You might have heard that MMS is celebrating its 10th anniversary. I assume that means the 10th year of serious Microsoft involvement in the conference.
As a result some of us old timers have been doing some reminiscing. I've got LOTS of great memories from the conferences. So many great people and so many great conversations! I've said it many times but it's still true: maybe only a computer management geek would say so, but this conference is always the highlight of my year. (And yes, it's true that some of my favorite memories are not appropriate for blog posting ;-).
It has been my pleasure to attend all the MMS / SMS Users' Conference conferences, and it's been a huge honor to present at them. With all the reminiscing I couldn't resist digging up the old files. Thus I can share a few details about my presentations over the years:
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1998: Migration from SMS 1.2 to 2.0 – Migration Issues and SMS Changes
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8 slides! I was really into minimalism in presentations (but there was an accompanying handout for the roughly 100 attendees)
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This is the only one when I wasn’t a Microsoft employee
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It was named the SMS Users’ Conference in these days but Microsoft was there as presenters
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1999: How Best to Monitor SMS 2.0
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There was no OpsMgr in those days – all the tools were small and often home grown (but there was an SMS status subsystem)
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Now 12 slides, but also with a handout
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2000: SMS 2.0 Security
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2001: Managing Systems with WMI; Scripting SMS Operations with WMI
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WMI was a new concept for most people at this time, especially for scripting
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It was named the SMS & W2K User Conference for this year
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2002: Scripting SMS Operations
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2003: SMS 2003 EAP: Notes from the Field – Microsoft OTG
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We were proud of our 10,000 SMS 2003 clients! (very small by today’s standards)
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This was a co-presentation and my lightest participation in the conference as a speaker
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2004: SMS 2003 Device Mgmt Feature Pack; SMS 2003 Client Availability; Patch Mgmt at Microsoft using SMS 2003
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2005: Using SMS on a Large Scale – Microsoft IT’s Best Practices; Powerful Flexibility Using SMS 2003 Advanced Client Local Policies
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2006: Patch Management at Microsoft IT; SMS Site Planning and Client Management at Microsoft
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Some client health content in the second presentation
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I also coordinated a birds-of-a-feather session on Successful Patch Deployment – Processes and Procedures and another one on SMS Reporting Writing – Tips and Tricks
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2007: System Center Configuration Manager 2007 – Microsoft IT’s Experiences
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2008: Advances in SMS and ConfigMgr Client Health Management; and Going Big with ConfigMgr
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2009: Client Health with Configuration Manager – What the Numbers Tell Us; and Using Local Policies to Solve Your Most Complex Configuration Manager Client Challenges
To summarize:
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19 presentations and 3 birds-of-a-feather sessions
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5 years of client health – 2004, 2005, 2006, 2008, and 2009
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5 years of Microsoft IT experiences – 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008
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2 years of scripting – 2001, 2002
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2 years of patching – 2004 and 2006
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2 years of local policies – 2005 and 2009
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The rest were one-offs
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My presentations at other conferences have included some of the same topics but also tended to have more scripting, hardware inventory extension, and WMI topics
The MSIT story makes sense. That's been a big part of my job and it has been well received over the year. It's good to see that client health has been a popular topic as well.
So many memories... I can hardly wait to make some more this year.
p.s. The myITforum MMS history is consistent with my notes: http://www.myitforum.com/myITWiki/MMS.ashx