I am stepping away from community

This all happened rather suddenly, the realization that I didn't want to lead nor be as involved in community and user groups. It has been such a part of what I have done over the years that it surprised me how much I was in auto pilot around doing things for user groups and how much personal time and energy (and money) I was spending on community activities.

Several things have happened since I made this decision. First, I have formally retired out of the Microsoft MVP program (withdrew my renewal for 2014 - my renewal quarter is July). I have been awarded 10 years in a row (first in 2004) and I felt because I was stepping away from community activity it wasn't proper to be accepting something that is at it's core a community contribution award. I have fond memories of attending many MVP Summits - I will miss seeing many of those colleagues in person.

Second, I also retired out of the Springboard Technical Experts Panel (STEP) as that is focused on engaged local community members who are driving events and content. Clearly I will not be doing any of that anymore either. The Springboard group had been idle for almost the last year so I felt with its renewed kickoff recently my stepping off the group would allow them to add some more energized and active folks.

Third, I am retiring from Pacific IT Professionals, the IT Pro user group I have helped run for over 15 years. This user group was one of the reasons I became a Microsoft MVP and has lead to many wonderful relationships over the years. I wish all those involved with the group the best of luck and I hope it develops some of the next Microsoft MVP's and continues to have impact.

So, what will I be doing? I will still be involved in IPv6, I still find it very interesting and technically relevant to what is happening to the Internet today. So, for now, I will be staying on with the California IPv6 Task Force. In addition, I will tracking cloud technologies and what is happening in that market. Everything else is undetermined. I hope to have more free time to explore new things that are personally interesting to me.

For those that know me and are wondering why, I can only say I have been burnt out for several years and I reached the breaking (the "I'm too tired") point this month. I made the decision over a weekend and I sent out the emails retiring myself out of everything right after that. The last things to do are clean up the blog to remove some logos etc. after July as I will no longer be an MVP or on STEP. It was time, I acted on that, now on to the next adventure!
- Ed

Join me at TechDays in San Francisco happening June 5-6

 

I'm excited to be participating in TechDays in San Francisco happening June 5-6. You can't ask for a better line up of speakers and sessions. It is two days, 4 tracks per day and just some amazing content. The entire schedule is available up on Eventboard (mobile app) and it is the best way to figure out who is presenting and the session abstracts.

The remarkable part of this regional conference is the quality and level of speakers they get who also present at events like Microsoft TechEd, TechMentor, Windows Connections, and many other key conferences. Oh, and one of the best parts of this conference? It is only $200 for two days and there is limited time to sign up. All the proceeds go to help fund raise for Pacific IT Professionals, a non-profit IT pro user group to run their monthly user group meetings so come help them out!

So join me in San Francisco at the Microsoft office and hear from industry experts about IT, DevOps and all the interesting innovations happening in the industry today, like PowerShell!
- Ed

Second Annual TechDays happening May 2-3, 2013 - only 3 weeks left to sign up!

Pacific IT Professionals will be hosting the second annual TechDays conference in San Francisco May 2-3, 2013. Really excited this is happening, specifically because the speaker line up this year is fantastic. The topics range from PowerShell (with two separate PowerShell MVP's coming to present - Jeff Hicks and Aleksandar Nikolic) to Cloud (Private and Public) to Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8.

Mark Minasi is returning and will be incredible as always and we will be welcoming some DevOp sessions with Glenn Block and Richard Campbell. Darren Mar-Elia is returning so those that need their Group Policy fix should be sure to attend. To add to the fun we will be having a Women In Technology (WIT) panel with Christa Anderson, Jennelle Crothers, Jessica DeVita and Laura Hunter and being moderated by Richard Campbell to be recorded for RunAs Radio. Almost all the speakers presenting at this conference are either Microsoft blue badge or Microsoft MVP's and are regular speakers at other conferences like Microsoft TechEd, TechMentor and Windows Connections.

Overall, I can't emphasis enough what an incredible bargain this conference is given what the quality of sessions (4 tracks running over 2 days) will be so go register now. It is limited to the first 200 registered attendees and that is it! The sessions are all available up on EventBoard which is available for iPhone, Android and Windows Phone in addition to a native Windows 8 app. A summary of the sessions is also up on the website.

