Techies have kids too

Without a bang!

One cannot say that Microsoft TechEd IT Forum in Barcelona ended with a bang, the last session stretched to 16:30, everyone collected their bags and many had checked out of their hotels in the morning and made their way to the airport for their flights back home.

There was no social after-party and it did not appear any had been arranged impromptu; I can understand that many companies having lost the physical presence of their techies for a week but kept them on leash through their Blackberrys, phones and ubiquitous laptops would not countenance the idea of a free weekend in the beautiful city of Barcelona, especially if they are paying.

Many were missing their young families already and that is if they did not have duties stacked up for them to do the moment they land back at home.

There were some that brought their families but they never had them for company except after the sessions which ended late every day.

Techies have kids too

One sight that impressed and amused me was a session called Internet Safety for Kids delivered by Laura Chappell, usually, when a session is full, the spillover is a monitor outside the door with probably 3 people observing the session, I even attending one like that.

This session had a large spillover, with people sitting on the floor outside, I would suppose this means a larger forum and place needs to be set up for such a seminar, next time. More importantly, if no one has ever noticed, techies, geeks, and propeller-heads are flesh and blood, like you and me, they breathe, they feel and they are human-beings affected by everyday things.

Wait for it! Techies have kids, nieces or nephews and they are just as concerned about technological advancements at work as they are about the safety of children when they roam the Wild-West of the Internet.

Besides, many are engaged in other activities as de-facto consultants at home, to neighbours, to schools and other community services that require learned people pro-bono to ensure their systems are safe and the users are even safer.

Internet Safety for Kids is where you can find information, material and detail about this presentation.

Server Core Command Prompt

I have always said I cannot be a UNIX geek because I do not have long enough hair to grow a pony-tail if any at all – Windows Server 2008 is taking us back to the days of the command prompt with a lightweight but extensible base installation called Server Core. [A new URL for the Server Core link was posted 02/04/2019 as I was informed of a broken link by Naomi Vojt of CompariTech. Thank you.]

Yes, you get a command prompt, you can use a Graphical User Interface if you elect to install a fuller version of Windows Server 2008, but this was geeky and we all need to dust off our command-line skills as a demonstration of edlin showed how long we had been in this line of work.

Anyway, it means respect has arrived at the door of Windows experts and now Linux town-criers who think the world revolves around their geekery might suddenly find themselves grudgingly admitting Microsoft buffs to the fold of nerds.

Advent of the management techie

If anything, all that I learnt at this forum was everything we do from this time on requires serious planning; point-and-click does not deliver solutions and technical people need to take on a management perspective of business needs and goals, and then tailor solutions to meet them.

Well, that has never been far from my mind and perspective, but there are many technical people who need to review how they see ones and zeroes and what makes a business gain competitive advantage through IT solutions.

Preparing for Microsoft TechEd IT Forum 2008 already – over and out!

The Vista from my Windows

Melee with meals

The past 5 days, one can say life has revolved between the hotel and the daily conferences which could be exhausting to say the least.

Despite the issues I have with the hotel I ventured into the hotel restaurant last night for a meal because I could not be bothered trawling the whole of Barcelona for a restaurant and a table for one.

As I got there, there was no way of knowing that one room was meant for groups and the other for non-groups, waiter spoke no English and reeled out probably 20 sentences to me on Catalan and I just looked at him like I had just seen an alien.

Eventually, someone came round to show to be some nondescript room with no atmosphere and left me there as if I was in detention. I managed the entrée and touched the main course, refused the desert, which left them worried that I did not like the food nor the service - this time someone from reception came up to chat and find out what was wrong.

Well, what I hated was the fact that being a lone eater the room should have had a bit more atmosphere, a waiter about, probably some music and maybe more people - in the end, eating alone takes away from the pleasure of dining and definitely, in my case, the food would not go down.

It is amazing that one is in Barcelona, an international city that once hosted the Olympics and has quite a big tourist throughput but very few people in the hospitality industry speak any English.

