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CortopolisWhere Cortness Lives September 28 Thinking about how to shareMy life is full. Mostly it is private: my home life with my wife and 3 year old daughter? Private. My work? Very private. So what is the point of blogging? I am hoping that I can sand off some of my insularity and put some thoughts up here.
In the past I've provided three types of blogging:
I'm considering how to deliver a fourth type, something regular, valuable and unsensational. Best, Cort April 29 Day 3 MMS KeynoteBrad Anderson (GM of Management & Services Division) presented.
Business Update: his group is the fastest growing in Microsoft with a CAGR over 20%.
He spent about 15 minutes talking about his group's focus on the next generation of users i.e. kids today. He is very focused on the expectations of this group: mobility, instant gratification, etc. One imagines that focus at, say, facebook and not so much in a corporate esque product family like System Center. But it makes sense as the next generation of employees will very much be affected by System Center in their workplaces. Fascinating.
News:
April 28 Day 2 MMS: KeynoteNote: you can follow the twitter tag #caamms to follow all our activity at MMS 2009
Bob Kelly, Corp VP for Server & Tools ran the keynote.
Log Line: Everything is the freaking cloud.
Why
Announcements:
Assessment: classic Microsoft -- they are behind others (VMWare, Amazon, Cisco) but are making the right investments and are going in the right direction. The concept of federated heterogenous private & public clouds is fantastic. I am very concerned about the road to get there. App-V investment will grow using its own technology stack and for the forseeable future it will integrate poorly with SCCM. New toolkits are appearing with as yet undefined integration. Our world will get more complex before it gets simpler. Other notes:
April 27 MMS 2009 Day 1Day one of Microsoft Management Summit 2009 was pretty great.
Nick S., Tony M., and I were all on the same 8:10am flight. We got in, registered and split up for our first session. Given that we didn't arrive on Sunday night it wasn't going to be a full day.
My kickoff was a lab where we converted an SCCM installation from mixed mode authentication to native mode. This assumed you had a PKI infrastructure and then took something like 200 steps. You essentially requested, issued and applied two certs (document & server) to SCCM, verified that it could be converted, changed its mode to native, packaged, deployed and executed a test that proved native mode was working, configured the client for certs, converted the client to native mode, then created and deployed packages and authored and viewed reports to verify that SCCM was interacting with the client in native mode.
My second activity was to participate with Nick & Tony in a Service Manager focus group. Here we provided features and prioritized. It was pretty energizing and it was great to strengthen our relationship with the Service Manager team. It was a little tough for me because I kept having to participate in a conference call that I simply could not miss. I had to balance both as both were important.
Finally the three of us went to the hands on labs and I introduced both Tony and Nick to the joys of PowerShell. I think they dug it although I expect it looked pretty complicated at first glance. It kind of is, but then you get the hang of it. I still am getting the hang of it myself.
After that we went to the partner showcase. We didn't see anything that was game-changing there (yet!). We were looking for Silect or Quest but haven't found them yet. We did see F5 labs - they were showing some sort of management pack for BigIP. I'll have to go back to see what that looks like.
That's the summary for day 1. Details on these events later.
Another SEO effortGo to google and search for "Yard almost finished". I seem to be holding at #2 in the search results. I believe it is safe to say that I have won the SACFTB competition.Eli, thanks for playing! June 22 A gentleman's contest Many of you might be offended by this. If you are particularly offended by very bad words in the English language, read no further. ... so, the competition is: who can in one week make the phrase "she's a cunt for the butter" the top search in google. here we go. May 03 My brother started a demo reel businessHe is promoting it with his new blog, Santa Monica Demo Reels. Yay! February 04 For a journalism mag, that was a pretty weak choice of a word beginning with "W"The article posits the need for a new "W" in addition to jouralism's classic five: who, what, when, where, why. Their choice is "what's next". I get the point: in a time of change you need to describe the trend. Yes! But "what's next" is a little unweildy and also repeats the already in use "W": what.
I would have chosen "whither". Duh! November 01 An inflection point
Just got off the phone with my great great great grand boss. I like her. We worked together before. She was caling to see if there was anything she could do to have me stay at Microsoft. But I already promised my heart to another company, so nothing can keep me here. In December I start a new adventure. My new employer is very circumspect so I won't talk about them here. It is enough to say that I am incredibly excited about the years to come. July 23 Tenure and Organizational HealthIn a big growing company with not enough tenured talent you are accepting people for roles for which they are not matched, can't handle, etc. But tenure is a strange thing. I see orgs where the old timers are not aggressive. Maybe I undervalue their contributions but I see employees who have their current roles because they asked their old buddy for the role, they wanted to try something new, etc. We cater to the long-employed because of our belief in their wisdom. They "get it" in a way a new employee would not. We trust them. But for the moment I would prefer rotating positions of influence and leadership through more employees, or finding some way to discover and develop more talent. The habit of "give it to the senior guy" seems weak to my eye today.
I met a guy in charge setting the program for a billion dollars worth of talent. It seemed to me like he could have been doing a smarter job. It seemed to me like he had his preconceptions from years of service and he was sticking to them. I am stuck downstream of his ideas. They could be much better. I gave him the help I could, but I can't live his life for him. He'll continue on with his middle of the curve effort. ho hum. July 17 At an eddie izzard "rehearsal"Once or twice a year or so eddie izzard comes to los angeles and tries new material in front of a small audience of lucky fans. Thanks to my wife we are always lucky. Tonight sir anthony hopkins is lucky too! Liberty loves balloonsIf you bring her one she walks around with it all day, all darn day, until at night she falls asleep still clutching it in her little hand. We then gently take it away and put it in the kitchen. The next morning she finds her pet partly deflated and therefore grounded. She spends the next day dragging it behind her as it dutifully bounces along. Tomorrow I leave this love and joy for five long weeks on the other side of the world. I am excited and simultaneously sad, knowing what I will miss. June 08 Her first petLiberty loves balloons. Yesterday she was inspereable from it. Today the balloon isn't doing so well. She is pulling it around encouraging it to get back up in the air. June 05 It is literally official.I have my visa to come and go from India for the next year. Probably I will only get to use it once but who knows? I leave on Sunday. June 03 Away to HyderabadA Grand Experiment
In a week I'll be en route to India to engage in an experiment that should be very interesting. I am hoping to rally my desire to blog and blog about the trip and the experiment.
In essence I am working with an entertainment company to try to make something with two teams on two continents using an amalgam of proven processes in a new way.
Like most experiments, this one is underfunded i.e. the experimenter (me) laments in the manner of most experimenters, soldiers, and division managers, that more funding, air cover and capital is necessary to complete the experiment, operation or business plan. But underfunded as I am, my benefactor (Glenn) has been quite generous in allowing this experiment to happen. We have some great people aligned with various degrees of dedication to make this work. I am hopeful.
I am being necessarily cryptic about what the experiment is. I will tell more later.
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