Tag Archives: Community

Speaking at Experts Live Europe 2019

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I’m very happy to announce that I will back speaking at Experts Live Europe 2019! I got 2 sessions to present this year, and I really look forward to go to Prague in November and be a part of this great community conference for the 7th time in a row! Read on for some more details, history and perspectives on why you should attend this conference also.

Experts Live Europe, SCU Europe & Me

This years event is the third edition under the name “Experts Live Europe”. Before that it was known as System Center Universe Europe, or just SCU Europe. The first edition of SCU Europe was in Bern, Switzerland, 2013. I went there because I wanted to attend a European based conference with focus on Datacenter Management after it was announced that Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) would be no more. I was immediately blown away by the community experience, great speakers and content. I made some contacts and friends I’m still happy to see and meet again today.

Of course I had to make it to the 2nd and 3rd editions of SCU Europe that were held in Basel, Switzerland, in 2014 and 2015. Speakers, sessions and community was as good or better as the first conference in Bern, and content was starting to focus more on Microsoft Cloud. Myself I was intrigued and motivated to be a bigger part of this community, and started submitting sessions proposals to be a speaker myself.

In 2016, SCU Europe moved out of Switzerland and to Berlin, Germany. And this year I was one of the speakers! I was so proud when the opening keynote video introduced this speaker from Norway, you can by the way see all those opening videos at https://www.expertslive.eu/history. The conference being in Berlin meant a much easier travel from Norway, and this time around I was able to bring some colleagues and customers along. We had a great time:

At the end of the 2016 conference it was announced that the name SCU Europe will be no more, from 2017 the conference would be named Experts Live Europe, being part of the Experts Live network of global community conferences (www.expertslive.org).

In 2017 we were back in Berlin and I was accepted as a speaker again :). Once again we traveled as a group of colleagues and customers, and had a great time enjoying the excellent content and community.

In 2018, after all 5 previous conferences had been in a city that started with the letter “B”, it was announced that Experts Live Europe 2018 was to be held in the beautiful city of Prague, Czech Republic. For the third time in a row I would be one of the Experts again. Prague is also easy to travel to from Norway so we once again went as a group.

And that brings us to 2019, where we go back to the excellent Prague Congress Center, 20-22nd of November! I’m once again very proud to be speaking at this great community conference, and my record of 100% attendance for every SCU/ExpertsLive Europe record is intact, 7th time in a row now :).

My Sessions

As previously mentioned, I will be delivering two sessions at this years Experts Live Europe. And for the first time I will hold a session together with the one and only Samuel Erskine. This session should be both informative and entertaining!

My session with Sam is titled “Same old System Center.. but how can we hook up the Cloud and make it hot again!”. As System Center 2019 was released earlier this year, and with updates from Ignite, we will look into how System Center 2019 can go from “same old, same old..” to integrating with the Azure Cloud Platform and make System Center hot again!

My second session is named “Manage Identity Lifecycle and Access Control with Azure AD Identity Governance”, in which we will focus on how to manage identity lifecycle and make sure users have the right access at every time using Identity Governance solutions in Azure AD.

You can see the complete agenda for all the sessions here: https://www.expertslive.eu/agenda.

Community Rocks!

The thing I love most with ExpertsLive Europe is the really strong community of experts, sponsors and attendees. Beside the sessions and pre-conference itself, a big part of the value of attending is getting to know new people, connect again with people you have met before, learn, discuss and ask questions, get answers and be followed up with the best of the MVP’s and Community leaders out there. I started out standing in the corner and slowly started interacting with the community members, and now feel I have made many friends and being part of this great community myself. I really want to say hi to you in Prague, either if you are attending one of my sessions or you see me in the expo area, at the VIP party or attendee party.

Hope to see you there, and if you’re still not signed up, you can still register at http://www.expertslive.eu!

Speaking at Microsoft Ignite – The Tour Stockholm

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It is with great pride I can announce that I will speak at Microsoft Ignite – The Tour, in Stockholm April 24-25 2019. This conference, which already is sold out and now only available on waiting list, will be held at Stockholmsmassan, and you can read more about it here: https://www.microsoft.com/sv-se/ignite-the-tour/Stockholm.

Ignite The Tour Stockholm will have over 150 different breakout sessions, theatre sessions, modules and workshops, covering 10 learning paths. Speakers will be from Microsoft, and from the MVP and Regional Director community, which I’m so fortunate and honored to be part of 😉

I will be speaking at the following sessions:

In addition to this I will participate on the following hands-on workshop as a proctor:

You will also find me at the experts area and doing booth duty, I will be at the following demo stations at the Hub and Microsoft Showcase area, covering topics on Azure and Azure AD:

  • Demo Station #5 (Azure): Day 1 1600-1800: “Getting Started with Azure Log Analytics and Azure Monitor using Azure AD Activity Logs“
  • Demo Station #6 (Azure): Day 2 0800-1200: “Getting Started with Azure Log Analytics and Azure Monitor using Azure AD Activity Logs“

I’m really excited for presenting these sessions and being part of the Ignite The Tour Community! Hope to see you there 🙂

Experts and Community unite again at Experts Live Europe in Berlin

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Last week I was back at this great Community conference, previously known as System Center Universe Europe (SCU Europe), and this year for the first time under the name Experts Live Europe, part of the Experts Live network (http://www.expertslive.org). This conference is well known for its great content, top speakers, sponsors and great community, where you meet friends old and new, and generally have a great time the 3 days the conference lasts.