I believe

I attended 4 sessions again and Microsoft might just have won a convert and that is what I said about these events. They are like evangelistic crusades with apostles, prophets, teachers, evangelists and pastors preaching the gospel of Microsoft and performing miracles in the name of Microsoft.

The wonder, the excitement and hypnotism - you get carried along, carried away and voluntarily brainwashed as the mass hysteria consumes every opportunity to resist the urge to succumb - when I get back home, I would be installing Windows Vista.

I came here a sceptic and would be returning a believer; the cynicism has been cast out with evidence of glorious vistas of operation, performance and technical goodies you cannot ignore.

The jewel of the conference has to be Mark Russinovich; a super-geek that looks nothing like the geeks you know - the man knows the internals of Windows and how to look under the bonnet better than any Windows mechanic I have ever seen - he makes tools for every single thought or idea he might have had about extracting information from Windows about what is going on.

He leaves you wanting to go home and get your hands really dirty, solve problems by really finding out why the problem is there, break it down and then fix it up nicely, whatever session he has going, I think I would be lapping that up.

Blogging for whatever

I attended an afternoon session about blogging, and I have been thinking about how to do a bit of technical blogging and veer a bit away from the general stuff that I regularly write about.

I have not decided if I should host that on a separate blog and leave that in this setup; the panel views differed on that matter, but the most important advice was to keep your personality within what you do.

Obviously, people blog for all sorts of reasons, some are fully technical and others are light-hearted - there is a broad spectrum of opinions and views.

Quality and quantity really depends on what you are writing about and they are relative issues, it appeared my blogging frequency was a lot higher than those on the panel, but then I suppose if I had to write purely technical stuff, I might not be delivering stuff with this kind of regularity.

Someone asked about blogging trolls, people whose existence is exemplified by rotten commentary and rude inserts - we agreed that each person's blog space is purely theirs and people who do not respect that principle do not have to be acknowledged.

Whilst I accept anonymous comments I expect people who leave negative insulting comments to also present an identity, if not, I just delete the stuff. If you cannot stand by what you have to say, you are a non-person and non-entity - whilst I would know your IP address, it is a waste of time giving such people time.

If I do go technical with some of my blogging entries, I would suppose it would still revolve around my experiences with analogies, allegories and inferences - I suppose that is the best way to blog - your views and well-researched opinions about how you observe things or how things affect you.

TechEd IT Forum a must

On already with the last day of Microsoft TechEd IT Forum and I am already planning for next year - thankfully, I do not have to run the gauntlet of corporate inertia in arranging for these conferences, I would expect any technical mind that manages and builds infrastructure in the enterprise should be here.

If only CIOs and IT Managers realised that this is no freebie holiday jaunt but an essential element career development that their staff should enjoy. I mentioned this at work months ago, but it all fell through for them and many other projects do because of the lack of adequate exposure to how things are done implemented elsewhere.

References

Mark Russinovich

Four stars or four tries

Four starts at nothing but annoyance

As you approach the main entrance to my hotel you see a sign that appears to have 4 stars, well, do not be cajoled into thinking you are in a 4* star hotel because that sign could have easily fallen off a lorry or been acquired at a car-boot sale.

Seriously, I am now under no illusion about that as I returned from a long day at the conference, I was in the lift with one of the housekeeping staff at about 19:30; little did I know that she would bound out of the lift and make a bee-line to my room to clean it.

So, for 15 minutes I waited for the lady to do what she should have done before 14:00 whilst the reception commiserated but had no clue as to how a room vacated at 7:30 in the morning only saw the feather duster 12 hours later.

Four sessions of info-drowning

It was 4 sessions again out of 5, though many were caught out by a session that indicated something about infrastructure but was entirely about something else called Groove 2007, we should read the small print a lot more - I made my excuses and left to catch the tail-end of something more interesting.

The country parties sealed up the day and I went to the Netherlands drinks when with hindsight I should have considered alternatives not so much related to where I live but other parts of my heritage, like the UK party being English or the World party for counties that did not have critical mass - at least everything would have been in English.