I hope I will see you there!
- Ed

Techdays SF - VPN Session Presentation

For those that attended my VPN session at TechDays SF at Microsoft today, thank you. I am making available my handout which is a reference guide to go along with my presentation. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions and make sure to fill out your surveys about the sessions.
- Ed

Less then two weeks until TechDays SF

I am co-chairing a regional IT Professional conference in San Francisco called TechDays SF. The conference is going to have some amazing speakers (many who present at Microsoft TechEd and other major IT conferences across the US) and I encourage you to check out their bios and the session abstracts too. The conference is at Microsoft's San Francisco office and is Thursday March 22nd and Friday March 23rd from 9am to 5pm both days. The TechDays website has all the details so I won't rehash it all here but please do plan on joining us, it should be a great event!
- Ed

Microsoft Private Cloud

Every hardware and software manufacture has a different definition and thoughts around cloud, both public and private. Few are big enough to have impact on the industry in any meaningful way. Some who do that come to mind are Cisco, Amazon, Apple, VMware, Citrix and Microsoft.

On Tuesday evening (Oct 4th) at the monthly PacITPros event in San Francisco Chris Henley (@chrisjhenley) with Microsoft will be presenting on Microsoft's approach to private cloud. If you are interested at all in what Microsoft is doing, what direction and strategy they are utilizing and how it will impact you then this is a presentation not to miss. Chris is a great speaker and is honest and open about what he can share. The great thing about Chris is that he and his teammates (IT Pro Evangelist in the Developer Platform Evangelist group) all do practical hands on projects and labs with the OS and help in developing solutions that make sense for IT Pros.

So if you haven't RSVP'ed for the monthly San Francisco meeting go do it now, you get free pizza and a chance to hear first hand how Microsoft will be approaching private cloud, what more could you ask for?
- Ed

Presenting in Los Angeles on Deploying IPv6 in Microsoft Enterprise Networks

On Tuesday, September 20th at 6pm I will be in downtown Los Angeles at the Pacific IT Professionals User Group meeting presenting on Deploying IPv6 in a Microsoft Enterprise Network. In addition, Richard Hicks (fellow MVP) will be presenting on DirectAccess. I'm excited that Jessica DeVita (another MVP!) who runs the group invited me to come and present. If you are in Los Angeles and want to come join us the event is free to attend and you can sign up at their MeetUp site.

I will post the presentation after the event, I'm still updating some of the content. A quick abstract for my presentation.

Abstract: The presentation is focused on the basic deployment items that system and network administrators need to pay attention to for Enterprises networks that are primarily Microsoft focused. Topics covered include default IPv6 behavior of different Windows OS's, when transition technologies are enabled, what Microsoft products will use IPv6 and deployment guide modifications for Exchange, DirectAccess, Forefront UAG and TMG. In addition, if time allows, some design challenges around DHCP and DNS and how Windows 7 will behave vs Apple OSX or Linux implementations.

Hope to see you there!
- Ed Horley - Microsoft MVP - Windows IT Pro

Presenting Deploying IPv6 in a Microsoft Enterprise Network at Pacific IT Professionals

I will be presenting an updated version of my Rocky Mountain IPv6 Task Force presentation tomorrow at the Pacific IT Professional User Group meeting at Microsoft's office in San Francisco on August 2nd. It is a free and open meeting to attend. Only request if for everyone to RSVP so they know how much pizza to order. Hope to see you there.
- Ed

Happy 4th of July, another year of being an MVP & more PacITPros stuff

On July 1st I received an email stating I was renewed for my 8th year as a Microsoft MVP. It's an honor every time to be awarded. The wonderful part was that my friend Jessica DeVita was awarded this year also, her first time as an MVP.


Springboard Series Technical Expert PanelSpeaking of Jessica, she has been working on running PacITPros down in the LA area and is hosting a big Microsoft Springboard event for Stephen Rose on July 12th on Deployment - sign up if you are in the area for the Microsoft Partner Conference as it is just down the street at the Microsoft downtown LA offices.

Tomorrow is our regular monthly San Francisco meeting. We will be having OpenDNS presenting at the Microsoft offices in San Francisco. RSVP for the PacITPros event and come participate in the largest IT Pro User Group in the San Francisco Bay Area - best part is that it is free.

