Speaking at Experts Live EU 2019 in Prague!

It's been super-quiet on this blog lately, mainly in part due to the preparation I've been putting in for conference season, which kicked off over the last month or so. This week, I get to represent Ireland while I present a few sessions at one of my favourite conferences - Experts Live Europe - which returns to Prague for a second year after a very successful event last time out.

This year's conference runs from November 20th - November 22nd and is jam-packed with great speakers and content for attendees to hang out with and enjoy.

Speakers

This year, there's 45 speakers flying in from all over the world ready to share their real-world experience and knowledge on a range of topics within the Cloud and Datacenter space. The speaker lineup includes Microsoft MVP's, Microsoft Regional Directors, Microsoft employees and well-known Community Champions. For the Keynote opener, Microsoft's Joey Snow and Rick Claus (aka Patch and Switch) will share their stories about how you can use your existing technology skills to future-proof your career as a Cloud-focused professional.

You can check out the full list of speakers here.

Pre-Conference Day

Following on from the success of last year's introduction of a Pre-Conference Day, this year's event will host four parallel all-day deep-dive sessions - of which, I get to co-present one with my good friend and fellow MVP Robert Hedblom. Here's the list of Pre-Conference sessions available:

• Cloud & Datacenter Management with Microsoft System Center & Windows Server 2019 (delivered by Microsoft MVP's Kevin Greene and Robert Hedblom)
• Microsoft Security lighthouse - how enterprise environments can protect against threats (delivered by Microsoft MVP's Maarten Goet and Alexander Benoit)
• Productivity happens in the cloud: mastering the modern workplace for enterprises (delivered by Microsoft MVP's Jan Ketil Skanke and Ståle Hansen)
• Azure initialization from zero to hero: onboarding, governance & resources deployment (delivered by Microsoft's Phoummala Schmitt and Microsoft MVP Michael Rueefli)

Each of the pre-conference day instructors are highly skilled experts in their chosen fields and well-placed to set you on your learning journey over the full day.

Tracks

The main conference gives attendees 6 parallel tracks to choose from. With over 70 breakout sessions, plenty of community theater sessions and a packed exhibitor area, this conference has you covered for what you need to take your career to the next level.

My Sessions

On Wednesday at the Pre-Conference Day, I get to talk for a whole six hours with my good friend Robert Hedblom on 'Cloud & Datacenter Management with Microsoft System Center & Windows Server 2019'. Here's a description of what we'll cover:

"If like most businesses, you're responsible for managing and monitoring a combination of on-premises and cloud-based workloads, then this pre-conf session will equip you with the tools and real-world knowledge you need to keep things running smoothly. You'll get a run-through of all the new capabilities of System Center 2019 along with an overview of the new Azure-attach features in Windows Server 2019. We'll close out the day with a 'Notes from the Field' section - where we'll share our real-world experiences of managing hybrid cloud environments with System Center, Azure and Windows Server."

Following on from the announcements at this month's Microsoft Ignite conference, we'll also be giving attendees a sneak peek of the new Azure Arc service and we'll show how you can use it to manage your on-prem and cloud-based servers.

Later in the week (Friday morning), I'll be flying solo and presenting a session titled 'Getting Started with Azure Monitor'. Here's the description about this one:

"In this session, we'll take you on a journey around Azure Monitor - Microsoft's one-stop-shop for metrics, logs, alerts and telemetry data across your Azure resources. You'll also learn how to make good use of advanced monitoring integrations such as Application Insights, Virtual Machine Insights, Container Insights and Log Analytics."


Getting Registered

There's still some time left to get registered and if you haven't already, then check out the registration link here.


If you're attending, make sure to come over and say hello to me and some of the other presenters during the conference. See you all there!

Speaking at Experts Live Europe 2018

This week, I'm over at the Microsoft Ignite conference learning as much as I can about the many new releases announced in the Azure and System Center world. All this information is an excellent way to prepare for my upcoming presentation at the awesome Experts Live Europe conference in Prague next month.

If you haven't heard of Experts Live Europe or just haven't had a chance to attend in previous years, this is a community-driven conference with a focus on Microsoft cloud, datacenter and workplace management. Hosted this year from October 24th -26th in the amazing city of Prague, Czech Republic - it really is one of the best Microsoft-focused conferences in Europe where attendees get to hang out and learn with top speakers from around the world.

Speakers

With over 40 speakers flying in from across the globe, you'll be treated to deeply technical and highly engaging presentations from Microsoft MVP's, Microsoft Regional Directors, Microsoft employees and well-know Community Champions. You can check out the full list of speakers here.

Pre-Conference Day

For the first time at an Experts Live Europe event, this year will host a Pre-Conference Day on October 24th with the following three parallel all-day deep-dive sessions:

• Cloud & Cloud Security (delivered by Microsoft MVP Pete Zerger)
• DevOps (delivered by Microsoft MVP Damian Flynn)
• Enterprise Client Management (delivered by Microsoft MVP's Kent Agerlund and Marius Skovli)

Each of the pre-conference day instructors are highly skilled experts in their chosen fields and well-placed to set you on your learning journey over the full day.

Tracks

The main conference (running from October 25th - 26th) gives attendees 6 parallel tracks to choose from. With over 70 breakout sessions, plenty of community theater sessions and a packed exhibitor area, this conference has you covered for what you need to take your career to the next level.

My Session

On the Friday morning, I'll be presenting a session titled 'What’s New in the World of Microsoft Monitoring?' and in it, I'll help you get up to speed with all of the latest happenings in the Microsoft Monitoring world. There'll be loads of demo's to see on the newest Azure monitoring capabilities  and we'll also cover what's new in the latest release of SCOM.

Getting Registered

With over a month to go, there's still time to submit your business case to your boss so you can attend this really cool learning event. There's a number of registration options that you can choose from (depending on whether or not you wish to attend the pre-conference day) and there's also an opportunity to get access to the exclusive VIP Party in the Cloud event on the Wednesday.

To choose your ticket and get registered for Experts Live Europe, check out all the information you need here.

If you're attending, please take some time to chat with me and some of the other presenters during the conference. See you guys there!

Experts Live Europe 2017

After a few weeks off work on vacation, it's back to full swing this week as I prepare to travel over to Berlin tomorrow for the awesome Experts Live Europe conference.

Formerly known as System Center Universe Europe, this is one of my favourite conferences to present, network and learn at. If it's anything like last years event, then the week ahead is going to be a blast.

I'll be presenting a session on Wednesday afternoon titled 'Monitoring...The Next Generation' where I'll be talking about some of the best new monitoring features available in the Microsoft space.

Later on Wednesday, I'll be back on stage with my buddy Stefan Roth for an 'Experts Discussion Panel' titled 'Monitoring, Insights and Analytics'. For this panel, we're encouraging attendees to bring their questions and engage in conversations - which will hopefully give people some real technical value to bring back to their workplace.

With close to 100 different sessions to choose from spanning topics such as Microsoft Azure, OMS, EMS, Azure Stack, System Center and Windows Server, there's something for everyone. Check out the session schedule here.

Looking forward to seeing everyone over there and make sure to drop in to one of my sessions and say hello!

Experts Live NL 2016

Today I've just finished up presenting my last public conference session of 2016 at the awesome Experts Live conference in the Netherlands.

This is my second year to attend Experts Live NL and it already seems like the conference attendee and speaker count has grown significantly in that short space of time.

My presentation this year was titled 'Hacking OMS with your OpsMgr Skills' and is an extension of the session that I co-presented with my good friend Cameron Fuller at System Center Universe 2016 in August.

The original idea and title for this session was all Cameron's and with his blessing, I put my own spin on the content to ensure that Experts Live attendees were treated to a significantly different version of the one we delivered previously at SCU. Also, with the vast number of changes and feature additions that we've now become accustomed to with OMS, there was much to show on the day.

My session was the first to open after the keynote and it was refreshing to see the room filled with a large number of current OpsMgr users waiting to hear how to advance their skillsets with OMS.

(Photo credit Pedro van Vliet)

When my presentation was done, I took some time to hang out with old friends and to network with the attendees and various booth vendors around the event.

All in all, Experts Live NL was a good closure for me to a hectic few months of traveling and presenting. I'm looking forward to now refocusing my attention back onto my poor neglected blog and bringing some useful posts into the community over the coming months!

Looking back on System Center Universe Europe 2016

A few weeks back I had the honour of presenting again at the annual System Center Universe Europe conference - which was held this year in Berlin, Germany.

This was my fourth year presenting at System Center Universe Europe and I can honestly say that the conference just keeps getting better and better each time. This is mainly due to the epic amount of time and effort the team over at itnetX dedicate to organising it.

I went into this conference initially with two sessions to present. One was a solo effort titled 'What's New with OpsMgr 2016' and the other was a joint presentation with the one and only Cameron Fuller titled 'Using your OpsMgr skills to hack OMS'.

A few short hours after landing in Germany, I ended up adding another presentation to my list. This third one was another joint presentation with Cameron Fuller and it came with the awesome title of 'OMS & OpsMgr: Mortal Enemies, Casual Acquaintances, Best Friends, or Inbred Cousins?' - only Cameron could think up a fun and quirky title like this!

Here's the low-down on how each day over there went for me:

Pre-Conference
The day before the conference began, a few of us (myself, Cameron, Robert Hedblom and Janaka Rangama) decided to do some sightseeing and took a cab over to the Berlin Wall Memorial. Although this is one of the top sights to see when you visit Berlin and definitely something on my bucket list to check out, the sombre historical significance of the wall was never far from our minds.

After a few hours soaking up some culture, we walked through the various meandering side-streets of Berlin until we came across the conference centre that would host this years System Center Universe event. Located right in the middle of Berlin's Alexanderplatz, it wasn't hard to miss due to the large SCU flags that greeted us on arrival at the front of the building.

After a quick recon mission of the rooms we would be presenting in and the overall venue, we all agreed that this was going to be a good week ahead.

When we left the conference centre, we decided (actually Robert decided) to get some food accompanied with some local beverages. Being in Germany, it would've been rude to order anything smaller than this as a beer to wash down the local staple dish of Currywurst...

Another great thing about this years host city is the fact that everything is so central and after catching up with my geek friends, it was only a short night-time walk back to the hotel - which was always easy to navigate back to due to the prominence of the building on the Berlin skyline!

Day 1
We had a bright and early start on the Wednesday morning as Marcel Zehner kicked off the opening keynote with a run-down of the few days ahead (including the all-important party list!)

When Marcel got the formalities out of the way, it was straight into tech with special guest Ed Wilson (aka The Scripting Guy). Ed delivered an awesome presentation on how to approach traditional IT challenges in a hybrid IT world.

Straight after the keynote, myself and Cameron headed over to our room to get ready for our first co-presented session titled 'OMS & OpsMgr: Mortal Enemies, Casual Acquaintances, Best Friends, or Inbred Cousins?'...

It wasn't long before the room filled up and in true Cameron style, he kicked off the presentation with a pre-recorded video of songs and images that represented mortal enemies, casual acquaintances, best friends and inbred cousins!

The interaction from the audience during our session was awesome and we had so many questions in the Q & A section that we ran out of time!

The rest of the day was spent watching and learning from some of the other presentations and later that night, it was time to chill at the speakers and sponsors party - which was hosted at Club Mio and included a top quality open-air barbecue dinner.

Due to some very suspect MVP dance moves, I'll keep the after-hours nightclub photo's away from the internet!

Day 2
On the second day, I took in a cool session from the dynamic Stefan duo (Stefan Roth & Stefan Koell) before heading over to Bob Cornelissen and Savision's session titled 'Prepare for Hybrid Monitoring - SCOM 2012, SCOM 2016 and OMS'.  Due to an unexpected hospital visit, Bob had initially asked me to be on standby to take over and deliver this presentation as he wasn't sure he'd even make it over to Berlin but, like a true professional, he stood up on stage and rocked it!

Following this, myself Cameron and Jan Vidar Elven headed over to the 'Ask the Experts' booth to host questions from attendees related to System Center 2016.

Later that afternoon me and Cameron were back on stage again for our  'Using your OpsMgr skills to hack OMS' session. This was another well attended presentation (especially considering the SquaredUp guys were doing an impromptu Whiskey Tasting in the room next door)!

When the final sessions of the day finished up, the conference venue played host to the SCU Networking Party where the mix of geek-talk, cocktails and music was rampant.

Day 3
With more than a few sore heads on the last day from the parties the previous night, I had my final presentation to deliver at the opening 09:15 time-slot. This session was titled 'What's New with OpsMgr 2016' and in it I covered all of the new features and enhancements that we can look forward to with the latest release of our favourite monitoring platform. Again, this was another session that had great interaction from the attendees.

An interesting method of gauging attendee feedback for each session was the 'Happy or Not' button stand that was positioned outside the door of each breakout session.

The results from this new rating system were uploaded and sent to speakers within a few days of the conference and thankfully the sessions I participated in where well received.

When I finished my last presentation, it was time to finally chill out a bit after prepping and rehearsing for most of the week and just after lunch a few of us decided to do some final sight-seeing before heading home the following day.

Here's me with my Ergo buddy Gareth checking out some of the amazing architecture around Berlin..

We also stumbled across what we initially thought was a normal Microsoft Store (similar to the ones in the US) however, when we went inside it was a strange bar/café combination so of course, we stopped here for some light refreshments!

When we were finished in the Microsoft bar, we headed on to the famous Brandeburg Gate (one of the top historical tourist attractions in Germany).

Closing Announcements
After the sight-seeing, we headed back to the conference for the closing keynote where some significant announcements were made relating to the future of SCU Europe.

The first announcement was that the conference would be back again in Berlin next year - which is a decision that has gone down very well with speakers and attendees.

The second announcement was that SCU Europe would be re-branded to Experts Live Europe...

I think this is a sensible decision as the conference has morphed into so much more than just System Center. Yes we will have a new release of System Center 2016 coming shortly but when you consider the amount of content discussed at this years conference on Azure and OMS technologies, it just makes perfect sense.

All-in-all, it was a great week and I'm really looking forward to heading back to Berlin next year to what has now turned into Europe's premier community conference for Microsoft IT pro's and geeks.