Canadian IT Professionals

Ignite Your Career - 2009 - E2 -Internal vs External training

Rick Claus — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 17:26:00 GMT

The Ignite Your Career webcast series was created as a result of your feedback that technical professionals needed help to develop those critical personal and professional skills that Technical Professionals so often neglect. We partnered with IT World Canada and the Canadian Information Processing Society – in order to bring industry experts and thought leaders together for a radio talk show chat where we discussed various topics and answered your questions

This special highlights edition of the Canadian Ignite Your Career webcast series takes the best ideas and soundbites from the previously recorded episodes. I’m joined by my co-host Shane Schick - editor in chief of IT World Canada – to help with the production

In this episode, we discuss maintaining your technical and personal skill sets and how they are critical to being successful in the job you already have and anything you might be looking to progress into. Unfortunately, the option of external training might not be available to you at this point in time. How can you take advantage of internal resources like job shadowing, mentoring, internal courses, study groups as well as external training activities when available? This episode is for you.

Panel Members

Barry Gervin: Founding Partner of ObjectSharp. Barry provides technical leadership to his valued clients, staff, and the development community. Over his 17 year career in the IT industry, he has helped many development teams architect and successfully deliver large software projects within tight schedules and budgets that consistently perform for their end users.
Brian Bourne: Industry expert with over 15 years of IT experience; he is responsible for managing all day to day operations at CMS Consulting Inc. and maintains his technical edge through consulting and participation with numerous technology related events.
Maurizio Laudisa: CIO of LifeLabs, where he rebuilt a national $14 million, 60 staff IT department in 6 months after sale of MDS Diagnostic to OMERS/Borealis. He has led or participated in several health IT initiatives, such as the Ontario Lab Information System (OLIS), Colon Cancer Check, integration to physicians’ CMS and EMR.
Aaron Skonnard: Co-founder of Pluralsight where he focuses on cloud computing, service-oriented architecture (SOA), XML and Web services technologies. He focuses primarily on the Microsoft platform and is considered an expert in the Microsoft community on Windows Azure, the Azure Services Platform, Windows Communication Foundation, BizTalk Server, SOAP/REST, and XML technologies.

More information and resources related to the Ignite Your Career series can be found on it's main landing page.

Direct Download:

Subscribe to the podcast: (so you don't miss an episode)

Full episode available here.

Comments, Suggestions and Ideas for Future Topics can be left below as a comment or emailed directly to the Ignite Your Career feedback alias atmailto:IYC@microsoft.com

Music and audio production provided by Mark Blevis - ThirdStoryProductions.

IT Pro Team Blog | IT Managers Blog |Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

Ignite Your Career - 2009 - E1 - Industry Insights and Trends Podcast

Rick Claus — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:16:00 GMT

In this episode, we revisit one of the most popular topics we've had on the ongoing Ignite Your Career webcast series to kick of this season. Industry Insights and Trends. You need to be on top of what is happening in the industry in order to position yourself and your organization to benefit from these trends. This panel discussion will arm you with the information you need from experts in the ICT industry in order to stay on top of your game.

Panel Members

Richard Campbell: One of the co-founders of Strangeloop Networks and part of the team building an appliance to accelerate ASP.NET. Richard is co-host of the ".NET Rocks!, the Internet Audio Talk Show for .NET Developers" (http://www.dotnetrocks.com/) podcast and the host of "RunAs Radio, the Internet Audio Talk Show for IT Professionals" (http://www.runasradio.com/) podcast.
Jay Payette: A consultant serving public and private organizations in the fields of technology and management. He currently works for the Ottawa office of Accenture in the Systems Integration and Technology practice.
Lee Jacobs: Program Director for Labour Marketing Information at the Information and Communications Technology Council (ICTC). Lee’s current focus at ICTC is on refreshing the ground breaking supply and demand forecast for ICT occupations in Canada, the Outlook 2008-2015.

More information and resources related to the Ignite Your Career series can be found on it's main landing page.

Direct Download:

Subscribe to the podcast: (so you don't miss an episode)

Full episode available here.

Comments, Suggestions and Ideas for Future Topics can be left below as a comment or emailed directly to the Ignite Your Career feedback alias atmailto:IYC@microsoft.com

Music and audio production provided by Mark Blevis - ThirdStoryProductions.

