PacITPros Takes on Los Angeles

The Pacific IT Professionals is pleased to be able to host “in-person” meetings in the greater Los Angeles area starting January 25, 2011. Jessica DeVita from UberGeekGirl and Joy Beland have generously donated their time and energy to make a meeting happen. Joy and Jessica will be leading up the group but they would love to have additional help if you have time and interest.

The kick-off meeting will be held at 6:30pm at the QuickStart training facility in El Segundo and expect to talk some tech with the meeting sponsor, StorageCraft. Also, Chris Henley with Microsoft will be presenting on general Microsoft technologies and what you gain by using them. Finally, Harold Wong with Microsoft will be presenting on Exchange. So don’t miss out on this great way to start of 2011!

Please keep in mind that the day of the week and the location may change as the group grows and becomes more established. Meetings are free and open to any IT professional, just join PacITPros the group (also free) to get meeting notices and RSVP information.

New Year = Second Year Microsoft MVP!

I’m excited to share that I’ve been awarded the Microsoft MVP award for the second year. 2011 is certainly starting out with a bang and I’m honored to spend another year as part of this great group of technical folks who are involved in supporting the community.

I’m looking forward to another great few days at the MVP Summit in February, catching up with the likes of Emily Freet, Stephen Rose and Jake Gray from Microsoft and some of my fellow MVPs!

She’s Geeky unConference – Early Bird Registration Ends 12/22

Are you a woman in an STEM (science, technology, engineering or math) field and looking to connect with other like-minded women? If so, you probably don’t want to miss the She’s Geeky unConference, especially if there is one planned for a location near you.

Starting off 2011 in San Francisco on January 28-30th, She’s Geeky will be held in the Mission, right near downtown. Score! I enjoyed the conference in Mountain View last year, but this makes it even better.

The early bird registration sale ends on Wednesday, so even if you register for all 3 days it’s a great price.

Upcoming Tech Events

In case you are lacking in some tech related places to be, here are a few good options for the upcoming week.

November 2nd – You should vote, of course. But when you are finished that, swing by the Pacific IT Professionals meeting in San Francisco. There will be a presentation from NetApp on storage solutions, followed by two Microsoft specific topics – BPOS (Business Productivity Online Suite) and MDOP (Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack). I’ll be doing the MDOP presentation, so if you aren’t sure what applications come inside that pack and what they do, this will be a great chance for you to get an overview.

November 3-4th – The gogoNet LIVE! IPv6 Conference in San Jose. I hear the pre-conference workshops are booked up, but it’s not to late to attend the 2 days of sessions on planning and transitioning to IPv6. I’ll be helping out with some of the conference logistics on the 3rd and am hoping to slip into a few of the presentations as well.

Today and the next couple Thursdays – Callahan, a Microsoft MVP and book author on SharePoint, is offering up several free webinar presentations on SharePoint Foundation. Today’s session is already started, but you might want to check out what she has to offer in the coming weeks. If I was migrating my current SharePoint WSS 3.0 installation to Foundations, I’d start my planning with anything Callahan has to offer.

Coming Soon! – Chat with MVPs, Learn about IPv6 and Hang with PacITPros

October is starting out with a bang. Here are a few upcoming events that you might want on your calendar. Please visiting their listed sites for more information or to register.

October 5th – PacITPros Monthly Meeting – This month they welcome Chad Scott, Solution Architect with Infoblox who will be going over their DNS/DCHP/IPAM solution plus their newest solution of NetMRI from the recent acquisition of Netcordia. Also featured will be Kenny Spade, Academic Developer Evangelist with Microsoft presenting on Windows Phone 7. This will be a sneak peak prior to the official launch date, so you will get to see the handset and OS in action.

Meeting location is at the Microsoft Office, 835 Market Street, Suite 700, San Francisco, CA 94103. Please RSVP at the www.pacitpros.org website.

October 14th – Chat About Microsoft Office and Windows with the MVP Experts, 10-11am PST -Would you like to learn more about the cool new features in Office 2010 and Windows 7 and what has changed since previous versions? Do you use Microsoft Office but would like to learn tips and tricks to be more productive at home, school or at work? Perhaps you are a new user who has questions on how to get started with Windows 7 or using the Office ribbon? Or would like to learn how to protect your computer from malware and viruses. Or perhaps you are just stuck and need answers.

The Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs) are here to help! The MVPs are the same people you see in the technical community as authors, trainers, user groups leaders and answerers in the Microsoft forums. For the first time ever we have brought these experts together as a collective group to answer your questions live.

MVPs will be on hand to take questions about Microsoft Office 2010 or Office 2007 products such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Access, Project, OneNote and more. As well as the Windows 7 and earlier versions such as Windows Vista. In addition to Microsoft Office, the chat will cover Windows related topics such as upgrading, setup and installation, securing your PC, Internet Explorer, personalizing your computer desktop or having fun with Windows Live Essentials to share photos, make movies and more. All levels of experience are welcome from beginners and students to intermediate power users.

Please join this informative Q&A style chat and bring on your basic and your tough questions!

