Reflecting on Ignite 2015 – The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

By MattG / May 18, 2015 June 1, 2020 / Microsoft, Out-of-Band Post

I know I am late to the game, Ignite ended over a week ago! I would just like to share my perspective on how the week went, as it was quite different than I am used to. This year I went to Ignite as Staff, I’ve never worked a conference, let alone one the size of Ignite.

Note: I thought it would be a good idea to shave - not doing this again for a long time! — Note: I thought it would be a good idea to shave – not doing this again for a long time!

My week of Ignite actually started quite early, I arrived Friday May 1st in the evening to Chicago. My first thought it holy cow I’m going to hate Chicago, they had the NFL Draft going, and traffic was crazy. I’ve been to Chicago before but did not remember how much traffic there was! After missing a turn and adding an additional 20 minutes to my 2 1/2 hour drive from Indianapolis I was ready to unwind in the hotel. Check-in was fairly easy, aside from the long wait to check in.

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TechEd 2014 Round Up

By MattG / May 21, 2014 June 1, 2020 / Microsoft

TechEd has come, and TechEd has gone… there were some cool announcements and some disappointments in the overall conference. Let’s start with the cool announcements and fun things that did happen at Microsoft TechEd 2014.

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PowerShell v4 Desired State Configuration Deep Dive

By MattG / June 30, 2013 June 1, 2020 / Administrator, Microsoft

During my time at Microsoft TechEd many new things were announced. My all time favorite announcement was PowerShell v4. There are many great things coming out with PowerShell v4, things that I haven’t really gotten a chance to dig into much yet. However the one of the few things I have run through would be the Desired State Configuration which I will refer to as DSC throughout this blog.

DSC is a way to manage the configuration for multiple servers utilizing a single script for the deployment. In the example I will use is managing an IIS Configuration across multiple servers. However as the DSC is developed there will be other usability options for this. …

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How the Microsoft TechEd Experience Changes with #TheKrewe

By MattG / June 18, 2013 June 1, 2020 / Microsoft, Out-of-Band Post

The last three years I have been extraordinarily lucky that I have been able to attend Microsoft TechEd. Every year I have participated in a group known as #TheKrewe and I have striven to force myself into social situations more and more every year.

What is #TheKrewe?

“The Krewe is a community organized professional networking group. Our mission is to build a dynamic networking community through various activities and gatherings. The Krewe primarily meets at Microsoft TechEd North America every year where we have The Krewe Meet ‘N Greet the day prior to the opening of the conference. Our group takes Networking to a whole new level, we are all close friends and are open to helping each other in any way possible be it through charitable works or by helping solve a question that has you stumped in your professional life. We are IT people from every level of the career, you may find someone totally new to IT who is just starting off or meet someone who has 20 years’ experience and is an MVP, MCT, MCP and any other abbreviation you can think of.”

– IAMKREWE.ORG

Year 1 Experience

My first year at Microsoft TechEd was in 2011 and I was still a student in college. I had no idea what I was doing attending this conference, I just knew I was excited and I was ready to learn. As the conference approached I realized I wanted to find evening parties as much as possible… after all I was 21 and who doesn’t love free drinks? …

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Summarizing The Microsoft TechEd Experience 2013

By MattG / June 17, 2013 June 1, 2020 / Microsoft, Out-of-Band Post

Two weeks ago I was lucky enough to be sent to Microsoft TechEd by the company I work at. It was such a busy week and another week of catching up with real life I am just now getting around to blogging about TechEd.

Warning: Long blog post!

This summarization of TechEd does not do a justice to how fantastic the experience is and how much you learn while there. …

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