IT Pro Team Blog | IT Managers Blog |Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

Impromptu Windows 7 Demos

pierre.roman — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 21:11:28 GMT

I wanted to take a few minutes to tell you a little story about my trip to the Halifax edition of TechDays 2009. The reason why it’s interesting is the fact that all IT pros at some point need to “demo” or talk about certain solutions. So we must always be prepared.

So here i am on Sunday morning trying to get quickly through security with 4 laptops, 3 external hard drives, a wireless access point and a bag full of cable. Quickly… yeah right…

Anyway, the security personnel were very puzzled as to why I carry so much hardware, so a discussion followed regarding TechDays 2009. They actually were very interested to talk about Windows 7 once they noticed all the stickers on one of my laptops.

Also because of the amount of hardware I had they made me turn them on. Which lead to more questions and impromptu demo of Windows 7 at the security counter. Other travelers were starting to gather around and we had very good discussion regarding performance, usability, simplicity.

The moral of this story is that when you’re the IT guy people will want to pick your brain about things that will make their lives easier and simpler. If you want to get prepared, check out the Windows 7 How-to videos that you can base you own demo experience on.

Be prepared there’s an impromptu demo waiting for you just around the corner….

Cheers!

_________________________________________________

Pierre Roman | Senior Technical Account Manager | Directeur de Compte Technique Senior
Microsoft Canada

E-Mail:pierre.roman@Microsoft.com | Live Messenger: proman_2007@hotmail.com

Premier Support : 1-800-936-7358

Visual Studio and Virtualization

rodney.buike — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:11:00 GMT

Visual Studio is a tool usually associated with developers. I’ve installed it exactly twice, VS2005 after the launch to take a peek, and VS2008 for a TechDays session. Today, as the boundary between developers and IT pros dissolves, more and more IT pros are using Visual Studio and now there is another reason. Lab Management 2010 is new component in Visual Studio 2010 that allows you to build, monitor and manage your virtual lab environment.

Back in my former life as the admin for a software development company we were constantly tossing code around between the dev team, myself and the testers as we went through the process of building applications, installing them in the test lab, testing them and then repeating as bugs were found and corrected. We referred to this as playing tennis with bugs but it has also been referred to as bug ping pong. Lab Manager 2010 is aimed at speeding up the develop – build – test – deploy lifecycle.

Lab Management 2010 integrates with System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) and Hyper-V to put an end to bug ping pong. It allows you to set up a test environment from scratch in minutes, deploy your applications to testers and then have them report back bugs with links to checkpoints (aka snapshots) for the developers to look at and reproduce bugs for a more efficient process.

Lab Management 2010 is really intriguing for a virtual guy like myself and I will be digging into this a little further as time permits and blogging my learning's and resources as I discover them. For now I am working on building a Lab Management lab (oh the irony) using the publicly available beta of Visual Studio 2010.

Stay tuned for more as I progress but for now you can download Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 here and learn how Visual Studio is not just for developers any more!

Are Resource Kits Dead? NOPE!

rodney.buike — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 14:05:00 GMT

UPDATE!!! The Windows 7 Resource Kit is now available from Microsoft Press. This 1700 page book and CD is the book for administrators who will be deploying, maintaining and troubleshooting Windows 7 in their organizations. The book was authored by three MVPs Mitch Tulloch, Tony Northrup and Jerry Honeycutt, and also by Ed Wilson who is commonly known as The Scripting Guy on Microsoft TechNet. The lead author Mitch Tulloch also maintains an Unofficial Support Site for the Windows 7 Resource Kit at http://www.mtit.com/reskit/ where he posts additional resources and responds to questions from readers.

Find out more about the Windows 7 Resource Kit on the Microsoft Learning website and order it from Amazon today.

------------------------------

I remember the first set of books I bought on Windows. The Windows 2000 Resource Kit was 7 volumes plus a poster and a CD with some great tools on it. The other day while flying to Vancouver for TechDays I was sorting through email lists and came across an email asking if the resource kits were dead. Mitch Tulloch, a friend, MVP and author chimed in with this response which he allowed me to post.

