ITCamp 2013

The third edition of ITCamp is coming to Cluj-Napoca again this year (May 23rd-24th) – and thanks to Mihai and the rest of the team behind the event, it’s shaping up to be more exciting than ever! :)

Just like last year, we’re having the content split into 3 parallel tracks over two days, which will mean over 30 sessions held by an amazing set of speakers. We’re joined this year by Richard Campbell, Tim Huckaby, Martin Kulov, Tobiasz Koprowski, Peter Leeson, Andy Cross and many, many others. All in all, we’ve got 4 Microsoft Regional Directors, 13 Microsoft MVPs and other great community speakers attending the event.

This year we’re also planning to have several pre-conference workshops and seminars as well, targeted at those out there who are looking for more in-depth and hands-on experience with some of the newest Microsoft technologies. Also, if you’ve missed our past editions, we’ve got a dedicated section on our conference page discussing them.

With a month left until the event, there’s still a lot left to do. But I know it’s definitely going to be worth the ride!

New series of Virtualization Jump Start courses

The Born to Learn blog lets us know that the IT Pro Evangelism team, Microsoft Learning and the Microsoft Virtual Academy will be doing a bunch of Jump Start courses on Hyper-V. You can join them for Introduction to Hyper-V today (Thursday, January 24th) and for Microsoft Virtualization for VMware Professionals on Wednesday, January 30th.

These live online events are designed for IT Pros that are new to virtualization, or experienced in other hypervisors (such as VMware or Citrix) and want to learn about Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V. Microsoft & VMware virtualization experts Symon Perriman, Jeff Woolsey and Matt McSpirit will hold this first Jump Start course in a demo-rich learning experience with a live Q&A for a full days of training from 8am to 5pm PST (6pm – 3am EET).

These events are FREE and open to the PUBLIC so you can register here: Introduction to Hyper-V (http://aka.ms/HyperVJS) and Microsoft Virtualization for VMware Professionals (http://aka.ms/vmJS)

Introduction to Hyper-V agenda: Introduction to Microsoft Virtualization, Hyper-V Infrastructure, Hyper-V Networking, Hyper-V Storage, Hyper-V Management, Hyper-V High Availability and Live Migration, Integration with System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager, and Integration with Other System Center 2012 Components

Microsoft Virtualization for VMware Professionals agenda: Introduction & Scalability, Storage & Resource Management, Multi-tenancy & Flexibility, Backup & High-Availability, Introduction & Overview of System Center 2012, Application Management, Cloud on your Terms, and Foundation, Hybrid Clouds & Costs.

What’s new in Windows 8

I’ve recently published my session’s slides from the last weekend’s Windows 8 Dev Camp in Cluj, for those of you who are interested.

It was more of a demo session, so the slides themselves aren’t that relevant, but I would like to recommend the TechNet page dedicated to what’s new in Windows 8 – it’s a great starting point if you want to find out more on the topic. You can also find a copy of the Springboard Series Windows 8 Resource Guide here. Since we’re talking about Windows 8, we’ve also had a TechTalk on Windows 8 back in late July, you can find that on Vimeo (in Romanian).

On a side note, we’ve recently published some of the sessions from this year’s ITCamp event in Cluj, which you can find on the dedicated Vimeo channel.

It’s been a while…

I know I’ve neglected the blog in the past few months, and while I’ve been somewhat active on Twitter/Facebook, I did not update this blog as much as I would have liked. That’s scheduled to change pretty soon.

This was partly because of the very busy schedule, attending and organizing different events (the yearly MVP Summit in Redmond in February, MS Days in Bulgaria in March, Microsoft/TechSoup NGO Connection Days in Romania in April, and this year’s edition of the ITCamp event in May). This pause was also due to some personal problems I’ve had to deal with, but all those have fortunately turned out okay in the end.

I’ve got quite a few new and interesting projects I’m embarking upon, and some of them will be described in more detail at the right time. Since summer is here, our ITPro community will most likely be active online since we’ll probably not organize any other events until Sep/Oct. Until then, if you’ve missed this year’s event, you can check out most of the ITCamp 2012 session slides online.

Transforming IT with Microsoft Private Cloud

If you’re even remotely interested in Microsoft technologies and private cloud deployments, you definitely shouldn’t miss today’s webcast:

Hear from other senior IT professionals about how cloud computing can help you gain maximum competitive advantage with minimal risk.

Learn about Microsoft cloud offerings, including private, public, and hybrid cloud models.

Experience Microsoft private cloud solutions through the Microsoft Technology Center.

