David Mackies Blue Brain

David L's Blog : I Already Know the Problems! Where's the Solutions!?

This could be a comment on Dave's blog but I would not want to put this much comment spam out there,

Dave I run the Canberra Windows User Group really an IT Pro Infrastructure Group and well let me call you to provide me with exactly that. Solutions YOU have. 

I Already Know the Problems! Where's the Solutions!?

I got an email later today from Franky, telling me that the Microsoft Developer Show was back on TPN, and that their re-entry show was titled, User Groups R Us!.

Now lately I've been working with a couple of new public technical communities, and some customers who are forming their own Internal Technical Communities, and I've spent most of that time working on some lessons learnt style strategies on how to start, grow and sustain a new or existing technical community.

I have had many conversations with Athena about her very successful community and how I could learn from her success. From what you say you seem to have a wider variety of answers for me. I will be pleased to hear it because I usually hear "User Groups are owned by the Community so only you can drive where it goes"

One thing has been finding and developing speakers. I like many User Group Leaders do everything because I want it and others want to be given it, that covers almost all aspects but the presenting duties are the most difficult for many.

Now Athena tells me that many of her speakers are MVPs I suspect trying to remain Knighted and this is fabulous. I have tried to find a list of IT Pro MVPs in Australia and they are thin on the ground or I just haven't looked hard enough.

So here is where our group is at:

• Running two years I have done all the sessions except 4.
• The best attendance is 45 and the average is 8 (I will show up for just one person)
• We have tried different session times, running two sessions etc

So looking forward I need new ideas and I'm happy to try yours while I dream up new ones of my own.

Source: David L's Blog : I Already Know the Problems! Where's the Solutions!?

Microsoft MVP Rates Trend Micro #1 for SMBs By Trend Micro, Inc.

Does this link a Microsoft Program with one ISV Partner over another? What would happen if Symantec or CA complained? What if another MVP said Norton was better?

Just interesting that the status as an MVP even came into it. Why not "Small" Business Server Integrator prefers Trend Micro.

So does this mean that there is not enough brand protection in programs that reward individuals that then have a pseudo licence to exploit that status for unrelated marketing efforts?

So I spoke with the MVP in question and apparently there is nothing in the MVP agreement that says an MVP status can only be used to promote Microsoft services.

Still!

Is something I would allow? No.

Is is bad? not sure.

Do we all make our own decisions? You bet

What do other MVPs think? Not being in that position my opinion is not that meaningful.

Microsoft launching new online video service, hoping to tap popularity in sharing clips

So I will be storing Pod casts on the mothership soon. I have been considering a YouTube account for storing podcasts I keep telling folk I will produce, but now it seems that MS will be in that Biz. Cool now to see who has the best AUP and who will want the least rights to my IP and we will be good to go. Let me know if you see any Beta Invitations going begging.

So when will I see an Microsoft Flikr equiv and will Live Writer just upload the bits I include in a post. There probably is a set of plugins I've not noticed yet

Microsoft Corp. is hoping to tap the explosive popularity of online video sharing by joining startups and major Internet rivals with its own video service.

"Soapbox on MSN Video" will let Internet users watch and post videos, rate or comment on them and share favorites by e-mailing them or linking them to their personal Web pages or blogs.

Source: Microsoft launching new online video service, hoping to tap popularity in sharing clips - Breaking - Technology - smh.com.au

Ahoy there you scurvy dogs

Thanks Frank for the reminder about Talk Like a Pirate Day I'll mix my previous career as a salty sea dog (9 years in the RAN, 7 years at Sea) so it will be a day of Goffas and Maccas, I might go to the Takeaway for the closest thing to SCRAN as I can muster.

BUT...

Best of all Catie (my 3yo Daughter) and I will take a break from singing the once more with feeling sound track on the way to day care and swap it for these too gems...

Best I get ready for my Jackstay transfer from the Study to the Bedroom. So we'll blow the man up, bullies, blow the man down, Way, hay, blow the man down. Wid a crew o'hard cases from Liverpool town. Gives us some time to blow the man down.

The Maid of Amsterdam

So my killing machine is blogging

My eldest started blogging and well lets just say he is now tooling up for some coolness. Why killing machine you may ask? He is now a Junior Black Belt in Tae Kwon Do before his 8th birthday, but I digress.

He has been in my ear about wanting Microsoft Word AND Photoshop what the??

Now he wanted Photoshop because Dav Pilkey apparently uses this as part of the process of building Captain Underpants and Alex wants to be like him. Now not wanting to put my hand too deeply in my pocket I have let him loose on Paint.Net and the first thing he did was scan in a hand drawn image and colourise it just like Dav Pilkey does.

So do I want to let him loose on Office maybe? 2003 or 2007? We are going to show him Wordpad because he knows what he wants Text formatting, Bold, Italics and Underline. Now I am going to take that one step forward and give him Live Writer Beta, to make his blogging experience better from the get go.

Now is there risk with giving him a blog? Sure I'm subscribed to the whole family RSS feed so I get to see pretty quickly what he is saying and because I host the Community Server 2.0 I have started making personal details be filtered language for the whole site, our home phone number, the suburb we live in, our address and components of it... anything I don't like moving forward.

I might ask the CS Dev team if there is a way to make a user and their Blog completely moderated this would increase my confidence but I think the steps we are taking are fair.

Not Virtual Virtual Tape and from SMB to Big Enterprise

I posted about a virtual tape solution I plan to use on my laptop and in my lab to emulate enterprise library functionality, people may ask what I recommend for workgroup implementations where cost and reliability are factors.

 

I really like these Quantum products because they just work with most things I do, also there are features coming that I'm not sure if my NDA briefings let me talk about yet but I will ask the guys when I'm at Storage Networking World later this month if I can talk about it I'll get right into why I think these boxes will be gold. I might try to do some podcasts of some of the vendor sessions. Did I mention these boxes scale from 1 to 104TB and the base model can emulate 32 Drives.

What product is hot and I have spoken about at length to customers and my User Group?

The DPM 5500 yes that's right a Virtual Tape solution bought out by a Data Protection company that integrates Microsoft DPM 2006, the quantum lads have a cool picture which describes how it works at a glance.

 I will go through a podcast of the detail I think I already have one but it is in an archive I don't have spinning just now If I can find it I'll make a new one so that's two lots of demos I need to do.

 

May have found the demo Library I've been searching for!

ViStor Virtual Tape Library (VTL)

 Cofio Software 

I was looking around for a VTL I could run in a Virtual Machine for running Demos of NetBackup and also for build Dev labs for documentation and such. There are quite a few standalone tape emulators but they are mostly a bit lame when it comes to Enterprise Backup Software Integration.

So now I can have a Timber Wolf or maybe a Mammoth on my laptop geeze we had great names for enterprise libraries.

The one I found is ViStor VTL I have not run it up yet but will keep you posted seems it emulates:

TAPE LIBRARIES:

0.EXABYTE EXB-10

1.EXABYTE EXB-10e

2.EXABYTE EXB-10h

3.EXABYTE EXB-10i

4.EXABYTE 110

5.EXABYTE 221

6.EXABYTE X80

7.EXABYTE X200

8.STK 9710

9.STK 9714

10.STK 9730

11.STK 9740

12.OVERLAND PowerLoader

13.OVERLAND LoaderXpress

14.OVERLAND NEO SERIES 2000

15.OVERLAND NEO SERIES 4100

16.OVERLAND NEO SERIES 420

Pretty cool selection and over iSCSI too now to see if they have NFRs since I am really just looking to run demos. If it turns out OK I might use one of these virtual libraries to pod cast a NetBackup 6.0 walk through.

The one I found is ViStor VTL I have not run it up yet but will keep you posted seems it emulates:

TAPE LIBRARIES:

0.EXABYTE EXB-10

1.EXABYTE EXB-10e

2.EXABYTE EXB-10h

3.EXABYTE EXB-10i

4.EXABYTE 110

5.EXABYTE 221

6.EXABYTE X80

7.EXABYTE X200

8.STK 9710

9.STK 9714

10.STK 9730

11.STK 9740

12.OVERLAND PowerLoader

13.OVERLAND LoaderXpress

14.OVERLAND NEO SERIES 2000

15.OVERLAND NEO SERIES 4100

16.OVERLAND NEO SERIES 420

Pretty cool selection and over iSCSI too now to see if they have NFRs since I am really just looking to run demos. If it turns out OK I might use one of these virtual libraries to pod cast a NetBackup 6.0 walk through.