-------------------------

GROAN. Resource Kits are NOT dead--it's only unsupported Resource Kit TOOLS (executables) that are no longer provided. The Windows 7 Resource Kit is an 1800 page book on how to deploy, manage, maintain and troubleshoot Windows 7 and will be available in bookstores in mid-October. You can also pre-order this book today from Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0735627002/mtitenterprises). In addition to having 32 chapters of content that has been peer-reviewed by dozens of individuals on the Windows team at Microsoft, there is also a companion CD in the book that includes:

- The Windows 7 Resource Kit PowerShell Pack, a collection of Windows PowerShell modules that adds over 700 new Windows PowerShell cmdlets and functions to those already present in-box in Windows 7.

- Almost 200 sample Windows PowerShell scripts are included to demonstrate how you can administer different aspects of Windows 7 using Windows PowerShell.

To repeat, Resource Kits are definitely NOT dead--I should know as I'm the lead author for this book :)

Cheers,

Mitch Tulloch

Mississauga SharePoint User Group Kicks Things off with 2010!

damirb — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 04:58:22 GMT

This week was a busy one not only because of the fact that Windows 7and Windows Server 2008 R2 hit the streets, but also because many details surrounding Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 were announced at the Microsoft SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas which just ended.

Many of you that attended TechDays in Toronto and Vancouver have asked me questions about SharePoint 2010 and what some of the new features will be, and, to be quite honest, I did not have a good answer as I was not privy to many of the details. This Monday, at the Microsoft Mississauga office you can learn about SharePoint 2010 at the inaugural meeting of the Mississauga SharePoint User Group.

Rob Windsor from ObjectSharp will take you through what’s new in SharePoint 2010. The session will provide an overview of the product with a particular focus on what’s new for developers. You will learn about the new designers, explorers and templates and overall developer experience for SharePoint 2010. Along the way you’ll see several of the enhancements to the end-user experience including the ribbon, in-place editing, and the new page and dialog interface model.

To register for the event, please go to https://www.clicktoattend.com/invitation.aspx?code=142514.

Damir

Canadian Windows 7 Launch

rodney.buike — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 15:07:49 GMT

The day is here! Tomorrow, October 22nd 2009, Windows 7 will be released and you’ll be able to head to your favourite reseller and pick up a copy or maybe even a new PC with Windows 7! Today is the press launch at the Westin Harbour Castle in downtown Toronto.

The media launch brought our fearless leader Steve Ballmer to open the event and he took the stage to talk about Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 and what is in store.

I am stationed in the “tweet lounge” talking with press, customer, partners and listening to some great Windows 7 stories. Follow along with the festivities on Twitter, just look for the #cdnwin7 hashtag. If you are not on Twitter you can still follow along at http://search.twitter.com/ just do a search for #cdnwin7!

“Security Bulletins for the regular IT guy” Podcast – 10/13/2009

Rick Claus — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 17:20:00 GMT

Three guys got together over pints in February 2009 and talked about how one of the issues facing Technical Professionals today is keeping their systems patched and up to date. This issue was brought up to them at a User Group meeting they were attending (Ottawa Windows Server User Group) where we were participating in an “Ask the Microsoft Guy” panel discussion.

Over pints at D’Arcy McGee’s, Pierre Roman, Bruce Cowper and I decided we would try to help solve the issue of information overload regarding patching and put together a timely podcast to go live each “Patch Tuesday”.

Goals:

Use plain English terms and every day language that any Technical professional can understand – minimize “corporate speak”.
Breakdown each Security Bulletin with summary information first followed by more details as to the impact an IT Pro would face.
Outline mitigation factors in case patches couldn’t be tested or applied in a timely fashion
Keep it top 20 minutes OR LESS. This one is critical – Keep It Simple, repeatable and get out of the IT Pros way to get on with their day.
Have fun!

Have a listen directly from the embedded Silverlight player OR subscribe to the specific feed and download it to your iTunes / Zune software.

As always - if you have suggestions on making it better - please pass on your comments. Mail me directly – rick.claus@microsoft.com

Direct Download:

Subscribe to the podcast: (so you don't miss an episode)

Disclaimer: This podcast was produced with the best information available to us at the time of recording. Your primary source for all things Security Bulletin related should always be the Microsoft Security Response Center blog.

Bulletins discussed for October 13th, 2009:

Podcast Participants: Pierre Roman and myself.

Additional Technical Show Notes:

Recorded in my backyard on Thanksgiving Weekend in Canada. Clear skies, but darn cold.
Beverage of choice for this edition: leftover Mooshead “Cracked Canoe” ale (http://www.crackedcanoe.com/) from my Thanksgiving festivities.

