Back from Experts Live Europe 2019

Back from Experts Live Europe 2019

I am back from Experts Live Europe 2019. The conference was very well organized and a great success. The speakers and attendees alike were passionate, drive and inquisitive IT professionals. We all came there to learn from each other. To talk shop and share our experiences and war storage. There were plenty of opportunities to network to do exactly that.

k from Experts Live Europe 2019
Back from Experts Live Europe 2019

I call these types of conferences “boutique conferences”. They are open to all who want to learn and be part of the community. The real-world content is not driven by marketing but by people sharing their experience and knowledge. People like you and me, who practice IT on a daily basis.

A big thank you to the attendees of my session Hyper-V Backups – The good, the bad, the ugly. I had fun presenting and the vibe in the room felt good. It enjoyed seeing that I was pointing out some of the problems some of my attendees encountered. It was even better to able to help them out. I sent the slide deck (pdf) to the conference organizers and it will be shared with you shortly. If you found my contributions helpful and enjoyed the session and the talks we had let the conference organizers know via your feedback. Also, note if something could have been done better. It helps us improve.

Well done!

Finally, dear Isidora and Marcel, well done. We all felt so welcome and appreciated at the conference. This made it easy to share with each other and learn how to become better technologists together. I hope to make it back next year! Thank you!

I can only advise you to try it out and attend or speak in order to learn with the community. Be part of it and advance professionally as well as personally.

I am speaking at Experts Live Netherlands 2019

I am speaking at Experts Live Netherlands 2019

I have the distinguished honor of announcing that I am speaking at the Experts Live  Netherlands 2019 conference.

This conference is a high quality event for ICT professionals in any role in any place. Infrastructure, DevOps, DevSecOps, 0365, automation as well as data & service availability and protection in any cloud (private, hybrid and pubic).  Over the years it has proven to be an excellent conference that has grown fat beyond the Dutch borders. It’ both rewarding and humbling to be able to speak there.

RDMA & SMB 3: State of the union

I will be giving a state of the union on RDMA & SMB Direct. We’ll look at best practices, guidance, trends and current developments that are interesting to decision makers, analysts, architects and hands on professionals that work with SMB Direct in ever more use cases.

As always I’ll be around the entire day to learn and educate myself, networking and I am available to talk shop on any subject within my area of expertise.

Call to Action

You need to do one simple thing. Register here to secure your spot and come learn with and from your peers.

The content is excellent, the speakers are passionate technologists, the attendees smart and experienced practitioners. This means it is an excellent opportunity to network, share ideas, experience and gain new and different insight. All this helps you set a course for your work and career. Make the most of it and have fun while doing so!

Attending the Microsoft MVP Global Summit 2018

Attending the Microsoft MVP Global Summit 2018

Once more I’m flying to the USA (Bellevue/Redmond, in Washington) where I’m attending the Microsoft MVP Global summit 2018. I’ll be spending my week at the Microsoft campus in Redmond and the offices in Bellevue. I feel grateful and honored to be part of this community and of the chances it offers to learn, connect and build a network world of class experts.

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The Microsoft MPV Global Summit is always a very busy week with both official and unofficial, planned and unplanned meetings. From breakfast till nightcaps we’re talking tech with peers from all over the world. The amount of expertise, experience and knowledge that descends on and near the Microsoft offices that week is nothing but amazing. Especially when you consider that MVPs are not Microsoft employees. They are independent experts who care enough about the technology to share what they’ve learned with Microsoft and each other. We provide feedback, the good the bad and the ugly.

I feel very lucky and privileged to get this opportunity once more that comes with being an MVP. As such I always try to attend by freeing up the time and the budget. It’s an investment. It also provides for an opportunity to meet up with many of my fellow MVPs and Microsoft employees we talk to, collaborate with and provide feedback to on a regular basis. Feedback is a dish we server with care and respect. Likewise, we expect Microsoft to listen and when possible, act. Our feedback is meant to be constructive and help, not to insult or cause pain.

If anyone still doubts the viability of remote teams spread across the world you should see a bunch of MVPs interacting, troubleshooting, assisting each other, create presentations and deliver results. All while spread around the globe.

Flying high above it all

I am and remain in the trenches because I don’t think you can design great solutions in the isolation of an ivory tower and without being in touch with reality. But I do tend to make frequent journeys and fly high above it all regularly to keep perspective.

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Yes, I’m even flying above the clouds. That’s because “Cloud” has become a polluted word that means whatever a vendor/ISV/VAR/OEM wants it to mean as long as it helps them sell whatever it is they are selling. But hey, nothing new there, sales will be sales.

