Update: Unfortunately due to unprecedented demand, Microsoft have reached the capacity for User Group discounts and we are unable to accept any new requests. Early-bird registration is open until July 26 (5PM AEST), and regular registration is open until September 7th. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.

It's July again! Which, amongst other things, means it's getting cold. In unrelated news, TechEd Australia is just two very short months away.

As usual, we at AuTechHeads are super excited about this conference and the opportunities it provides for geeks such as us.

We are pleased to be able to offer a substantially discounted ticket to our members on behalf of Microsoft Australia. If you're a member of AuTechHeads, simply register your details in the form (closes August 2) and we will pass your details on to the generous folk at Microsoft.

Once Microsoft receive the minimum number of user group registrations (just thirty - so we're quietly confident) the offe ...

This is a crosspost from my blog at flamingkeys.com.

One of the people I was lucky enough to meet at Tech·Ed Australia 2011 was Mr Paul Cunningham, who runs the popular website Exchange Server Pro. Paul is one of the most respected names going around when it comes to Exchange, and he has the real world experience to back it up. As a favour to the community (and our profession) Paul has decided to produce a free (as in free beer) boot camp for those wanting to learn Exchange 2010. The boot camp consists of four modules  containing physical challenges, early morning runs, rope climbs*, text, screen shots and videos to help you learn the basics of Exchange Server 2010. Having worked through this boot camp myself, I can say that this is an invaluable resource for those getting started with Exchange Server, and also those who may have managed an Exchange environment but not installed one before.

Please make sure you check the boot camp out, and also be sure to stick Paul’s blog ...

Yes, we know it's next Monday, and a school night, but hopefully we will see you there!

Venue has been confirmed as Squires Loft City Steakhouse at 12 Goldie Place, Melbourne 3000, booked for 7.30PM.  RSVP is mandatory for numbers reasons, so please use the registration form below or tweet us.  Please hit either @hjmcmanus or @chrisbrownie up on Twitter.

Officical hashtag is #MelbourneMeatUp so check it out!

Link to map of venue here.

G'day All (and anyone else listening in),

Just a heads up to let you know that SMBiT Professionals Brisbane is running a Spotlight Session this coming Sunday (2011-10-23) at the Chalk Hotel in Woolloongabba where we're delving into Group Policy with Alan Burchill and Remote Desktop Server with Bryce Telfer as related (in particular) to an SBS 2011 environment.

The event will be streamed live for financial SMBiT Professionals members in our SharePoint site, under the Brisbane sub-site.

For everyone else, the event will be streamed free (of cost, password, however not advertisements) at:

http://www.justin.tv/hiltont

http://www.Ustream.tv/channel/SMBiTPro-Brisbane

So, feel free to get your geek on with us this weekend - the show starts around 10:00 AM and will be over just in time for us to watch the Rugby Union final!  :)

Our very own Simone "Kitty" Bennett - @kittenstix on Twitter - who's one of our awesome Core Team members, was the runner up in Microsoft's Women in IT Community Contributor of the Year Awards held on Wednesday 2nd September 2011, at Tech.Ed Australia!

Simone is a smart, intelligent, and knowledgeable woman that truly shows many of the qualities that women can bring to the IT industry, and I can't express just how deserving she is of this kind of recognition. I've gladly talked before about my own support for women in IT, but nothing could be better than seeing one of our own both nominated and recognised!

While she's hardly the type to put herself forward when it comes to community recognition, Simone easily wins the respect and admiration of many that know her. I'm very proud to call her a friend, but far more thrilled to see her lauded for her efforts!

Unfortunately I didn't catch the name of the winner, and I'd be happy to update with this - congratulations! I think the recognit ...

So, a few miffed tweets and a blog post or two, and I find myself picked up by itnews.com.au (totally without my knowledge, mind!), and the story grows legs, and takes off all on its own.  That said, I stand by what I have written, and I firmly believe that I have delivered an even handed and fair appraisal of what occurred from my personal perspective surrounding the issues with the Pre-Conference Technical Training at Tech.Ed Australia 2011. Bottom line, most delegates in the training did not get what they paid for.