PodSafe music from PodSafe Music Network @ http://music.podshow.com/. Artist: Derek K Miller, song - “You’re the Big Sky - rock guitar instrumental”

IT Pro Team Blog | IT Managers Blog |Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

Red Hat Virtualization Support

rodney.buike — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 15:30:22 GMT

I was just catching up on some RSS feeds and came across this post from the Microsoft Virtualization team. As of October 7th 2009 Microsoft and Red Hat will support each others OS on their respective virtualization platforms.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2, 5.3, 5.4 have passed cert tests when running on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V, Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2. See more at RedHat's certified hardware site.
Windows Server 2003/ Windows Server 2008 / Windows Server 2008 R2 are validated to run on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4, using their KVM-based hypervisor. See more at Microsoft Server Virtualization Validation Program site.

So no whether you are running Windows on Red Hat or Red Hat on Windows you are supported. Great news but that’s not all. Running an OS is one thing but what about application and management support?

The KB article outlining applications supported in a virtual environment was updated and can be found here.

Also System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 has been released and supports monitoring of the following operating systems:

HP-UX 11i v2 and v3 (PA-RISC and IA64)
Sun Solaris 8 and 9 (SPARC) and Solaris 10 (SPARC and x86)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 (x86/x64) and 5 (x86/x64) Server
Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 (x86) and 10 SP1 (x86/x64)
IBM AIX v5.3 and v6.1 (POWER)

Great news all around!

So you want to be an MVP?

rodney.buike — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 18:14:00 GMT

Hi Everyone,

My name is Simran Chaudhry and I am the MVP (Most Valuable Professional) Lead for Developer & IT Pro MVP’s in Canada. Along with Sasha Krsmanovic & Ljupco Grmaskoski, we run the Microsoft MVP Award Program in Canada. I thought it would be a good idea to let you know who MVP’s are, what they do, and let you know a bit more about how you can submit a nomination for yourself or someone else that you think deserves the award.

MVP’s are exceptional technical community leaders from around the world who are awarded for voluntarily sharing their high quality, real world expertise in offline and online technical communities. They are great assets to the community and are superstars in the technology they are experts in (sometimes more than one). They volunteer much of their personal time to help others, all for free, through proactively seeking out problems in online & offline technical communities. Microsoft MVPs are a highly select group of experts that represents the technical community's best and brightest, and they share a deep commitment to community and a willingness to help others.

Some of you may be thinking that you or someone you know would make a great candidate for the MVP award. How can you be a part of the MVP program and become an MVP? Now you can submit a nomination online. Click here if you would like to nominate yourself or someone you know for the Microsoft MVP Award program.

If you would like to know more about the Microsoft MVP Award Program, please visit the MVP Program page or contact me directly.

On behalf of the entire Canadian MVP Team, thanks for reading,

Simran Chaudhry

Canadian MVP Lead

What I learned at SecTor!

rodney.buike — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 17:05:00 GMT

So SecTor 2009 wrapped up the other day and again, like any conference I attend, a lot is learned. The event was success in my opinion, from the venue to the food to the keynotes and of course the sessions. Even the vendor area had some exciting things happening. So what did I learn? I am going to break it down buy the sessions I attended…

Opening Keynote: "The Frogs Who Desired A King: A Virtualization and Cloud Computing Security Fable Set To Interpretive Dance" - Christofer Hoff

Christofer Hoff has an amazing talent and breaking down complex subjects, simplifying them and driving home a message. Walking away from this session it is clear that could security will offer a set of new and familiar challenges in the security space. Christofer (aka @beaker on Twitter) broke down the differences between the *aases and where the responsibility for security differs in each. Infrastructure as a Service, or IaaS (think Amazon EC2) is much like running any other server in that it is your responsibility to harden it. From the point that the network traffic hits your server up through the application(s) you are solely responsible for the security of that server. No surprise there.

It gets a little less clear with Platform as a Service, or PaaS (think Windows Azure) and Software as a Service, or SaaS (think Salesforce.com). In these instances your responsibility comes in at a different level and there is a level of trust that you must have in the provider. With PaaS services you are ultimately responsible for the security of the application and the data it is accessing and following SDL guidelines to ensure your application is secure is where your responsibility lies. You have to trust the provider that the infrastructure is secured properly. This trust becomes even more important with SaaS where the vendor is also providing the software.

