March, 2008

There's an extraordinary event happening in a matter of a few weeks. It's the MVP Global Summit 2008 -- a celebration about contribution, and value involving communities worldwide. The upcoming summit, April 14-17, will feature a keynote from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and closing by Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie, in addition to hot-topic sessions, including topics ranging from social media...

Graham Jones (Surrey, BC - IT Professional and President of VANTUG ) The Traditional Role The traditional role for most UG's has been to hold technical events to inform and educate their members, promote networking between members and perhaps to run certification classes. Although this is a necessary role it may no longer be sufficient to meet all member needs and ultimately the IT industry as a whole...

Stuart R. Crawford (Calgary, AB - Business Development Manager of IT Matters) Many small business professionals toss and turn in the middle of the night, losing valuable hours of much needed sleep worrying about making a difficult or in reality it may just be a not so difficult decision. We lose thousands of hours of sleep throughout our lifetime, thinking about even deciding to make a decision. More...

We've been talking quite a bit about various aspects of Vista on the IT Manager Connection blog as well as the Canadian IT Pro blog - aspects such as configuration, deployment and the impact of service pack 1. SP1 became available to TechNet and MSDN subscribers a few weeks ago, but today the big announcement is that it becomes available to the public for download. In mid-April, SP1 will become available...

This article " The 20 most useful Microsoft sites for IT professionals " is worth a look since it gathers together in one place the resources you need. Have a look: http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/25840?nlhtnsm=rn_031208&nladname=031208networksystemsmanagemental Best regards, Stephen

Below is the list of upcoming IT Manager webcasts available live online throughout April. Remember that if you see one you're interested in, but can't make the specified time, it'll be recorded and made available on-demand at a later date. For a list of all the on-demand webcasts, go to http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=5172762 . Check out the Additional Resources section below for podcasts and virtual...

        Alan is the top IT guy (as well as the only IT guy) for a small vibrant company call AGSI located in Hornby, Ontario , just west of Toronto. I visited him at their funky new office location earlier this week to talk about his Vista and Office 2007 deployment project. He's currently about 75% complete having rolled out 30 computers. Unlike larger organizations, a company...

This is the next blog in the continuing series of interviews with top-echelon and renowned professionals. In this blog, I interview Internationally-Renowned Speaker, Corporate/Executive Coach, Best-selling Author-- Cathy Shaughnessy , Partner ShaughnessyHowell Inc. I was fortunate to see Cathy lead two workshops where there was uniform appreciation for the value delivered. This is what prompted this...

The Microsoft Technet Canada Innovation Awards - what a great way to highlight and reward hardworking IT professionals across the country! Besides recognition and accolades, the winning team will receive $4000 in cash, $1000 for their chosen charity and a trip for 2 team members to EnergizeIT while the winning individual will receive $2000 in cash, $1000 for their chosen charity and a trip to EnergizeIT...

As part of the launch events for Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008, there are a number of Community Connection Events happening across the country in 14 cities. My colleague, Rick, does a great job of explaining in detail what these events are . The most exciting part of these events, in my opinion anyway, are the learning circles where IT professionals and developers talk...

Earlier this week, on March 5, Mark Russinovich got together with a panel of experts to talk frankly about deploying Vista, answering questions live on-line from those watching the webcast. They discussed adoption experiences, the user access control (UAC) feature, application compatibility (including shims and the application compatibility toolkit (ACT)), hardware requirements, performance, drivers...

  Stuart R. Crawford (Calgary, AB - Business Development Manager of IT Matters) How many times have you heard this at a seminar or trade show? You must be present to win. Has this ever happened to you? You bow out of a seminar earlier because you have an emergency at the office only to find out the next day from your peers that your name was drawn for some great prize and you weren’t there...

I often talk about events that I attend or that are going on in southern Ontario, because that's where I live and work. However, my team and I actually work and connect with IT professionals and groups across Canada. I won't be able to personally attend this particular event, but if you find yourself out in western Canada near the end of this month, check out the Southern Alberta Microsoft User Community...

Don Spencer (Waterloo, ON, IT Professional) What makes for a productive IT environment? What can a manager do to keep staff fully engaged in their respective projects, collaborating with one another at an optimal level, efficient and effective most of the time? Well, many things, actually. The IT manager has at his or her disposal a toolkit of soft skills to help the IT crew sail the seas at top speed...

This is the next blog in the continuing series of interviews with top-echelon and renowned professionals. In this blog, I interview World-Renowned Business and Technology Thought Leader and Educator: F. Warren McFarlan , Professor Emeritus, Harvard Business School. You hear a lot about China, and India in the news. Warren provides unique insights into this region. Moreover, he shares his views into...

Microsoft Technical Fellow and desktop guru Mark Russinovich will be hosting an interactive virtual roundtable—broadcast LIVE over the Internet on Wednesday, March 5 th . The subject? Windows Vista adoption and deployment. On the panel with Mark will be independent industry experts and IT pros from organizations that have already deployed Windows Vista—all openly discussing known challenges...