As in any good road trip, I need to get my exercise in! (Connect with me on Strava if you run, lift or bike!) Mondays are my lifting day however it’s difficult to get a decent one in with just dumbbells. Do what you can do is what my personal trainer would tell me. Before everyone makes a judgement on “…the Microsoft guy having a personal trainer”, must be nice! I have to frame out the day in the life of my role. As a Program Manager, my role is to be the glue between interacting with customers and translating those needs back to our product devs. In order to meet customers face to face, that means traveling all over the world (see below, right?). The years have been good but without the proper nutrition and exercise over the years, I’ve grown ‘robust’..shall we say? So, I’m actually on a weight management program which allows me to meet with a personal trainer and nutritionist to get my personal health back on track.

From a traveling perspective? Yes, it’s a ‘glam life’ traveling to all these places, right? No way in heck! I LOVE my role and interacting with customers, but it comes at a price. I remember my first years as a buck consultant and being married… my new wife thought I lived a glamorous life jet setting to new cities, staying in nice hotels and eating at great restaurants all the time. So, I decided to bring her on one of my engagements to see what it was like! I booked it in Peoria, IL making sure I stayed at a hotel which was behind a strip mall (bad view) and some of the worst restaurants around. She now respects my view of traveling! 😊

Yesterday evening at Brainstorm was the Welcome Reception. For those who REALLY know me, you know that I’m not a social person. Yep, seriously! A room full of strangers can be very overwhelming and intimidating to me. However, I put on my best game face and dove in! I was able to visit and sit in with two different tables during the time. Once that initial ice is broken, I ALWAYS love talking / discussing stuff! I leave that general because I try to mix work with personal things which I enjoy like fitness or coffee. In the end, I always loving hearing our customer’s perspectives! Believe it or not, most everyone is a Microsoft customer one way or another!

I believe that’s why I enjoy speaking. Today was not an exception. There were two Intune for Education sessions schedule. It was prearranged that I’d be in the room to give any support needed or assist with questions. Well, as life had it, I was ask 5 minutes ahead of time if I could cover the first session! Yep, no prep and no deck. Just talking off the top of my head about our product! So, if it seemed a little random or winding… well, that’s because it was! I apologize to the attendees but I was covering for a co-worker that got slammed into another meeting! To top it off, because I was unrehearsed, I was over on time! This left me in the middle of a topic with several still to cover. Bringing me into the second session! Yep… back to back, unrehearsed and unscripted sessions! This second session was even MORE challenging than the first because about half of the attendees were in the first session! So, I had to bridge the gap of bringing everyone along for the ride! I promise, next time I’ll sign up for my own sessions so it doesn’t come off so poorly! Needless to say, it was a stressful day!

The start of Brainstorm (or any conference) always intrigues me. You never know if there will be patterns, trends or themes that emerge. I believe the Day 1 sessions always set the tone; however, I believe Day 1 of Brainstorm is actually a pre-day. None the less, we were in a packed room on Sunday afternoon to listen to a “Windows 10: Modern Device Management Workshop” by Doug Wilson.

One of Doug’s first slides was about community. This topic is near and dear to my heart since I was part of the systems management community way back in the Swynk.com (I believe that was the spelling!) days of SMS. Through the years, I grew up working in public schools doing edtech but actively participating on MyITForum.com. At the time, that was “THE place” where all the smart consultants and MVPs hung out. I remember being envious of the breadth of knowledge they had and their willingness to share it back to that community.

As I grew technically, it was my goal to be able to be at that level of knowledge as my peers had. After many hours and carving out my niche area on the Internet, I was able to return that knowledge back in the form of task-based videos in SMS / SCCM and MOM/SCOM. Those are the technologies which I’ve built my career on and allowed me to be in the ranks as a Microsoft MVP.

I find myself, years or even decades later, faced with the same situation with different challenges. As I’m sitting in the back of this session, I have a very different vantage point from when was first starting out my career. I look down at my conference badge which reminds me that I’m a Program Manager with Microsoft in the Intune for Education Product Group. How can I assist those around me and hopefully allow them to stand on my shoulders as those did for me in years past? I attempt to remain respectful to the presenter as he makes his way through his material but the same question keeps running through my mind: “Where do these peers go to gain that knowledge as I did in years past?”

I put it out there, but I really don’t get a clear sense of “a place” where my technical peers go. Sure, I get the feedback of going to the Microsoft documentation and such… but where do you REALLY go? Conferences are a GREAT place to make those connections with your peers but how do we keep that conversation going throughout the year? This is an open thread which I’m going to keep asking and digging into…

Working in the datacenter arena, I’m trained to parse through logs, look at events and just making sense of it all. However, I tend to think of working smarter not harder. Thus, allow me to introduce Microsoft Azure – Operational Insights. It’s still in preview due to Microsoft wanting to nail the security and data privacy of their service. They’ve published a security PDF which contains the official statement that “…The Operational Insights software development and service team is actively working with the Microsoft Legal and Compliance teams and other industry partners to acquire a variety of certifications including ISO before general availability of the Operational Insights service”. You may also remember a vaguely similar service called System Center Advisor which was announced at the Microsoft Management Summit a few years back; that service has formed the foundation and rolled up the functionality into Operational Insights.

By now,  you may be asking yourself why I’m bringing up such a technical topic in a classroom or institutional context? Well, I believe that a LOT of hard work and insights have been digested down into a proactive dashboard with a TON of great data driving it. Such items as failed logons, log management (including IIS), capacity planning, patch state as well as a host of other data points which are important to an institution! Take a stroll over to the Microsoft Azure Operational Insights website and see what’s in store. You do NOT need to be running System Center Operations Manager to gain insights into your environment however you’ll get a ton of value when using them together! Take a quick look at my video introduction! Happy computing!