.
After the coffee break, I went to Volume Activation 2.0 in Vista and Longhorn Server, hosted by Sean Deuby of Intel. A very interesting and very misunderstood feature of Windows Vista and Windows Longhorn is the activation schemes used by Microsoft. Sean demystified the process and the technology involved. There are several methods used for system activation and a good system architect will need to understand the needs of the business to decide on the best option. One learning from this – Volume Activation will be as important to your infrastructure as DHCP – prepare now. This was one very educational session, whether anyone wanted to hear it or not. Thanks Sean for delivering on a very difficult topic!
After the lunch break it was on to session four of the day. Cracking the DaVista Code: The Best Things You’re Not Using in Vista with Mark Minasi. This session delved into the hidden (or little-known) features of Windows Vista. Mark talked about things like the take ownership tool, elevated explorer, use of ALT in explorer, backup tools, using WinPE to backup systems to a network, tags & indexing, new built-in tools like RoboCopy, restoring missing UI features, new Windows Logo key shortcuts, resizing partitions, WAIK. All that and much, much more. If you ever get a chance to attend a Mark Minasi session – do it, he’s entertaining and educational. A hard combination to find in many seminars.
Finally, after another break, this time for ice cream :), it was the final session of the day (and main conference), the Q&A Closing Session. Here, all the speakers were available for any question (and many debates!) on attendee questions. As usual, there was several lively discussions on many topics, with much input from the presenters as well as the attendees because of so many ways business use technology, and simply perceive certain issues. Very fun!
Tomorrow is the post-conference session Microsoft Office SharePoint 2007 (MOSS) Web Content Management with Bob Mixon.
Update: Bob Mixon had broken his ankle earlier in the day and the session had to be canceled. I transferred in to a different session on IT Provisioning with Dan Holme – more tomorrow.
Technorati tags: Windows Connections, Dan Holme, Jeremy Moskowitz, Bob Mixon, Mark Minasi, RIS, WDS, SharePoint, WinPE, Business Desktop Deployment, BDD, WAIK
Apr 3, 2007 | blog
Here are some pictures, many of the resort, from the first half of my stay at the Hyatt Grand Cypress for the Connections 2007 conference. Yes, these were taken with my T-Mobile MDA – sorry for the poor quality, I had forgotten my real camera!
Technorati tags: Hyatt Regency Grand Cypress Resort
Apr 3, 2007 | blog
Probably the longest day of the conference, the middle day starts early and ends late! The main party is still going on outside, and I just got back from a pretty good walk around the Grand Cypress resort. Lets see, what was today…
Starting with a nice continental breakfast, with Florida’s excellent fresh Orange juice, it got me ready for the keynote of the day – Attacker Trends and Techniques: An Update with presenter Steve Riley of Microsoft. Steve’s reputation on security & Microsoft is well deserved.
The first session (there were 5 today!), was New Features in PKI and Certificates for Longhorn and Vista by Brian Komar of IdentIT. I’ve been to many sessions presented by Brian, and he never fails to bring the complexities of PKI, Certificates, and Security into sharp focus that’s easy to understand. Vista/Longhorn has significant improvements in the handling of certificates that address many user requests.
Session two was Reimaging the File Share: Automating and Provisioning Secure Business Data Shares with Dan Holme of Intelliem. Both Jon and I got a lot of ideas that we want to bring back and have worked into the project plan for next year (if we can’t squeak it in this year). Mainly to go back and pick up the user/group/permissions provisioning that we left on the table after our Windows Server 2003 upgrade & Active Directory implementation project in 2004. Lots of ideas for role-based scripted processes and procedures. One of the best sessions for practical application so far!
After a quick break, session three was lead by the ever-lively Mark Minasi of Minasi Research and Development. Titled Windows Vista Security: The Hidden Truth, Mark really dove into a number of reasons for Vista’s User Account Control and why it should be left in place. Also, demonstrated was how to automate legacy software compatibility.
Lunch was a buffet style of Italian classics, with a nice hour afterward to catch up on email and such before getting back into the sessions.
For Session four, attended the Using SharePoint Designer as a Workflow Tool hosted by David Gerhardt of 3Sharp. A fascinating tool, the usefulness was quickly demonstrated, and I am certain that this tool will be in my solution arsenal in the near future.
Last session (number five) was again with the irrepressible Mark Minasi. This time the topic was Name Resolution: DNS, WINS, and NetBIOS in Longhorn. True to his word, the mysteries of WINS and NetBT were unraveled. Another great entertaining, informative session. No wonder why Mark gets the rave reviews he does – he earns it.
Finally, the day was wrapped up with a fantastic Western theme (in Florida?) party with grilled steak, beans, and the whole works. They need a better beer selection (bring on the Sam Adams), but that’s the only thing I could find wrong with it all! Good music and fun networking with peers from around the US and the world. Any IT Pro (Windows OR Unix) should plan on attending one of the bi-annual Connections conferences if they can make it.