"Hacking the Privacy Legislation" - Tracy Ann Kosa

This was by far one of the most interesting sessions. Tracy is a fantastic speaker and really knows her privacy legislation both in Canada and abroad. While privacy laws can be pretty boring and mundane what became evident early on was that everyone’s expectations of privacy are different and those differences can be even more noticeable around the world. More on expectations in a minute.

"DNSSEC deployment in Canada" - Paul Wouters, Norm Ritchie

There has been a lot of talk about DNSSEC in the last 18 months since Dan Kaminsky disclosed his DNS vulnerabilities. DNSSEC deployment is underway world wide, including Candada. CIRA is currently undergoing testing of DNSSEC on certain .CA domain names. DNSSEC might seem new, but in reality it is just DNS secured and post install it works and acts the same as the DNS you know and love. In fact the speakers went ahead and set up DNSSEC for the conference networks name resolution to prove that it was simple to set up and unnoticeable to those using it.

"Malware Freakshow" - Nicholas Percoco and Jibran Ilyas

I liked this session the best. Nicholas and Jibran walked through 4 real life situations where they have gone in to investigate payment system fraud. It was eye opening in the fact that 3 of the 4 cases discussed could have been prevented by either stronger passwords (aka not the default password) and/or limiting/securing remote access. While there were other issues within each case the issue that started it all was remote access which lead to systems being accessed. I know a lot of organizations that have devices managed by an external vendor and those vendors will open remote access so that they can troubleshoot and repair systems remotely. Ask yourself and then ask the vendor, is the password secure and does remote access need to be open 24/7 or can it be turned on when an issue arises? You can read some of their stories here and here and grab their whitepapers here.

Lunch Keynote: "A day in the life of a hacker..." - Adam Laurie (Major Malfunction)

Adam Laurie is one of the originals, a DefCon goon, and someone not to trust any RFID equipped cards with :) RFID is popping up everywhere, in passports, driver’s licenses and it is pretty scary how insecure it is. To prove it Adam read the RFID data from a passport, edited the security certificate and then replace the photo with a photo of a well known terrorist all within a few minutes. If you think your RFID credit card, passport, etc… is secured, think again!

"SSLFail.com Panel Discussion" - Jay Graver, Tyler Reguly, Mike Zusman

This was the last session I attended and the panel shared some information that they researched on SSL and it’s failures. From the ways browsers notify users of SSL, to tools that can be used to strip SSL while fooling users to poor implementation of SSL by admins there are some challenges here. While there was no answer given it was eye opening to hear that SSL faces its own issues and that they will need to be addressed. You can read some of their stats here.

“Wall of Shame” – SecTor Management & eSentire

The wall of shame was controversial to some, eye-opening to others and DUH moments to others it did educate. The wall of sheep/shame is common at security conferences in which people who connect to the unsecured wifi will have traffic sniffed and any unsecured communications posted on the wall. This usually entails a user name, blanked out password and the protocol and service they are using. It is meant to embarrass and enlighten the individual. SecTor provided both a unsecure open wifi network as well as a secured (AES-WPA2 PSK) wifi network but added a twist. They spanned a port on the switch the access points fed into and sniffed the wire, gathering all the traffic from the secured wifi as well.

A lot of people got caught, including the organizer (BTW Tweetdeck uses SSL to login and post but profile lookups are not secured and each lookup contains your credentials), some press and someone checking his online dating profile :)

The controversy came from the idea that the secure wifi was secured and therefore shouldn’t be on the wall of shame. The point missed by all was that while the traffic from the PC to the WAP was secured, in every wifi network the traffic eventually hits a wired network. We do a lot to ensure that the wireless portions of the network are secured but how many people do the same thing on the wired side?

All in all it was a great event, lots learned, lots to think about! Can’t wait for next year!

Microsoft Techdays Toronto 2009 WRAPS UP!

rodney.buike — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 16:09:37 GMT

And so it came to happen. An event that was born from brilliance came to life. Techdays. A conference for Canadians, By Canadians, done ACROSS Canada to bring technology and training to those who needed it most. It was only last year I remember waking up a 4:00am for the First Techdays held in Toronto. Excited! Ready to launch into the great pools of knowledge. I and so MANY others. And this year it continued. And after an amazing 48 hours, concluded.