The virtual event agenda is the following:

Private cloud discussion with Microsoft executives: Insights and news

  • Satya Nadella, President, Server and Tools Business, Microsoft
  • Brad Anderson, Corporate Vice President, Management and Security Division, Microsoft
  • 8:30AM PST | 16:30 UTC

Executive panel and Q&A: Guidance and best practices

  • Brad Anderson, Corporate Vice President, Management and Security Division, Microsoft
  • Jacky Wright, Vice President, IT Strategic Services, Microsoft IT
  • Rand Morimoto, Chief Executive Officer, Convergent Computing
  • 9:00AM PST | 17:00 UTC

Envisioning Your Private Cloud: A scenario based demonstration from the Microsoft Technology Center in Redmond, WA.

  • 9:30AM PST | 17:30 UTC

Once again, the registration link is here - enjoy! :)

CodeCamp and ITSpark autumn events

Even though this comes with a slight delay, I’m just writing to say I’m very excited about our recent tour of events covered by the ITSpark and CodeCamp communities. :)

To keep things short, the end of November had both our communities covering events in 5 citiesTimișoara, Oradea, Cluj, Iași and Bucharest – and speaking to a total of about 400 attendees.

Among the speakers, we’ve had 6 Microsoft MVPs, and we’ve covered topics ranging from new technologies coming out in 2012 (Windows 8, SQL Server “Denali”, .NET Framework 4.5, the System Center 2012 suite and Hyper-V 3.0), to technologies already in use today (HTML5, CSS3, jQuery, EF, Unit Testing, MVC, WCF streaming and Office 365).

The feedback we’ve got was extremely positive, so we’ll definitely do this again in the future. Until then, I’ll leave you with a few other links (impressions, photos and some session slides):

If you want more resources on Windows 8, I definitely recommend you check out the Build conference website, where you’ll find 275 recorded sessions on technologies coming in W8.

Also, for those of you who haven’t had a chance to get to the events, I just wanted to point out a thing we also mentioned to the attendees, which is that we’ve published all the video recordings from the ITCamp conference earlier this year. If you weren’t there or just wish to view some of the sessions again, head on to our ITCamp channel on Vimeo. ;)

I don’t want to end this without sending our thanks to all our sponsors and partners for these events: Microsoft Romania, Yonder, Ullink, Small Footprint, Endava, Pras Consulting, OradeaDevs, Avaelgo and Transcent. :D

A huge thank you to all the speakers and attendees as well – we couldn’t have done all this without you!

I’m now a member of STEP!

After my MVP title renewal earlier this month, I’ve just received news that I’ve also been selected to become a member of the Springboard Technical Expert Program (STEP). What is STEP? Well, here’s a short overview:

The STEP program was launched in 2009 as an effort to not only drive global awareness and value of Windows products, but to help influencers build community and advocacy around these key technologies. The goal has always been to make our launch efforts a true, “for the community, by the community” effort. Since that time, the program has expanded to support Windows, Office, MDOP (Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack), Desktop Virtualization, Windows Intune and Internet Explorer to help support the growing needs of the IT-Pros.

This program helps to expand reach beyond typically-attended Microsoft events like TechEd to more local efforts. The nexus of the program lies in the IT pro-ready content on The Springboard Series on TechNet. This “how-to” content helps IT pros to Discover and Explore, Pilot and Deploy, and Manage Windows, MDOP, Office, and IE. Content is currently available in 10 languages and the site receives over 3.5 million visitors each month.

Some benefits of the STEP program include:

  • Since 2010 STEP members presented 350 events to over 130,000 IT Pros in 39 countries on 15 languages.
  • STEP members were invite to participate at MMS, TechEd US, TechEd EMEA, on Talking About Windows, the Springboard Series Tours (US and EMEA) tour,  as well as on the Springboard Series Virtual Roundtables.
  • STEP members are regularly featured on the Springboard Series on TechNet, the TechNet homepage and community pages and in the Springboard Series Insider Newsletter.
  • STEP members are sought after for many speaking opportunities.
  • STEP members have access to members of the Windows product team for troubleshooting and questions.
  • STEP members have regular opportunities to participate in product panels and focus groups.
  • STEP members presented at MVP summit alongside Microsoft SMEs.

I’d like to publicly thank everyone at Microsoft who had a say in this for the amazing opportunity I’ve received, and of course to everyone who has ever attended my events/seminars – this wouldn’t have been possible without the people out there who I got to share my knowledge with over the years! I’m sure the STEP membership will empower me to keep doing what I was doing up to now anyway, but this time on a whole new level.

You can check out the Springboard page on TechNet, the Springboard Series blog and the official Springboard twitter feed for more information. ;)