Just as a heads up to all people planning to attend the Microsoft Management Summit 2013 (MMS 2013) this blog is to let you know that registrations open on December 3rd 2012.
So, I’d keep an eye out for the MMS 2013 site and register as soon as you get the opportunity. This event has the tendency to sell out fast.
From the 16th of April until the 20th of April 2012 Microsoft is running animportant conference for anyone who’s involved with systems management in the Microsoft sphere. It is, of cause, the Microsoft Management Summit 2012 (MMS 2012) in Las Vegas (Nevada, USA).
This is a conference that is held in very high regard and I’ve heard through the grape vines it’s one of the favorite conferences for Microsoft Employees to attend themselves due to its high quality and focus on the System Center suite. I’ve never had the opportunity to attend before and I would like to go.
It’s very likely that the System Center 2012 Suite of products will be officially launched at MMS 2012 and there will be an abundance of learning opportunities in regards to these. As said above, I’d really love to go and I encourage anyone who can make it to attend. Yes, I know it’s in the United States, so for us non US residents that can mean long and expensive travel and we’ll need a budget to stay in Las Vegas for a week. But it’s the only conference of its kind. There is no MMS Europe and such. Although I have to say that with initiatives like “Best of MMS” TechNet events Microsoft & the community make an effort to deliver content and information to a much larger audience, which is great.
If you’re in the target group for this conference and you’re interested take a look here. They even have cost/benefit sheet to help convince your management 
Now a lot of you are already be playing with the System Center 2012 Betas and Release Candidates but if you’re not you might want to get a head start by downloading the System Center 2012 Evaluation Products and perhaps even by joining the Community Evaluation Program for System Center 2012 (Private Cloud) and Configuration Manager 2012.
At TechEd 2011 Microsoft announced the OpsMgr 2012 Community Evaluation Program (CEP) and are now inviting everyone to apply to take part in this in the public Beta time frame. They position a CEP as follows:
Many of you are likely familiar with Microsoft TAP’s, Technology Adoption Programs, where a small pool of customers partner with our engineering teams to preview and provide feedback on pre-beta software. TAP participants provide our engineers with some early guidance and validation of next generation software, prior to us releasing publicly-available beta software. TAP is a great program, but it starts very, very early on and usually fills up quick (and waay before beta). The OpsMgr 2012 TAP has been very active in helping us with early builds, but it is unfortunately full.
The Community Evaluation Program (CEP) has recently been created to provide a broader range of customers with an in-depth experience with our upcoming beta software.
Essentially, a CEP is an organized way of bringing our subject matter experts (SMEs) from our product teams, our community (like MVPs and experienced users) and those interested in taking a deep look at our v.Next software for evaluation and preparation for deployment purposes.
This is good news, we’ got SCVMM2012 Beta running in the lab, it will be nice to get our ands on SCOM 2012 Beta as well. For an overview of the Operations Manager 2012 CEP, take a look at TechNet blog post http://blogs.technet.com/b/momteam/archive/2011/06/02/now-enrolling-for-the-operations-manager-2012-cep.aspx and the OM12 CEP overview datasheet.
If this is to your liking you can get all the information you need here and follow this link to apply for the CEP Apply for the OpsMgr 2012 CEP. Somewhere in June the accepted participants will get the SCOM2012 topic schedule & access to the CEP discussion forums. If you have questions on all this you can send them to [email protected].