So Toronto wrapped up with an absolutely amazing turnout! Over 1200+ people, from all walks of life, depths of technology and influences, CONVERGED into the Metro Toronto Convention Center.

1200 minds walked in that day and after 48 HOURS engorged themselves in various aspects of technology.

Whether they checked into the various booths downstairs, got some hands on with Multi Touch technology in Windows 7, barraged the various Experts and Speakers floating about the convention which challenging questions, or just plain and simply linked up with others.

It can be said, without question, that Techdays Toronto was an absolute raging success.

Microsoft brought together this in particular Techdays in Toronto some of the most passionate and creative people to make it such a huge smash event. Techdays was a success note because it showed exactly what happens when Microsoft brings the Community in to help. The passion of the presenters showed, the Experts were ready to dive out and engage the crowd, never was such an intermixing of minds seen.

Not only did it cover deep dive information for Development and Infrastructure, but it was a chance to get hands on with some of the newest types of technology and those involved in it's creation.

The list of those involved was long from various sponsors including, Ford, Dell, Microsoft and various Community Members. Techdays Toronto personified the culmination of Technology and Community. It brought forth not just a chance to learn more, but to meet more people and possibly to learn a little about ourselves. It helped each and every one of us, who've been there in the field, especially those lone warriors fighting the good fight, sometimes un-thanked. It brought a sense of "Hey I'm not alone in this!" At least that's how I felt.

And so I ask that all of you raise a glass of your beverage of choice, and tip a toast to each and every one out there who was involved in Techdays in Toronto (and other Techdays going on RIGHT now!) A Toast to Each of you and to Each other, to the Amazing team at Microsoft Canada and Microsoft Corp which had volunteers fly in from afar. *YOU* made Techdays happen, *YOU* helped shape it, and *YOU* are why Techdays will be a success.

Cheers to all of you, and see *YOU* next year, at Techdays!

W00t!

Sean
The Energized Tech

Day One – Half Done – TechDays Toronto

Rick Claus — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 22:23:57 GMT

Here we are, half way done the first day and things are flying. It’s awesome to see how many people came out to attend TechDays Toronto in order to pick and choose their personalized “a-la-carte” track from the over 40 sessions. As you can see – we’ve got some interesting challenges with capacity planning for certain sessions – so we’ve got monitors outside the rooms to accommodate some overflow.

We actually managed to re-configure the rooms so that instead of a half and half experience of classroom desks and rush seating, we’re going for full rush seating to accommodate the load. Luckily we can re-jig this over lunch.

One of the cool added experience piece that we have up and includes internet kiosks running Windows 7 – so you can both stay in touch with the office and your regular day job while trying out Windows 7 to boot. They are in a couple of spots around the venue and people seem to be using them quite frequently.

I am currently writing this blog post in the Windows 7 Lounge – nice couch setup with HD TV, Windows 7 touch devices and of course an xBox360 configured as a media extender to one of the HP TouchSmart systems. Funnily enough – I am working away on my Dell E4300 laptop writing this blog post while Barnaby Jeans is playing the demo for Forza 3 with Christian Beauclair and Rob Burke watch on.

I’m off – the 5th session is going to be starting soon followed up with FailCamp!

TechDays_ca in Toronto – Setup Well underway.

Rick Claus — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 22:15:04 GMT

Hey guys/gals,

By now I hope you know that TechDays is a technical conference that we’re putting on across most of Canada – 7 cities to be exact. The other day I tweeted that I was excited because we crossed the 350 registered attendees for our “expansion city” of Halifax as of the registration reports on Friday. This is awesome for the region – mainly from a community / ecosystem perspective – it’s probably now one of the largest technical gatherings in Atlantic Canada in recent years!

Not long after tweeting and emailing about that event – I started the packing process for TechDays Toronto. I arrived in on the flight this morning just after the thunderstorms blew through. Quick pit stop at the office for a meeting or two and then down to the MTCC South building to see the new Digs and help with the setup process.

TechDays is going to be BIG – over 1200 people registered for Toronto! Don’t worry – we have a couple of the large 800 series rooms for the food hall and some great sized breakout rooms on the 700 level for each of the tracks. I popped my head in room 718B (718 Butter) to see how the setup was progressing – the Servers, Security and Management track has over 400 registered attendees!

