Barnaby's Canadian IT Pro WebLog : Events

Kick Back, Relax, Play some XBox

Barnaby_Jeans — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 21:50:03 GMT

As an IT Manager or IT Professional you probably spend a lot of time under pressure at work. So when the time comes to relax you probably want to make the most of it.

So as a test, we want to find out if you are interested in getting together (virtually) every couple of weeks to interact with the TechNet team (Barnaby, Rick, Bruce, Damir) over a more social and relaxing medium – XBox Live.

Damir has just put up a post on the CanITPro blog (http://blogs.technet.com/canitpro/archive/2006/07/14/441850.aspx ) to gauge interest in doing an XBox Live gaming night every couple of weeks. If you are interested leave us a comment either here or on the CanITPro blog and let us know what your gamertag is so we can add it to our friends list. If there is enough interest we will setup a regular night and let you all know.

Here's my gamer card:	And here is Rick's:

See you on live,

Barnaby

TNX: TechNet Exchange Event (Toronto)

Barnaby_Jeans — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 06:54:00 GMT

WOW! What an amazing event. I spent most of today in the John Bassett theatre at the Metro Toronto Convention Center watching Damir and Rick deliver an excellent set of sessions on Communicating and Collaborating.

For anyone out there that was unable to attend the session, and is looking into mobility solutions, you should keep an eye on the CanITPro Blog for the slides and audio versions of the sessions. Rick and Damir skillfully walked the audience through the steps required to configure Exchange, SharePoint, ISA, and Windows Mobile 5 to provide the end user with an environment to allow them to work collaboratively regardless of whether they were in the office or on the road. They even managed to throw in some adhoc, realtime, Instant messaging with one of the User Group leaders in Montreal. Talk about keeping it interesting and interactive.

A lot of the technology that they showed was stuff that as Microsoft employees we take for granted. The ability to launch Outlook and Office Communicator without having to VPN back into the work network is a great boost for productivity, not to mention, ease of use for the user.

I will be uploading all the photos of today’s event (yes I was the guy with the flash, sorry) to my Flickr account over the next couple of days, but here are a few to get you started.

The rest of the photos will be here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/barnaby_jeans/sets/72057594057232847/

I hope you enjoyed the event as much as I did.

Thank you Canada

Barnaby_Jeans — Fri, 16 Dec 2005 17:04:00 GMT

After 5 weeks of touring across the country and delivering presentations in 10 different cities, all I can say is WOW! The Canadian IT Pro's and Developers are great.

As Damir mentions in his post "It has been an amazing five weeks..."

For those of you that were not able to attend every session that you wanted to, the slide decks are now posted at http://www.microsoft.ca/launch2005, additionally, the audio recordings of the Database Track are also available (look for my earlier blog posts on this).

Finally, make sure to stay connected to TechNet by signing up for the TechNet Flash Newsletter http://www.microsoft.ca/technet/flash.

I look forward to see you all again on my next tour across the country.

Tags: [Microsoft] [Launch2005] [SQLServer]

Launch 2005 - High Availability Podcast

Barnaby_Jeans — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 08:26:00 GMT

Here is the third of the Launch 2005 audio recordings. This was recorded live on November 22nd as part of the Launch 2005 activities in Vancouver.

If you were not able to attend the Architecting for High Availability Session, download the mp3 version to hear what my colleague Damir Bersinic had to say. The session runs about an hour and twenty minutes.

Tags: [Microsoft] [Launch2005] [Podcast] [SQLServer]

Update: changed mp3 link to microsoft.com media server

Launch 2005 - Managing and Monitoring SQL Server 2005 Podcast

Barnaby_Jeans — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 08:23:00 GMT

Here is the second of the Launch 2005 audio recordings. This was recorded live on November 17th as part of the Launch 2005 activities in Victoria.

If you were not able to attend the Managing and Monitoring SQL Server 2005 Session, download the mp3 version to hear what you missed. The session runs about an hour and a half.

Tags: [Microsoft] [Launch2005] [Podcast] [SQLServer]

Update: changed mp3 link to microsoft.com media server

Launch 2005 - Business Intelligence Podcast

Barnaby_Jeans — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 08:20:00 GMT

Here is the first of the Launch 2005 audio recordings. This was recorded live on November 8th as part of the Launch 2005 activities in Toronto.

If you were not able to attend the Delivering Business Intelligence Session, download the mp3 version to hear what you missed. The session runs about an hour and ten minutes.

Tags: [Microsoft] [Launch2005] [Podcast] [SQLServer]

Update: changed mp3 link to microsoft.com media server

On Tour with SQL Server 2005

Barnaby_Jeans — Mon, 21 Nov 2005 02:24:00 GMT

It's about 3:30 on a Sunday afternoon and I'm sitting in my hotel room in Vancouver overlooking a very foggy harbour. We've completed four of the ten cities on this cross Canada tour.

So far, we have been to Toronto, Ottawa, Edmonton, and Victoria. This week we are in Vancouver and then Calgary. The response in all of these cities has been great, and we have been seeing lots of blog posts and photos appearing about the event.

If you are coming out to one of the upcoming events, don't forget to blog about it, or if you are bringing your camera, tag your photos and upload them to the group pool on Flickr.

There are already some great photos online, including this one that Chris took of the stuff that you'll get in your bag.

Thanks everyone for the photos and blog posts.

See you in your city.

Tags: [Microsoft] [Launch2005] [Vancouver]

Rock the Launch

Barnaby_Jeans — Tue, 08 Nov 2005 07:45:00 GMT

Let the fun begin.