I am getting embarrassed about being an Englishman abroad and I am not as responsive to hearing things said in Dutch, it would have to be more lessons or a new location.

Once again, I see solutions and new problems, it is all going to take a lot of thinking about before anything gets rolled out - play, I must, learn, I should and I must avoid the dangers of information overload.

Skirting the issue

Ladies and Gents

I once was in an office block where the gents and ladies alternated on each floor just in case one column of drainage went out of order, however, there was once a time when some playing a prank switched the signs between the ladies and the gents.

Being one to check the signs even though subconsciously one knows which is which, I ended up in the ladies that was the gents and wondered what that extra bin was about - it took a call to facilities management to sort it all out.

So imagine when the big sign outside shows gents and you find that there are no urinals and all the cubicles have those extra bins apart from the fact that each door to the cubical has the internationally known sign for the lady and definitely, it looks like one is really skirting the issue of gender representation.

Expect Windows Scenic

That is not all, we have Windows everywhere but looking out still, not one is keen on the vista at least not till it gets quite scenic and that would not be for a while. Every time a speaker asks if there are Windows Vista installations out there, nary a hand goes up.

Well. Everyone is wary of that thing, in fact, much as the trumpeting of the features and qualities are almost too deafening to hear anything else, I learnt at the beginning of my IT career that I do not want to belong to the group of those they call "Fools Rush In". Basically, when it comes to operating systems, the smart money is not to boldly go where no one has gone before, but to see from afar the ones that have fallen and then chart your course round their mistakes and experiences.

Let someone else find out if the world is flat before you get on your boat and fall off the edge, I would be rolling out Windows Scenic when it arrives as an update to Windows Vista - meanwhile, I would toy and play with it.

Tradeoffs with the Taliban

The day was quite eventful and I attended 4 sessions, I failed to get into a hands-on lab for a product I believe solves a lot of my problems but there are other things I want done that it does not cover. It is strange to witness the fanfare accompanying one product and then hear questions that make the product look almost half-baked, that is life.

In lieu of the hands-on lab I happened upon a security treats and trade-offs seminar and boy, that was engaging, entertaining and enlightening - who would have thought with the Security Taliban I grapple with at work, security could be so refreshing.

This morning, I am numero uno for the hands-on lab. Off I go.

Beating the hands in Barcelona

Into the groove

What an eventful day it has been, so much information and what one would do to absorb it all and be able to apply it to situations and circumstances one finds back in the wild jungle of work.

I arrived at the conference centre more or less better prepared for the journey and since the keynote address was in the afternoon, one did not have to run the gauntlet of rush-hour traffic or crowds.

I must say the issue of seating has really not been addressed, there were lots of people sitting on the floor and sometimes it was like a rush for seats, for a person like me who uses a cane, there are times one was tempted to put on a poor puppy face to create the compassion that allows others to yield their hard-earned comfort for my pleasure.

I saw some old work colleagues and even joined one for lunch which started quite early and in the middle of lunch a drummer team started a cacophony I initially did not appreciate.

Having lunch early was essential because the keynote speech was going to attract the largest audience of the conference and in our seats were these coloured "scroll-holders" which had me thinking we would be asked to look through one end and see the narrow perspective of our objectives - I found out a lot more, later.

Drums from Africa

The drummers then took the stage, I am always amused when African percussion is offered as entertainment in Europe without the accompaniment of dancers and I was quite impressed with the two Caucasians in the ensemble who gave quite a performance considering I have never thought my white brothers appreciated tribal or native rhythms - I must now disabuse that thought.

The drumbeats almost had me getting up to dance as I feared the gods might be angered at the absence of human frenzy and festive hysteria to what might have well been the call to animist worship, but with no Shamans, no witch-doctors around possible wrath loomed.

I recollect that the music playing before they arrived on stage had a Nigeria flavour to it, with some lines in Nigerian Pidgin English and other words in Yoruba giving that crude feeling of being at home but still far away in Barcelona.