To accommodate this – we had changed the room setup to allow for the front half of the room in classroom style and the back half of the room as regular seating. If you are looking for the prime location – get there early!

I’ve got to get back to setting up the infrastructure and also get the Windows 7 Lounge area configured as well – more on this as they take shape.

“What have you been up to lately? How’s the IT department?” Ignite your Career – Episode 3

Rick Claus — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 15:12:00 GMT

Picture yourself walking into an elevator and having a senior executive standing in there. After the pleasant head nod, you press your floor button and stand to the side. After the doors close - the executive finally recognizes you and remembers you’re in IT. Because it’s a long ride up – she asks you a small talk type question like “So Bob, what projects have you been up to lately? How’s life in the IT Department?”.

Are you ready for this question? How would you answer?

Remember - You’ve got one minute to promote your personal brand and make an impression. Are you ready for that?

This is a serious topic that comes up in conversation when my team is out at events and talking with people. It’s mostly around the issue of looking for a job or trying to break into he industry as they are newly out and seeking employment. Kudos to the ones that are asking – most are seeking advice on what to say and how to promote. What about all the OTHER people in the room who are not doing a good job of connecting and self promoting? Sure – maybe they are gainfully employed now or have not had to look for a new job in a while – but what about if something changed?

Self Promotion / personal brand awareness / pride in projects completed AND being able to clearly communicate them in the proper depth and manner that matches the situation is something that is hard to do. Are you someone like me (believe it or not) who’s a little introverted when one finds oneself in a crowd of strangers, nervous to be the one who does the approaching - but more then happy to talk once approached by someone in a crowd to talk. Maybe you are a bit more extreme – someone who shies away from getting out there at all, making connections and selling yourself. Being confident and taking the time to build and nurture your “public” brand may not seem important to you now – but what about when it really counts?

when you find yourself being passed over for a new role with more responsibility.
when you feel it’s time to move on down a slightly different career path.
when it’s time to strike out into new territory all together and look for a new employer
when it’s time to get into your first career or into your next career change.

How do you stand out from the crowd – even if it’s not your style? Can you summarize your accomplishments from past projects clearly and succinctly? When is the last time you updated your resume or maintained your “project portfolio”?

My team and I have committed to do whatever we can do to support your career growth as an ICT professional both on the traditional “technical skills” side as well as on the “personal/professional skills” side. With this episode of the Ignite Your Career webcast series - I figured it was time to focus a little energy towards this very important topic. When I reached out to the team to see who they would suggest would be good panel members – WOW. I was impressed with who wanted to talk on this topic.

We’re coming at it from all angles here: A brand and image savvy developer, an IT manager looking to hire, a headhunter who can help locate the right candidate or give you an edge and finally an HR professional who knows all about recruiting and staffing processes. Check out this line-up!

Scott Hanselman – Principal Program Manager at Microsoft. You can find him on the web at http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ or listen to his podcast HansleMinutes. Trust me – if you are a developer – you’ve heard of Hanselman.

Andrew Dillane is the Group CIO for the Randstad Canada Group of Companies. He’s the national president for the CIO Association of Canada and is actively involved in the Program Advisory Council for Ryerson University’s Information Technology Management degree program.

Nick Crocodilos is no stranger to the Ignite Your Career webcast series. He’s provided colourful insight and valuable information on how to work with HeadHunters. His latest book How to Work with Headhunters is a great read and his previous book Ask The Headhunter: Reinventing The Interview to Win The Job was the #1 selling interview guide on Amazon for 26 months. You can reach Nick over on his AskTheHeadHunter blog. Note: Nick is making a SPECIAL OFFER for webcast attendees – Save $10 on his new book How to Work with Headhunters by using discount code = ignite

Heather Hamilton – manages Microsoft’s Global Competitive Programs Team which is responsible for monitoring competitive talent landscape and leverage opportunities to recruit the best technical talent possible. She’s a well known blogger over on her site called One Louder and is a requested speaker on topics related to candidate outreach and community building.

I honestly can’t wait for Thursday the 24th. This will be an episode you will NOT want to miss! Register today to attend this free webcast series.

IT Pro Team Blog | IT Managers Blog |Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn