Category Archives: Community

I’m Attending The 2013 MVP Global Summit

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Well, that time of the year is getting closer again. It’s something different, unique and somewhat exclusive. It’s the 2013 MVP Global Summit!

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For this summit MVPs from all over the world converge on Bellevue/Redmond near Seattle. The summit takes place on and around the Microsoft campus. To discuss their favorite & most important MSFT technologies in depth amongst each other and with Microsoft staff.

I have the good fortune of being able to attend again this year. I have to express my thanks to our top management for this Smile. This is very valuable to both me and my employers. It’s also fun to discuss the technology you work with amongst so many like minded people in the same business. The amount of knowledge sharing, insights and ideas around Redmond creates a stimulating buzz and I loved every moment of it last year. I met many great professionals and interesting people with whom, from breakfast till after dinner drinks, we had a truckload of interesting discussions. It’s a bit of a geek fest.

So I’m looking forward to all this and also to meeting up again with some MSFT employees and professionals from the Seattle area I got to know last time.

The MVP summit is also a good time to pass feedback from others on to Microsoft as well. You’re not in the drivers seat when it comes to the direction Windows and Hyper-V will take. However, you cannot have your opinions taken into consideration unless you let them be be heard. So, please feel free to share any remarks, feedback, feature requests you’d like to the virtualization, cluster, storage, file share, network, etc. product teams to know. You can post them in the comments for all to see. To shy to post it publicly? You can send me a e-mail via the contact form on my blog or direct message me via @workinghardinit on twitter.

Now the entire summit is under NDA (Non Disclosure Agreement) but that doesn’t mean it’s a pure diplomatic mission. We all love the technology, that is for sure, but we also  pass along the bad and the ugly next to the good. It’s not marketing or indoctrination,if it was MVPs would not spend the time an money to attend.

That’s where the words “independent” and real world” comes into play. We’re not a bunch of fan boys. The communication is both ways and I think that make this event extra valuable to both parties. I’m looking forward to the 2013 MVP Summit and I have a lot of feedback and questions based on using Windows Server 2012 and Hyper-V in real live.

E2EVC Hamburg 2012 Video Interview

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In November 2012 during Experts2Experts Virtualization Conference in Hamburg a couple of fellow MVPs (Aidan Finn  aka @joe_elway, Carsten Rachfahl aka @hypervserver, Thomas Maurer aka  @ThomasMaurer) I delivered a keynote and a master class on Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V. During some down time at the conference we took the time to do some podcast interviews with Florian Klaffenbach form Dell aka @FloKlaffenbach.  We also sat down for a video interview on our beloved subject. Carsten Rachfahl was the interviewer/director and did a great job, for which I’d like to thank him in this post as he’s been doing a bunch of them over the years and it’s nice to see the results of the time he puts into them.

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Subjects include converged networking, migration paths, Cluster Aware Updating and the very capable Windows 8 hypervisor we can now enjoy for free.

A New Year and it came with a Microsoft MVP Renewal for 2013

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I’m a January 1st MVP. That means that on the 1st January I get an e-mail that brings news of a renewal or not … so apart from celebrating the new year relaxing a bit we also keep an eye on our inbox. This is what arrived just now:

Dear Didier van Hoye,
Congratulations! We are pleased to present you with the 2013 Microsoft® MVP Award! This award is given to exceptional technical community leaders who actively share their high quality, real world expertise with others. We appreciate your outstanding contributions in Virtual Machine technical communities during the past year.
The Microsoft MVP Award provides us the unique opportunity to celebrate and honor your significant contributions and say "Thank you for your technical leadership."

Mike Hickman
Director
Community Engagement
Microsoft

Great news to start the new year with. While you get the MVP reward for contributions over the past year to the community I must say that being active in the community is a very rewarding endeavor in itself. For my job I need to figure out a lot of things and I like to share them, including my mistakes, for the benefit of all. Sharing means communication, which leads to questions and discussions that help all of us gain a better knowledge of how things work. It’s not one way traffic. They say there is no better way to learn a subject that to teach it or write a book on it. I think that holds true. Heck, “just” doing a presentation on one subject helps. There’s a constant stream of new capabilities and options that can be leveraged to achieve our goals and being able to discuss these with so many experts from different environments makes a lot of difference in wrapping our heads around it all.

It also helps me be better at my job. So it also helps my employers. In that respect I have very good bosses. They invest in their people without hesitation. They don’t fear the possibility that we might leave for greener pastures. Instead they focus on getting the best out of us and support this actively. Pretty smart and we all gain something from this, as this makes for a very nice green pasture to stay on and they get knowledgeable, motivated employees.

I’m very happy and I’m looking forward to seeing many of my fellow MVPs in Redmond in February for the 2013 MVP Global Summit. Last year’s summit was very educational. It was also a blast to meet so many people in real life for the very first time and talk shop. Thank you all for the opportunities, the challenges and the continuous learning journey.

To conclude I wish all my community buddies and readers a wonderful and happy 2013!

I’m Presenting At The Belgian TechDays 2013

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A little end of year news flash for you all. I already mentioned the contribution the local Belgian MVPs and MEET members are making to the TechDays in 2013 and now I can tell you I’m joining them for a presentation as well on March 7th in the 16:15-16:30 time slot . In the talk Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V Networking Evolved I’ll be discussing some of the network improvements in Windows Server 2012. Some are very well known others a bit less but they all work together to make Windows Server 2012 a very capable operating system that’s future proof.

Hyper-V benefits from a range of new features introduced across the entire network stack in Windows Server 2012. Some of these are native networking improvements in the operating system itself. Others leverage technology that requires supported Network Adapters & Switches that benefits Hyper-V hosts and the virtual machines that run on top of it. Come and see how even the most demanding workloads can now be virtualized without sacrificing performance, reliability, security or scalability. These features vary from easy & transparent, with almost zero configuration, to complex, requiring more design and implementation considerations. Join me for an overview of these network improvements, how they work and what they can do for your business.

We’ve been running Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V in production since August & September 2012. So we put our money where our mouth is. If you hurry up and register before the end of the year you can still get the early bird price.

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Your company cannot lose here. You gain insight & knowledge, your employer gets a well prepared and motivated employee. How’s that for a nice new years gift?