Qrazydutch I hope you reported the bug before crying to Redmond Partner

Last night I got a copy of the Redmond Partner Newsletter and saw this, I smiled a bit when I saw the Foghorn analogy because if this guy spent as much time reporting the bug and testing other features as he did coming up with this wise crack I'm happy. Do you think he did?

Sadly we tend to see many more people bitching and moaning about things that don't work for THEM.

"A better name for Longhorn is Foghorn. Lots of noise, very foggy so you cannot see anything, hard to make out the shape, unknown in speed and size. Will crash the entire drive, not just the part you had it loaded on. As happened in my case. Not only did it refuse to boot up (with error 'new hardware found' XXXX.exe not found), but it also prevented my regular Windows, which it had kindly added to its boot menu as 'older version of windows,' from starting."

 I think I might do some more Longhorn testing today perhaps NAP with the XP SP2 Integrations who knows but I will report my bugs to MS NOT Redmond Channel Partner Magazine.

This plan is lunarcy - Security - Technology - smh.com.au

Now I thought my customers had big expectations for their offsite requirements. Check this out.

IF YOU think your organisation is savvy because it has an offsite data warehouse, spare a thought for William Burrows' plan to store life's blueprints - on the moon.

The journalism professor and former New York Times' space reporter's dream to back up the world's DNA to a site on the lunar surface would read like science fiction if it wasn't for the fact that the general idea is supported by the likes of Stephen Hawking, five Scandinavian prime ministers and a British group compiling a genetic database of endangered species.

Mr Burrows devised the disaster plan with Robert Shapiro, professor emeritus and senior research scientist in biochemistry at New York University, in the 1999 book A Lunar Sanctuary. From there, they formed the Alliance to Rescue Civilisation (http://arc-space.org), which has attracted scientists and thinkers.

So that would be quite some DR project, how do we keep the DR Site up to date? What are our RPO and RTO? I'm thinking the replication across the wide area might be a little behind during high rate of change situations. A job for DFSR perhaps?

Source: This plan is lunarcy - Security - Technology - smh.com.au

New laws target modchip users - Games - Technology - smh.com.au

Users of modchipped gaming consoles could face fines of thousands of dollars when new copyright protection laws are introduced this year by the Federal Government.

So does this mean that people who bought completely legal modchips will now be breaking the law? Will  we see a great big XBOX and Playstation buy back scheme? I can see it now police stations full to the roof with Chipped games consoles just like the gun buy back scheme or are they just going to say so sad too bad, because gamers are not as big a lobby group as the gun toters.

Source: New laws target modchip users - Games - Technology - smh.com.au

Canberra.Net Launch @ Canberra Focus on Business

Still looking at what Canberra.Net means, and what an IT pro equivalent would look like. The thing that struck me as interesting was a comment by I can't remember if it was Michael Gration or the Chief Minister about a place to meet, collaborate, learn and grow these are not the words they used but I did think isn't that what Athena does with the DotNet User Group?

So if that was the aim of Canberra.Net why not expand on the good work already being delivered? A cynical person would think it is because the 30 odd players didn't start, run or contribute to existing community so building your own and calling it new, is a novelty but lasting and meaningful? we will see.

WSUSMon - Free real time monitoring of Windows Software Update Services 2

Very cool and super simple tool for WSUS, after I saw this on Kleefy's Blog, I quickly downloaded and pointed it to the WSUS instance on my SBS 2003 Server. Well in less than two minutes had the tool downloaded, extracted it and was looking at a report.

Now where can I try it against a really big installation

WSUSMon is a simple, FREE utility that allows you to monitor Microsoft Windows Software Update Services version 2 (WSUS) in real time.

Source: WSUSMon - Free real time monitoring of Windows Software Update Services 2

Observations about Community triggered by the Event to recognise ACT Partners

So as I mentioned previously Microsoft had a luncheon to recognise members of the Partner Community for various achievements over the last year. Both Synergistic Network Solutions and DotNet Solutions were recognised for our involvement in the Canberra User Group Community, now Athena and I had lunch together with some other partners and a couple of Microsofties and had quite a talk about the Partner Community and IT Community issues in general.