Technical failures happen.  In our industry, we all have to deal with them.  In a previous blog, I made mention of the fact that a great organisation is made by how they respond to this sort of event.

As a result of my blogs and tweets, I had some chats and emails with people from Microsoft such as Jeff Alexander and Sarah Vaughan.  Both of these guys made every effort to apologise and to make sure that I was listened too and responded too ap ...

OK, so the journey continues on my Tech.Ed Australia adventure for 2011, and I must say that things are one heck of a lot better than yesterday.  Those that have been playing along from home, or keeping tabs via this site or on Twitter will have read from yesterday's blog that things did not get off to a very good start with the Pre Conference Technical Training Labs.

Attendees were basically served up crashing VMs, couldn't log on, or were forced to sit through an unfortunate barrage of 'Death by PowerPoint' sessions as a result of the SAN running the VMs having a hardware failure.  The trainers all did a great job of trying to save face and deliver meaningful content to the attendees, but at the end of the day, none of us paid the aforementioned $715.00 to attend a PowerPoint slide-deck-fest.

This morning, things were markedly different.  On arrival in my lab, I noted that the workstations we were using had been re imaged overnight to include all labs on ...

So my Tech.Ed Australia adventure is off to a very bumpy start so far.  I, along with a few hundred others, paid the princely sum of $715.00 (plus extra accommodation, food etc) to attend what should have been two fully packed days of learning and tech geekery.  Instead, we encountered death by PowerPoint, error messages such as "SYSTEM IS FULL - All of our available lab connections are in use at the moment, Please check back at a later time" and generally high levels of nerd-rage and frustration.

The day started off fairly normally - there was an introductory session, and info on the new stuff, complete with complex Visio diagrams and verbose PowerPoint slides.  We then progressed onto the first of the lab sessions, of which we were expected to complete three in around an hour and a half.  Simple stuff like adding server roles, creating users and OUs in AD.  Instead, we were served up with endless loading/progress bars, VMs that wouldn't start, and generally ...

Hi,

I thought this would be a good discussion point. I'm sure we have some readers who have a passion for I.T. but may not know where to start for their career, and there'd be some interesting stories on how some of us managed to get our way into the industry.

Personally, growing up I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do - but I did know that I liked computers, and spent a lot of time on them from a very young age. My Dad was a computer technician in the hardware and building PC's sense - so I sort of assumed I'd do that. After doing some work experience with him, and being put on a production line (he was higher up than that) being told to sort out a box of screws to different sizes, I decided I probably didn't want to be a computer technician after all.

After finishing high school, I then had an opportunity to do two weeks work at my Dad's new place of employment, where he was the systems builder and tester. I was excited to be earning $13 an hour back in mid 1999 but the j ...

Hello,

I thought I'd share with you my experience with taking the first steps to be Cisco certified. I didn't really know what to expect when I started, but hopefully for anyone else considering doing their CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Associate) or CCENT (Cisco Certified Entry Networking Technician).

This is part 1 of 2, as I've only gone so far as doing CCENT. It's half way to becoming a qualified CCNA, and a lot of good fundementals in general networking. To explain further, the first half of the CCNA course is called CCENT 1 (which is just CCENT) and the second half is CCENT 2. You can either do a seperate exam for CCENT 1 & 2, or just a full CCNA exam which contains questions from both courses.

At this point, I'll quickly mention that if you've done your CCNA pre 2007, the course changed and became a LOT harder. So if you see someone's resume listing CCNA, find out when they did it. Also, Cisco certs are only valid for 3 years unless you do another exam!

So what di ...

2 weeks ago, my employer realised that the best way to ensure the survival of the company was to shed staff. Not my ideal solution, considering that, as I was last in, I was one of the ones out. I don't know how they came to the decision, not do I want to, it was pretty hard for them to make - I have done it in the past.