Two more days – one main conference day tomorrow, and one post-con course on Thursday. Then back home to the snow!
Technorati tags: Windows Connections, Office Connections, Exchange Connections, Mark Minasi, Brian Komar, Dan Holme, Steve Riley, David Gerhardt, IdentIT, 3Sharp, Intelliem, Minasi Research and Development
Apr 2, 2007 | blog
Another great day at the Windows Connections 2007 conference in Orlando, FL, at least for me. Got to a keynote, three interesting sessions and some time with Microsoft, just to chat.
This morning’s keynote was Exchange 2007: Getting to Know You presented by Tony Redmond of HP. Pretty good information, though it was kind of tilted to Exchange geeks (of which I’m not). It did set the stage for a session later in the morning.
Next was the Imaging Windows Vista session presented by Chris Henley of Microsoft. Talking through the progression of Microsoft imaging methods and technologies from MS-DOS 6.22 through Windows Vista (yes they had deployment tools for DOS). Creating and maintaining Windows Vista images will be much easier than it is today with Windows XP. Pretty cool too!
Mid-morning found me in The Unified Communications Technical Vision & Strategy session with Bob Williams of Microsoft. Bob walked us through Microsoft’s vision of what fully unified communications is and will be. I’d seen portions of this roadmap about two weeks ago at a local Microsoft IT Leadership Summit in Minneapolis. Very interesting… it’ll be fun to watch what happens in the telephony market later this year and in 2008. Big changes afoot.
After lunch I had a chance to sit down with some folks and provide some feedback on Office, Exchange, Windows, SharePoint, and Systems Management Server (I’m a big believer in SMS). It was fun, fast paced and lead to interesting discussions that never seemed to get finished in the time we had.
For the last session of the day, I choose What’s New in the 2007 Microsoft Office System? Client Feature Walkthrough hosted by Chris Avis, again of Microsoft. While Chris is a pretty good speaker, his enthusiasm of the product, and the unstructured nature of his presentation did not allow him to get as much info demonstrated in the time we had. He did cover a number of neat features of Outlook, Excel, OneNote, and a few Word features as well. Nifty stuff in Office 2007 for those that have not seen or worked with it yet.
Overall, a good experience; if you want a full list of the sessions available at the spring Connections 2007 conference, look here.
Technorati tags: Windows Connections, WinConnections, Chris Henley, Chris Avis, Bob Williams, Tony Redmond, Unified Communications, Unified Messaging
Apr 1, 2007 | blog
Good session so far! There are more features available in Windows SharePoint Service (WSS) 3.0 than I had realized. Lots of really neat things that you can do that I had previously believed was only available in the Office SharePoint Server 2007.
I had planned on setting up a virtual machine in the near future. This conference session only reinforces that plan. WSS is the basic glue for any real Microsoft based integrated productivity solution. Of course, that assumes that you buy into the entire Microsoft productivity strategy. That means, databases, messaging, office apps, client OS, server OS, backup, portal, web, etc… If one does buy in, it does work, and will impress.
At any rate, I’m looking forward to lunch in 30 minutes. Should be interesting, we’ll be eating at Hemingway’s here at the Hyatt Grand Cypress Resort. Nice place.
Technorati tags: Windows SharePoint Services, WSS 3.0
Session two called Goodbye RIS, Hello WDS presented by Jeremy Moskowitz of Moskowitz, Inc. covered Windows Deployment Services. Jeremy delivered a heck of a session diving into the differences of RIS to WDS, and how to leverage WDS for not only Vista and Longhorn, but also XP and 2003. Topics covered ranged from creating and managing boot images, to images, image groups, post install configuration, answer files, WinPE, BDD, and a smattering of useful tools for the enterprising admin.
After the coffee break, I went to Volume Activation 2.0 in Vista and Longhorn Server, hosted by Sean Deuby of Intel. A very interesting and very misunderstood feature of Windows Vista and Windows Longhorn is the activation schemes used by Microsoft. Sean demystified the process and the technology involved. There are several methods used for system activation and a good system architect will need to understand the needs of the business to decide on the best option. One learning from this – Volume Activation will be as important to your infrastructure as DHCP – prepare now. This was one very educational session, whether anyone wanted to hear it or not. Thanks Sean for delivering on a very difficult topic!
After the lunch break it was on to session four of the day. Cracking the DaVista Code: The Best Things You’re Not Using in Vista with Mark Minasi. This session delved into the hidden (or little-known) features of Windows Vista. Mark talked about things like the take ownership tool, elevated explorer, use of ALT in explorer, backup tools, using WinPE to backup systems to a network, tags & indexing, new built-in tools like RoboCopy, restoring missing UI features, new Windows Logo key shortcuts, resizing partitions, WAIK. All that and much, much more. If you ever get a chance to attend a Mark Minasi session – do it, he’s entertaining and educational. A hard combination to find in many seminars.