As Mark posted earlier today, the Launch activities are underway. I have posted a few behind the scenes and setup photos to the flickr group (rss), and hope to post more as the day unfolds.

Remember, get spotted wearing old launch gear, and you could win a prize.

See you at the launch events

Tags: [Microsoft][Launch2005]

Are you ready to launch...

Barnaby_Jeans — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 21:59:00 GMT

Well, we're into the final few days before the first event on the SQL/Visual Studio Launch tour.

Mark Relph has been busy blogging and has a couple of posts you should really read:

Sneak Peak at the software (Yes we are giving away software)
Blog about the tour and win prizes
Wear your old Microsoft gear and win

There is still space in the following cities:

Quebec
Halifax
Winnipeg

I hope to see you on the tour.

Tags: [Microsoft] [SQLServer] [Launch2005] [VisualStudio]

The Mystery of Free Software

Barnaby_Jeans — Fri, 28 Oct 2005 23:37:00 GMT

For those of you that have asked questions about whether we will be handing out software at the Canadian launch events, Mark Relph has just written about this on his blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/mark_relph/archive/2005/10/28/486419.aspx

Enjoy,

Tags: [Microsoft] [SQLServer] [Launch2005] [VisualStudio]

Are you attending the launch? Are you blogging about it?

Barnaby_Jeans — Fri, 28 Oct 2005 20:56:00 GMT

Are you planning on attending the SQL/VS/BizTalk Launch? Are you planning on blogging about it? If you are, you may want to add your blog to the TechNet Event Bloggers site (http://techneteventsbloggers.net). As I mentioned in a previous post, you may also want to consider tagging those posts.

Tags: [Microsoft] [SQLServer] [Launch2005] [VisualStudio] [BizTalk]

Tag the Launch

Barnaby_Jeans — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 15:25:00 GMT

Are you blogging about the joint SQL Server / Visual Studio / BizTalk launch this November?

If you are, you might want to consider tagging your blog posts to make it easy to search for anything "Launch 2005" related.

Simply tag your posts with Launch2005 by adding the following somewhere in your blog post:

<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Launch2005" rel="tag">Launch2005</a>

If you're uploading pictures to Flickr, you may want to join the Launch2005 group; and remember to tag your photos with Launch2005 as well.

I'll be presenting at almost all of the Canadian tour dates, so look for me in your city starting November 8th.

Update: Don't forget to ping technorati to let them know your blog has been updated.

Tags: [Microsoft] [SQLServer] [Launch2005] [VisualStudio] [BizTalk]

TechNet Tour - Edmonton and Winnipeg

Barnaby_Jeans — Wed, 12 Oct 2005 17:58:00 GMT

Last week I had the opportunity to visit both Edmonton and Winnipeg as part of the TechNet Innovations tour and User Group Tour. I had the opportunity to meet lots of great IT Pro's and answer lots of questions. For both the Edmonton Microsoft User Group and Winnipeg IT Pro User Group we had a great discussion about Microsoft Small Business Server. If you are an IT Pro in either Edmonton or Winnipeg, and are not already a member of the user group, you may want to check them out.

There were a couple of things that we talked about during the TechNet session; one of them was the TechNet Innovation Award. To quote the website:

The TechNet Canada Innovation Award is awarded to a Canadian IT Professional who is a bright star in the IT community. The Innovation Award is given in recognition of Canadian IT professionals who make a positive impact using Microsoft-based technology.

Well, now you can go ahead and nominate yourself or a fellow IT Pro for the award. Check out http://www.microsoft.com/canada/technet/innovationaward/ for more information. We also talked about the Discover TechNet quiz with the chance to win an XBox (and to see how well you know the team). Take a look at http://www.microsoft.com/canada/technet/discover/ before October 31st, 2005.

One of the recurring questions that I got asked was about the ClearPC demo boxes that we use. Well here is some more information on the configuration of the hardware:

ClearPC Secret Agent Briefcase - http://www.clearpc.ca/secretagent/
ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe Motherboard - http://usa.asus.com/products4.aspx?l1=3&l2=15&l3=0&model=375&modelmenu=1
- Dual Gig-E Lan
- Onboard Hardware SATA Raid Controller
AMD Athlon64 4000+ CPU
4 GB Ram
3 x Western Digital WD740 (10,000 RPM, SATA)
Various fans and lights

Depending on the demos that we are doing, these machines are either configured with Windows Server 2003 or Windows Server 2003 x64. For the upcoming SQL Launch, you might see these machines running SQL Server 64-bit on Windows Server 2003 x64.

Tags: [Microsoft] [SQLServer] [Launch2005] [Small Business Server] [TechNet] [Edmonton] [Winnipeg]

SCM '05

Barnaby_Jeans — Fri, 30 Sep 2005 19:05:00 GMT

In a previous post I mentioned that I would be presenting at the SCM '05 Symposium in Toronto.

I had the good fortune of running into a couple of people that I hadn't seen in quite a while. It seemed as though the conference was well attended and everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves.

I have posted the slides if you are interested in looking at them.

Are you interested in Supply Chain Management?

Barnaby_Jeans — Tue, 20 Sep 2005 02:39:00 GMT

If you're going to be in the Greater Toronto Area, and are interested in Supply Chain Management, I'll be speaking at the Third Annual Symposium on Supply Chain Management at the Wyndham Bristol Place Hotel on Thursday September 29th.

The title of the session is: Enhancing Business-to-Business Integration using Microsoft Technologies. Specifically I'll be talking about how you can use BizTalk Server 2004 to help integrate your supply chain.

If you're going to be at the event, leave me a comment here, and perhaps we can connect.