As a final note, my thanks and gratitude to the men and women who serve in the armed forces, they allow us to celebrate this wonderful 4th of July under the watch of their dedication to liberty and freedom. Time to go put up our American Flag out front!
- Ed

PacITPros meeting tonight will have live demo of IPv6 RA flood DOS for Windows 7 and Server 2008

If you are interested in seeing the behavior hands on for the Windows 7 and Server 2008R2 IPv6 RA flood denial of service then you need to show up at tonight's Pacific IT Professionals user group meeting in San Francisco. Sam Bowne will be showing off this simple but effective DOS. I have a feeling there will be more IPv6 specific issues found over the next year or two simply because not enough folks have been testing IPv6 on a regular basis. Hope to see you there.
- Ed

Pacific IT Professional San Francisco Meeting - Feb 1st

I will be hosting the PacITPros meeting in SF tomorrow at the Microsoft offices. On deck will be Citrix and AppSense going over how you can build some killer VDI solutions for iPad and lots of other platforms.

In addition, Microsoft will be presenting on their System Center product lines and some of the related products. Hopefully we can then get them back in to do a technical deep dive on a specific System Center product that the group finds most interesting.

Hope to see you there, as always the User Group meetings are free to attend. Please RSVP at the website so we know how much food to get.
- Ed

Pacific IT Professionals - Microsoft SIR and Terminal Services presentations

I got to present at the last Pacific IT Professionals meeting at Microsoft's office in San Francisco about network edge filters. The presentation was a summary of my Bogon blog post plus using the RFC's for network edge filtering so nothing new. The slide deck was mainly a single diagram to have a talking point to generate discussion. You can get the deck here at the PacITPros website.

It was nice to present but there were two excellent presentations worth mentioning that happened at the same meeting. The first was from Joanie Rhine with Microsoft regarding Microsoft's Security Intelligence Report (SIR) and an overview of it's results, the presentation is available on the PacITPros website here.

The second was a Terminal Services presentation by Jennelle Crothers that is really good, talks about replacing Citrix with a simple Microsoft only solution and some of the challenges and differences there are between the two. You can find that presentation at the PacITPros website also, here.

Sorry for the delay on the blog post about the meeting, I managed to get a horrible cold that knocked me out for a few days. Put a damper on updating the site.
- Ed

Pacific IT Professionals - User Group Craziness

It is official, I have been the sponsor coordinator (the person who make arrangements for vendors to pay and present at our monthly IT Pro user group meetings) for 6 years now. Somehow I have managed to get a lot of companies to come present and sponsor our group over the years and I want to thank them for being so generous and also seeing the value in coming to talk to a user group.

I've been involved with PacITPros (formerly SFNTUG) for well over 10 years now and have meet and had the pleasure of knowing a ton of people due to my time in the group. I also helped run and do the same roll over at TVNUG before we ran out of steam and I am involved with the East Bay Cisco User Group and the Silicon Valley Cisco User Group which I highly recommend for those that are involved with networking at all.

So, with any luck I will still be doing this in another 6 years and PacITPros will still be going strong. I've been fortunate to watch in grow from 20-30 folks meeting at a law office in the Embarcadero Center to well over 70 people per meeting per month with several thousand on the mailing list. A quick thank you to Doug Spindler (President) for trusting me to get sponsors, Jennelle Crothers for dealing with the pizza, raffle items and general organization of the group, Blaine Busse for dealing with troublesome folks who might show up from time to time, Robert Riebs for giving time and sweat to help keep Doug organized and to lots of others in the group who make the whole user group experience worth the time and effort.
- Ed

PacITPros - Microsoft Server Feedback event tomorrow evening

Tomorrow evening PacITPros will be hosting their regular monthly meeting however this one is very special.

Quick quote from the announcement:
"The Windows Server product and planning groups are joining us on May 5th to meet face-to-face with PacITPros members and capture valuable feedback related to your future IT business priorities. Your input will help establish the foundational feedback that will drive planning activities for Windows Server going forward."

The best part is all you have to do is RSVP on http://www.pacitpros.org and you can participate. So if you are in the San Francisco Bay Area you really should sign up to attend, this is a very rare and unique opportunity. We've even had internal Microsoft employees sign up to be able to give their feedback to this group.
- Ed