One thing we noticed was how many of the attendees we did not even know by sight let alone have any other connection with. This struck me as a big shift from the IT Community I entered when I left the Navy in 1994. In Sept 1994 I joined IPEX Information Technology Group a then small presence in the Services provision community in Canberra (quite a way from the work they are doing these days) at that time we all made certain to go to sales and technical training sessions run by the strongest distributor of solutions in town (Com Tech) the channel partners that attended got to talk with each other regularly, build skills and learn about things that they would be implementing soon.

Now I don't see that these days and if anything I have learned recently that especially in the Infrastructure Partner Community, an example recently was a partner organising a presentation form a particular vendor got their invitatation sent to a number of community lists and I got a copy. Now because the technology was hot I asked the partner concerned (in Email) if they would want me to forward the invitation to the CBR Windows User Group to help drive numbers. Now I never heard from the person running the event but did find out from another source that they were worried that other partners would be attending the event. WTF???

So this may be a photo of the state of play and how much work I need to do to convince people that paying it forward is good for everyone. Until then I will try to be sensitive to people with these attitudes and try not to focus on this particular company having about 5 focuses in as many years perhaps why the are paranoid about competition.

Oh yeah I recieved a referral this week, and am now resposible for random favours for three more people (Thanks Athena)

Event to recognise ACT Partners

So one night during TechED I got back to my apartment checked my mail as the Nerd in me demands that I do and I get an eMail about a Lunch to recognise Microsoft Partners in Canberra

So I RSVP and think we don't really do much to be recognised in this way but are happy to come along and cheer on the other Microsoft Partners who I am sure are doing wonderful work in fantastic projects. Turns out everyone who attended was being recognised for their efforts and yes everyone was a winner, more about that in a second.

Synergistic Network Solutions was recognised for our contributions to community, I have to say thanks to Selwyn for coming up with the idea for the luncheon plus Michael and the rest of the team for making it happen.

How do we continue to win in a meaningful way... New post needed I think this is really just a thankyou to the MS Canberra Team.

Thanks Guys.

So what Nerd Tunes do you love

After hearing Star Trekin' this afternoon I thought about what other songs I think are in the same league so here goes in no order

• Doctorin' the Tardis
• Star Trekin'
• Wash your face in my sink
• DR Worm
• Cows with Guns

Now who could not love YouTube.com

• Justified and Ancient
• Unbelievable

Perhaps more if I find them :)

The Starlight Children's Foundation gave me an excuse to geek out even more!!

So today I was out and about in the car and the local radio station is running an appeal to raise money for a Starlight Express Van, this weekend they will play anything in exchange for donations to the appeal. OK so this guy called in and requested Star Trekin' by "The Firm" which I think is way cool. I have included most of the info for the appeal below but don't let not living in Canberra stop you you can stream live from http://www.fm1047.com.au/listenlive.asp so what is your favorite nerdy song? Call up and request it Studio Number +61 2 6242 1047. If they play Doctoring the Tardis by the TimeLords (The KLF) AND Justified and Ancient (feat Tammy Wynette) I'll throw down my $104.70

I'll list my favorites in a separate post. 

Chris, Sarah & Mason are launching a massive appeal to raise $100,000 for the Starlight Foundation, an organisation whose purpose is to bring fun back into the lives of seriously ill & hospitalised children and their families. The $100,000 is to purchase a Starlight Express Van. A Starlight Express Van visit brings interactive hi-tech entertainment to hospitalised children giving them the opportunity to meet Captain Starlight, dabble in some magic, watch the latest movies on the big screen, participate in arts and craft and generally have loads of fun. At the moment there is one of these vans in Sydney, and they manage to make it to Canberra only once or twice a year.  Our aim is to get one of these specially made vans that belongs to Canberra, so we need to raise $100,000 - and this is absolutely what we plan to do.  Click here to find out more.

Source: FM104.7 Canberra

An incentive scheme for Synergistic? Could we borrow this idea from this weeks My Business Episode?