This year the conference was held in the BCC by Alexanderplatz in Berlin, the same venue as last year. With almost 400 people from 28(!) different countries, I was very proud again to be among the great set of Experts and MVPs presenting sessions on topics from Cloud, Datacenter, Management, PowerShell, IoT, Azure, EMS, and more.

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I presented two breakout sessions, the first one was about how to “Take your Azure AD and Intune Management Skills to the Next Level with Microsoft Graph API and PowerShell”, a practical and demo-heavy session.  The PowerShell script I used in the demos can be found in my GitHub repository: https://github.com/skillriver/ELEU2017-Public

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The second session I presented was on “Mastering Azure Active Directory v2”, where I discussed features in the new Azure AD Portal for Azure AD Administrators that have previously used the classic portal or Office 365 admin portal for managing users, licenses, and admin roles and more. We also looked at the Azure AD v2 PowerShell, that will replace the v1 (MSOL) cmdlets. Look to my Gist repository for several examples on using Azure AD v2 cmdlets, https://gist.github.com/skillriver.

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I also had the pleasure to be in a discussion panel with Microsoft Intune Principal Program Manager Simon May, CDM MVP Tudor Damian and my fellow Norwegian EMS MVP Jan Ketil Skanke, where we had good questions and discussions from the attendance on the topic Identity, Security and Compliance.

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The days went by really fast, and soon it was time for the closing note and the traditional trivia with funny stories and facts from the past conferences. One of the questions was how many have attended all 5 conferences (speakers, sponsors and attendees), the correct answer was not known, but the audience who had done this was invited onto the stage, and 10 people (in addition to Marcel) had their loyalty appriciated with claps and cheers from the room. And, I’m one of those that has been to all conferences 🙂

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So with that ended the 5th annual conference that used to be SCU Europe and is now Experts Live. I have made some great friends there, and the conference has a family feeling going back there every year. There has been some early mornings, and some late nights, as it should be.

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Thanks for me, Berlin and Experts Live, next year it will another place, it will be exiting to see where it will be. I know I will be back, hope you will to!

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Speaking at Experts Live Europe 2017, Berlin!

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Once again I’m very proud and excited to announce that I will be speaking at Experts Live Europe 2017, in Berlin August 23rd to 25th.

Experts Live Europe, previously known as System Center Universe Europe, is celebrating 5 years anniversary this year, after beeing arranged in Bern, Basel x 2, and last year moved to Berlin, where it was announced that the conference in the future would be part of the Experts Live Network!

SCUE16 – System Center Universe Europe becomes Experts Live Europe from itnetX AG on Vimeo.

I have been lucky to attend every single one of the previous conferences, and last year I presented a couple of sessions there as well. I have got to know some great community leaders and IT pros from all over the world at this conference, it really is one of the best community conferences around, as well as top experts and contents in sessions!

This year I will present 2 sessions:

I will also be running a Discussion Panel on “Identity, Security & Compliance” http://sched.co/B9TK , together with Simon May, Principal Program Manager – Intune, Microsoft, EMS MVP Jan Ketil Skanke, and CDM MVP Tudor Damian.

And, in addition to the already mentioned great experts, content and community, there’s also great parties there!

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Read my recap of last years conference at the same venue here: https://gotoguy.blog/2016/08/31/experts-and-community-unite-at-last-ever-scu_europe-2016-expertslive-next/

If you haven’t already registered, and are still wondering wether to go, read more about the conference and register here: http://www.expertslive.eu.

Hope to see you there!

Renaming and rebranding my blog

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I have been thinking about this a while, as my previous blog URL address systemcenterpoint.wordpress.com and title SystemCenterPoint not longer accurately reflected the blog content I produce.

When I created the blog for over 4 years ago, I was heavily invested in System Center products, and especially Service Manager and Operations Manager, and most of my content published on the blog was related to that.

These days, I still work a lot with SCSM and SCOM, and with partners such as Cireson, SquaredUp and itnetX, but also more and more with Cloud and Azure based solutions such as Operations Management Suite. The same with System Center Orchestrator, where I now automate more with PowerShell and Azure Automation than Orchestrater Runbooks.

In addition, being awared Microsoft MVP for Enterprise Mobility I also focus a lot on Identity and Access Managment and Security with Azure AD and EM+S!

So, what to rebrand my blog URL and Title to?

When I was at the MVP Summit recently I was very inspired by James Whittaker that had a session on the importance of story telling. And he challenged us, what is your story?

My story is not finished, it is a working progress. But if I should start somewhere I would be saying to anyone that asks that: “I’m the Go To Guy!”

I realize that this title is not exclusive to me, many people are Go To Guys in their workplace or community. But I’m already labelled (one of the) Go To Guy in my workplace, amongst many customers and as a MVP I’m aspiring to be a Go To Guy for many in the communities I participate in.

So, thats why my blog now has a new URL: http://gotoguy.blog ! And the blog title has been updated to GoToGuy Blog.

Looking forward to produce more great content on the blog!

(PS! All old references to systemcenterpoint.wordpress.com will of course work for the future until eventually not needed anymore)