So I started the campaign to get a new job. I scattergun replied to ads, and got quite a few rejections, the job has closed, you are overqualified, etc, etc. I have had a few interviews, and maybe one will drop. Anyway, one of the rejections blew me away. Apparently, I don't have enough experience in the canberra market, selling to businesses and govt. interesting.

I checked my resume, for a clue that may have brought this on. first job was in 1992, at an IT provider  (Communications wasn't sold by resellers back then) so, lets see... that means I have been selling to government and corporate in the Canberra market, to technical staff and CEOs for the past 19 years. < ...

Day after day, at the moment, we see examples of information leakage. I refer, of course, to the diplomatic cables being released by Wikileaks which is the target of so much media attention.

I wonder that no-one considers the ramifications of these revelations to ICT and to IT Managers, with all this information existing in digital form. I know that I certainly do, but many in both private and public enterprises simply do not. There is a legal and ethical minefield to consider though, both for the IT Manager and their staff, and for the broader organisation.

I must admit to falling on the side of information wanting to be free. I struggle with the notion of classifying information as secret and confidential, except where it directly relates to personal information or information that could put someone at risk.

That said, as an IT Manager, it is my job to look after information. It would be unethical - and potentially criminal - to release information under my custodianship ...

You have a Twitter account. You Facebook. You post on forums. But you don't have a personal website or blog. Does this mean you don't exist on the social landscape?

It's a topic I have been pondering for a number of weeks now, but I've finally put it together, after applying for the Telstra Windows 7 Phone Social review process. Now this isn't a whinge about not getting it, nor is it a suggestion of their preference in allocating positions (congratulations to those who did get chosen, especially the AuTechHeads regulars!). Rather, the process made me think about the topic a great deal. Which is why I'm here.

Having your own blog is a pretty decent undertaking. For it to be good, you must generate fresh content on a pretty regular basis, be a good writer, without necessarily making anything back on your investment of time and thought. However, blogging about your personal areas of interest, passion and experience can be a rewarding experience, especially knowing that your readers share your ...

The aim of the seminar series is to generate discussion between the small to medium business owners in our target regions and their existing IT consultants around utilising Virtualisation, Cloud, Communications, Green Technology and ...

The Open Source Developer Conference (OSDC) 2010 is being held in Melbourne. And like in previous years, Microsoft is one of the sponsors – and I will be attending. Right after I get off the plane to Pycon New Zealand.

The Pre-day will be held at the same venue (The Abbotsford Convent) on Tuesday 23rd November 2010

Initially as a random idea, that quickly sprouted into reality, Microsoft is sponsoring a PHP Pre-day. Having used PHP for nearly 10 years, now is a very interesting time. Different Frameworks and Content Management systems such as Joomla!, Drupal, Cake and WordPress (to name a few) and the maturation of the language itself makes keeping abreast time consuming.

There is no cost to attend, nor to present. Food, etc has been kindly sponsored by Microsoft. You will not be borg’d and powerpointed to death with Microsof ...

Since 1991, the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC10) has been the epicenter of Microsoft’s
biggest platform announcements. Leading-edge developers and architects gather to hear about the next
generation of Microsoft developer technologies.  The PDC isn’t just about content and sessions – it’s an
opportunity for you to talk with similar developers and technology leaders involved in making strategic
deci ...

[This is cross-posted at http://www.gnomeangel.com/ as a guest post there]

When @GnomeAngel asked me to write about Twitter,  I thought it would be really simple. As I pondered what it meant, I was very wrong.

Then, I saw a tweet from one of my favouritest humans ever:



Perspective. From a man who has been known for most of his life having his first name prefixed with the word "Weird".

I signed up for my first account 4 July 2007. 29,000+ tweets later (on that account alone), it's a fair call to say that I'm very close to being addicted and needing my own 12-step program. I now have 3 personal accounts (split to reflect the content & so as to not sully one stream of followers with info & views that may not be of interest to them); 1 account I set up for my team at work to share & connect with those we deal with; 1 parody account (which is a little ignored, but is there to u ...