November 2-4th – The gogoNET LIVE! and CAv6TF IPv6 Conference – With IPv4 addresses predicted to be depleted within 18 months we all need to start becoming familiar with IPv6. The California IPv6 Task Force is pleased to present the gogoNET LIVE! IPv6 conference at San Jose State University to:

– Get the knowledge you need from experienced IPv6 professionals
– Learn IPv6 theory in workshops
– Make useful technical contacts in the IPv6 world

This is the only local West Coast IPv6 event for the remainder of 2010 and it is right here in the Bay Area so take advantage of this opportunity to increase your knowledge on all things related to IPv6. gogoNET LIVE! is a live version of the gogoNET social network that has close to 30,000 IPv6 professionals as members.

Be prepared, don’t fall behind – this is your chance to get on the cutting edge of IPv6 deployment. Visit http://gogonetlive.com for details and to register.

Round Up: September Events and Windows Resources

As the summer draws to a close, here are a few thing that have caught my eye. Check them out and see for yourself.

First up, a comprehensive article on Redmondmag.com by Greg Shields on “Avoiding Active Directory Disasters“, particularly with Windows 2000 and 2003 versions of AD. It might just be time to do a little end of summer health check for an important component of your network.

PacITPros will be holding their monthly meeting tonight starting at 6pm. It’s not to late to RSVP and get in on the action. Compellent will be presenting on their data storage solutions and there will also be a presentation on the latest and greatest with Microsoft’s OCS.

On 9/30, don’t miss out on the Springboard Series Virtual Roundtable on migrating from IE6 to IE8 on Windows 7, starting at 9am. This virtual, interactive discussion will cover migration strategies, standards, and support for organizations moving from Internet Explorer 6 to Internet Explorer 8.

Finally, check in with the folks at TechNet on 9/22 when they host an in-person event on Deploying Windows 7 at the Microsoft downtown office in San Francisco. Learn more or register at TechNet Events Presents: Deploying Windows 7. This event will also be held in Irvine, CA on 9/20 and in Los Angeles on 9/21.

Don’t miss these Upcoming Events

PacITPros will be having there monthly meeting on August 3rd. PacITPros member Sam Bowne will be presenting a recap of items that came out at Defcon and Blackhat. Doug Spindler will be talking about security items related to the recent Microsoft Zero day exploits that have come out. Don’t forget to RSVP!

Coming up in early November, there is the SharePoint Intelligence one-day conference in Santa Clara. For $350, spend the day attending a variety of sessions and networking with others involved with SharePoint. I’m hoping I can score a little training budget from the office! If you are in Southern California, the event will be held in mid-September.

Wow…Time Flies!

When did it become June already?

The month started out with a bang – if you are a Bay Area techie, hope you didn’t miss out on the PacITPros meeting on June 1st. We enjoyed a presentation by Mark Vinokur with Citrix who covered XenDesktop and XenClient and demostrated how at Citrix, employees can simply subscribe to a service IT provides, and how IT can assemble the right desktop to the right user on the fly.

Next week, I’ll be heading out to New Orleans to attend TechEd. It’s going to be a busy week, but if you are going to be there, be sure to swing by the TLC area where I’ll be helping out at the Springboard booth. I’m hoping I’ll be able to find some time to blog about what’s going on and some of the sessions I’m planning to attend, so stay tuned!

Finally, I’m bummed that Microsoft has suspended 83-640 and is reverting back to 70-640 starting yesterday (June 2nd). Granted the exams cover the same skills and objectives, so it won’t affect your certification goals, but I really enjoyed taking that exam back in it’s beta days. It really felt like how I regularly worked and I thought it would really let IT Pros show their true colors while testing. Not everyone is a great standardized test taker and the simulation exam went a long way toward making the test close to “real-life”. I hope they work out the kinks and get it back online soon.

Even More Windows Events!

It must be conference season again, because I keep running across a variety of technical events that look valuable. Here are a couple more:

Windows Summit 2010 runs May 25-27 at the Microsoft Conference Center on Microsoft’s campus in Redmond, WA and is designed for people who engineer and test Windows 7 PCs, devices, and software. Three technical tracks (System, Device and Software) will to help you create the best systems, devices, and software using Windows 7 and Internet Explorer. For more information visit the website, registration is $399.

Also, the Launch 2010: Technical Readiness Series kicks off in late April. The event in San Francisco is on May 20th at the Embarcadero Hyatt, but check out the full city listings for other locations. The event will cover Office 2010, SharePoint 2010 and other products including Exchange 2010 and SQL Server. There are both IT Professional and Developer tracks available and this event is free, so register soon – these types of events fill up fast.

Finally, don’t forget the Pacific IT Pros regular monthly meeting tomorrow and the special TechDays Forensics session next week.

On the Tech Radar: Upcoming Events

Looking for some technology events for your calendar in the upcoming months? Here are a few that you might want to check out.

Start out April with the regular Pacific IT Professionals meeting on April 6th. Hear from Neustar about their Webmetrics and UltraDNS solutions. Also, PacITPros will also be having a special TechDays event on Computer Forensics on April 12th. Sign up soon to secure your spot!

A one day Windows Intelligence event is being held in Burlingame on April 26th, hosted by QuickStart Intelligence and Microsoft. Technical tracks include Windows 7, Server 2008 R2 and Virtualization, Exchange and Office.

On June 10th, the Microsoft and Citrix will team up and come to San Francisco to talk about desktop virtualization. Other cities and dates are on the schedule from now through June as part of the 2010 Virtualization Summit.

Finally, don’t forget some of the multi-day events, which are always a lot of fun – the Microsoft Management Summit in Las Vegas (April 19-23) and TechEd in New Orleans in June.