TechEd 2014 Round Up
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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TheKrewe
PowerShell Pranks – Making Work Fun with Creepy Voices!
In every IT office I have worked in, pulling pranks co-workers has been a standard. They tend to be low-tech; co-workers leave their computers unlocked, change their background, and maybe change their Windows sound effects. They tend to be small and easy to revert.
We had an intern program over the summer in our office and a specific intern who wasn’t very wise when it came to locking his computer. We got him probably 10-15 times with a picture of David Hasselhoff in a thong. We also installed some fun Google Chrome add-ons that would change every image on the page to something else.
These got boring, which is very unusual when making someone have a sexy background. However, because we became so bored with it, we decided to take it a step further. We thought, wouldn’t it be cool to automate this with PowerShell? So our initial idea was changing the background to a random image. Looking through the ways of doing that was semi-complicated, and I was feeling lazy. So we ditched the idea, and it was on the back burner for a long time.
One evening I came home from work and stumbled upon this fantastic post on the PowerShell Sub-Reddit “A fun script for Friday – make your friend’s computer start talking to him/her.” To sum it up, it’ll use Text to Speech to have the computer talk. In the example posted, it used PowerShell Remoting. Using PowerShell Remoting for such a malicious intent may cross a line, depends on who the target is and how much you abuse it. In my case, the computers were not domain joined, and so I couldn’t use that as easily. So I decided to take my Friday night and make it quite a bit more “portable.”
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How the Microsoft TechEd Experience Changes with #TheKrewe
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
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. …
Now that #IAMKREWE, how the hell do I meet you?
As I sit here reflecting on my last 2 years being with #TheKrewe I was thinking. There are quite a few new people this year and the majority of you are probably like me when I joined and have NO IDEA how you are going to meet new people. So I’ve decided it would be good to share some helpful tips on socializing with other members of #TheKrewe
The Basics:
- Get on Twitter use hash tag #TheKrewe and #IAMKREWE
- Join IAMKREWE.org
- Join the Facebook Group
- Attend evening events (Ex: #TheKrewe Sunday Meet ‘N Greet, #TheKrewe Monday Mixer, etc)
Breaking Out of Shell:
Now this is where I have a horrible time and I am lucky enough to have already started meeting people online, once I’ve met someone online it makes it much easier for me to talk to them in person. You may be different and may be more outgoing than me and if that is the case you will be golden!
- When attending evening events
- Introduce yourself to other groups (Super hard for me to do)
- Start talking about work
- Find other people from same State/Country as you (I met 3 people from my State last year I didn’t know before!)
- Share your charging station, good chance to talk when you are waiting for a phone/tablet to charge!
Lets get Advanced:
- Find common interest, meet up other nights of TechEd
- See someone hiding in corner all quite? Go engage with them, make a friend even though they may not be the most social they are out at night so they want to meet people!
- Stay in touch after TechEd, never know when you need that Lync admin you met at TechEd
- Stay active on Twitter/IAMKREWE.org/Facebook group, these are friends for life now!
I know a lot of this is very general, but I can’t give you a set instruction on how to meet people, that is why I am so horrible at it! However if you are willing to help people, they are willing to help you. If you want to make new friends, so does everyone else at these evening events. If they didn’t they would stay hidden in hotel room playing with the new tech they learned that day.