Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Nick King Event

As most UG members would know, Nick King, the EBS/SBS Product Manager responsible for technical training (and probably some other salesy stuff) will be in Australia on Feb 16, 17 and 18 for 6:00 PM meetings in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney (respectively, with the Sydney one also being webcast, not that I have an address for this yet). These meetings are for the SBSC and SMB IT folks to come along and a) let Nick know how they feel about Microsoft's recent efforts with respect to technical training, b) let Nick know what they would like to see from Microsoft when it comes to future technical training and c) to actually receive some technical training (apparently).

So, for all those who are able to get to the Microsoft offices in Brisbane (16 Feb), Melbourne (17 Feb) or Sydney (18 FReb) for a meeting from 6:00 PM to around 8:00 PM, I'm sure we'll all learn something from this event. And those who cannot make it can attend the Live Meeting event of the Sydney event, details of which I'll post when I receive them.

If there's questions you'd like answered, PLEASE comment on this blog entry so we can collate them (or email them to myself or The Wayne) and give them to Nick before his presentation to allow him to give real answers, not "aahhh, I'll get back to you on that" responses. It is always good to be prepared...

Nick is apparently aware of the really, really bad experiences we all had with the SBS and especially EBS Hands on Labs held recently, so whilst there will no doubt be some mention of these, we need to look at what Microsoft can do to make things better than we've been experiencing with their training of late. Wayne says that "Nick can talk across any type of level from sales/marketing to deep technical" however as we've all been "sales" talked to at technical training events, I'm sure we'd like to keep this as technically focussed as possible.

So, if we can all make it to these events physically or virtually, offer input on Microsoft's technical training abilities, responsibilities and performance in the SMB market of late, offer suggestions on how these experiences can be improved and then learn somtthing from Nick whilst he's here, it should be time well spent.

Here's a rough agenda for the evening, as given by The Wayne:

10 minutes – Introduction of the event / Key people
50 minutes - Open Q&A / Feedback session
1 hour Tech Training supplied by Nick – “as deep as we want to go” – I’ve (The Wayne) suggested the topic of SBS Migrations would be the most relevant

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I would suggest migration may not be as key as they think.

What I'd really like is a top ten best practices sort of thing (as specific to 08 as possible) For example "Turn on AD recycle bin" (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd392261.aspx) something that would be really useful in SMB's I'd think.

Hilton Travis said...

G'day Makka,

I agree, kinda. Migration to SBS 2008 from SBS 2003 is definitely a *finicky* thing, but yes, there's a decent whitepaper available and Jeff Middleton's "Swing Migration" kit is well into its beta testing for this as well - and anyone who has used JeffM's kit knows all too well how much more simple and yet comprehensive it is as compared to Microsoft's directions.

Your example of the AD Recycle Bin isn't valid, however, as it is only available in Windows Server 2008 R2, which isn't yet available and will only be valid if MS so chooses to allow us the privilege of this feature of Server 2008 R2 in SBS 2008 R2 - and I think that Microsoft may actually build SBS 2008 R2 on top of Windows Server 2008 R2, unlike SBS 2003 R2 was (as compared with Server 2003 R2) where SBS 2003 R2 missed extremely important functionality such as DFS-R.

Personally, I think a more "best practices" style of session would be better. The Wayne managed to squeeze some time out of Microsoft in November to present a very good 24 minute session (where we all were lead to believe he'd be allowed a lot more) to do something like this and I know it was *extremely* well received in Brisbane, and from what I've heard in the other States as well. Yes, I also feel this sort of session would benefit people more than a dedicated Migration session.