David Koch the finance dude and co-presenter of Sevens Sunrise programe has a weekend show called "My Business" while he can be a zoober head sometimes I quite like him generally. So I watch the show even though Mel and Nat are not there to moderate him.

This week there was a bit about Red Baron a scenic and aerobatic joy flight business. The one thing that really stayed with me was how to keep contractors with you when they could work for almost anyone. I wonder what we can do with local IT Pros to help grow the commercial business I just don't have time to work on or in.

Here is what Julia Bickerstaff came up with...

Joel is really happy with his team of pilots who are contracted and paid per flying hour as well as for briefings on the ground.  He believes they could easily work anywhere and doesn’t want to lose them as the success of the flying school depends upon them.  He also knows that if they’re happy they’ll help promote the school but as a new business owner he can’t afford to pay exorbitant salaries.  Our finance expert Julia Bickerstaff gave Joel some tips on incentivising employees.

Julia Bickerstaff: finance Top Gun

• Phantom share schemes work by giving a notional small percentage share of the business to each instructor.  At the end of a given period of time, each instructor will be paid as a cash bonus the difference between what those shares are worth at the start and the end of the period.
• To set up a phantom share scheme you need to work out the way you’re going to value the business and use this method at all stages of calculating incentives. 
• A share scheme like this can be used where traditional bonus methods are difficult to implement.  For example, sales staff will often have key performance indicators based on number and value of new sales.  What instructors do may not result directly in sales, so it may be better to have some employees on a performance-based incentive scheme and others on a phantom share scheme.

Source: Sept 3rd > My Business TV - Red Baron -

The Monkey Chow Diaries

OK the reason I thought about this very scary guy was a joke email my wife sent me this morning not sure which is more for me, my vote would be neither. 

Imagine going to the grocery store only once every 6 months. Imagine paying less than a dollar per meal. Imagine never washing dishes, chopping vegetables or setting the table ever again. It sounds pretty good, doesn't it?

But can a human subsist on a constant diet of pelletized, nutritionally complete food like puppies and monkeys do? For the good of human kind, I'm about to find out. On June 3, 2006, I began my week of eating nothing but monkey chow: "a complete and balanced diet for the nutrition of primates, including the great apes."

Source: The Monkey Chow Diaries

Here is the joke Elizabeth sent "Dumb Question...  

I have a Yellow Labrador Retriever and I was buying a large bag of Meaty-Bites at K-Mart and was in line to check out. A woman behind me asked if I had a dog. On impulse, I told her that no, I was starting The Meaty-Bite Diet again, although I probably shouldn't because I'd ended up in the hospital last time, but that I'd lost 50 pounds before I awakened in an intensive care ward with tubes coming out of most of my orifices and IVs in both arms.  I told her that it was essentially a perfect diet and that the way that it works is to load your pants pockets with Meaty-Bites and simply eat one or two every time you feel hungry and that the food is nutritionally complete so I was going to try it again.  I have to mention here that practically everyone in the line was by now enthralled with my story, particularly a guy who was behind her. Horrified, she asked if I'd ended up in the hospital in that condition because I had been poisoned. I told her no; it was because I'd been sitting in the street licking my balls and a car hit me.  I thought one guy was going to have a heart attack he was laughing so hard as he staggered out the door."

Pay It Forward Foundation

Is your state letting the team down?

Having looked at Franks blog about attendance at TechED I wondered about how else I could look at that data.

So here is the challenge you have 11 Months to get your state to perform as well as the ACT, 6 times the population.

Not possible you say, well best you start recruiting people to come along to save your embarrasment.

So what are your targets for next year...

Now that is only if ACT numbers don't go up, let me tell you it is freezzzzzing in Canberra in the beginning of August and TechED 2007 is on the Gold Coast again. Frank can we get that many folk in the hall? OOOOPs thats 2500 more than Boston had

OK too ambitious how about .....

By the way a Full priced ticket works out to be about $6 a day between now and then, cheaper with an early bird, even cheaper again if you buy together so user group leads lets try to facilitate this early. If we put in a single order can we get the group pricing guys? Per Sate? Community Wide? That would make it worth being a user group member, in anyones language.

2 Buckets of Coffee nothing really,  full price.

well lets just say almost all my ACS Practising Computer Professional (PCP) Points in one week too way cool.