The gods would have been pleased when those scroll things were inculcated in the entertainment as we held them in one hand and hit the other to a rhythm dictated (conducted) by one of the white drummers, then it began to make sense and rhythm too - there were six colours and of different lengths arranged along different columns of the auditorium creating a phonic atmosphere and the game began.

We could all have hit our hands sore in self-flagellation thorough the willingness to participate and it was great fun that came to a crescendo with an emphatic and loud YES at the end of it all.

Suddenly, you see that a lot of planning does go into these participatory things and the more fool for those who refused to join in the almost juvenile atmosphere.

Talk sweet talk hoarse

The keynote started off nicely with quite a number of demonstrations of the future as Microsoft presents it, then another session to detail how the implementation of the new server software would affect our infrastructure.

I felt sorry for the presenter of the session on Microsoft Forefront a security product which I strongly feel should be integrated in other robust security platforms, he must have had acute laryngitis, after many sips of water, it appears he just downed his cough syrup like I do; bottle-to-mouth and gulp till you have but a drop to spare. Well, not as much from what I could see.

The welcoming reception was in the exhibition area as we walked past another group of this time, Spanish guitar players doing Catalan folk songs where my lesson in yo-yo manipulation still had this old dog unable to learn new tricks, the canapés and finger-food was quite nice and I think it is time to call it a day - tomorrow starts at 9:00 and it does not end will the sun is down.

Coming out of it a human-doing

Thanks

First I like to thank those who have dropped by with comments which have served as comfort in a personally tumultuous time.

It is strange that my discomfiture has been worse when I have had a second to think at work rather than when I am in the safety and warmth of my home.

What has surprised me is my delayed reaction to this matter, it happened almost 4 weeks ago, but it was only at the beginning of this week that many of the implications started to sink in.

There is anger, self-pity, loss of control, a fuzzy focus and denial but one must needs gain focus and assume control of these affairs – my head cannot afford to cede control to my heart for too long – meanwhile, I have a life to live and too much energy to going into autopsies and hugging cadavers. Yuk!

I find myself agreeing with an analysis made on the My Family sitcom, I am not only a human-being, I am also a human-doing, I have to be doing something and hopefully something exciting, challenging, new and different. I still need to learn to be a proper human-being regardless of what I am doing. [Context of human-doing here is not hedonism or materialism but elements of being a control freak – I honestly do not think I am a control freak, just as a drunk would not confess to being an alcoholic.]

Getting into exciting stuff

We all have to find ways of dealing with these matters in our different ways and I see some major decisions coming because I need new compelling challenges not distractions to close this chapter properly and open a new one.

Again, it is work related but it would be mixing work with pleasure, I would be off to Barcelona in November for the annual “religious” camp-meeting of senior geeks in Microsoft tools and software – I would not say I am a geek per se, but I do think geeky stuff and sometimes do geeky stuff.

The camp-meeting once called Microsoft TechEd and now called Microsoft TechEd IT Forum is a big tent meeting of technology movers, designers and architects using Microsoft solutions, you can imagine that apostles, prophets, teachers, evangelists and pastors of the Microsoft doctrine would be whipping up hysteria and excitement sharing the purposes and strategies that people like us have contributed to the pool of knowledge that Microsoft adapts for local, enterprise and global solutions, it could be great fun.

An enduring experience

I was last at a Tech Ed event in Amsterdam in 1999, it was year of great change with SMS 2.0, Windows 2000, Active Directory and .NET being introduced and made accessible to us.

This year in Barcelona, it is Microsoft Vista which I believe is not ready for enterprise deployment for many reasons including the fact that the support infrastructure is not wide enough to handle user issues and enquiries, System Centre which covers all management and administration issues – these are the areas I am quite interested in.

At the end of the forum, I should be buzzing with Microsoft miracles to unleash on projects under my remit – I am definitely looking forward to that, 5 days of camp-meeting out of a 9-day holiday.

My revival has begun!