In order to make sure we talk about usable and valuable solutions that put customer needs first we literally have to rise above it. We need to look at the needs of the customers and find ways to serve them with the solutions we build and offer. Too often today customers are offered cookie cutter services that are designed to meet the profitability of the provider and whatever politics that are at hand and not primarily the needs of the customer. I see “cloud” projects last for years and fail to deliver as much or more than they used to so in the client/server era. The failures of bad ideas, politics over customers, lack of context, bad designs and architectures are still blamed on technology or companies. Nothing new there. Customers or employers are not resources to be mined for every penny. And because I pride myself in not playing that game to make money I keep investing in myself. Getting out of the echo chambers that projects and organizations tend to become is key in achieving that. Way to often the focus is on “a can-do attitude” and “loyalty”. People, voicing concerns, discussing issues and speaking one’s mind are key to achieving success. Conformity and compliance are not, those are measurements, that’s all.

So, what is it I go and discuss for a week on end? Well, I cannot tell you, my employers or customers. Luckily, I get to discuss a lot with my fellow MVPs. It’s always a blast to see so many of them again.

Forging valuable solutions

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I can tell you that it helps me make better decisions. It enables me to provide the excellent advice, great designs and functional architecture. These are forged in the fires of reality with my knowledge and insights for a hammer. My context and situational awareness are the furnace and the technologies Microsoft and partners provide are the resources that are turned into valuable solutions. Those are built, not bought. If that’s something you’d like, we can help get you in touch with many MVPs that have a wide variety of skills and are able to assist you.

Our regular schedule resumes after the summit

Anyway, while that week will be busy and while we’ll be anything but quiet over there within our Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA).

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That means you won’t hear about anything under NDA and as such we’ll remain silent on what we see, hear, learn and discuss at the MVP Global Summit 2018. See you after “The Summit”!

Cloud & Datacenter Conference Germany 2018

Cloud & Datacenter Conference Germany 2018

The Cloud & Datacenter Conference Germany 2018 is a shining beacon of light in a sea of marketing driven IT events. It is organized by Carsten Rachfahl via his company Rachfahl IT Solutions. Carsten is a Microsoft MVP and Regional Director whose commitment to excellence has show for many years in his community engagements. I think his integrity and style is a driving force behind this conferences ability to attract the quality of attendees, speakers and sponsors.

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Cloud & Datacenter welcomes top expert speakers from the community and the industry. They deliver high quality sessions and share their combined experience and knowledge with attendees that are truly interested in working with those technologies. That combination delivers high value interactions and knowledge sharing. The sessions in combination with the interaction between everyone there is works very well due to the size of the conference. Its big enough to have the breath of topics needed I todays IT landscape while it is small enough to allow people to dive in deeper and discuss architecture, design, implementation and visions.

Some extra information

The Cloud & Datacenter Conference Germany 2018 is being held on May 15-16 2018 in the Congress Park Hanau, Scholes Plats 1, Hanau, 63450 Germany. That’s close to Frankfurt and as such has good travel accommodations. Topics of interest will be Azure, Azure Stack, Hybrid Cloud, Private Cloud, Software Defined Datacenter, System Center & O365. The conference is a real-life technology event so no one is pretending that the esoteric future is already here. We are working on that future by building it in our daily job and helping organizations move forward in an efficient and effective manner.

This is a great conference by technologists, for technologists. The opportunities to learn, network and exchange information are great. The speakers are approachable and all of them together are there both share and learn themselves. From my past experiences the organization outstanding and the feedback from attendees was outstanding.

I’ll be speaking on RDMA to give a roadmap on this ever more important technology. On top of that I’ll be around to discuss high availability, clustering, data protection both on premises as in (hybrid) cloud scenarios.

Do your self a favor and register for the Cloud & Datacenter Conference Germany in 2018.

All I can say is that you should really consider attending. It’s most definitely worthwhile. The quality of the attendees, the speakers and the absolute top-notch organization of the conference have been proven in the previous years. The Cloud & Datacenter Conference is a testimony to the professionalism, integrity and quality my fellow MVP and friend Carsten Rachfahl delivers with his company Rachfahl IT solution on a daily basis to his customers. So, help yourself out in your career and register right here. I hope to see you there.

Note: The CDC is German spoken conference but as some speakers are from around the globe you’ll have to listen to some of them speaking in English. If you’ve ever heard my German, I’m sure you’ll prefer me speaking English anyway.