I am happy to announce I got re-awarded the Microsoft MVP Award for Exchange Server for 2014:
MVP awards are given to individuals by Microsoft in recognition of their contributions to the technical community, such as this blog, forums or our very own The UC Architects podcast.
I’d like to take this opportunity to thank my readers, followers, fellow MVPs and of course the Microsoft employees that have encouraged, helped and supported me over years.
My MVP profile can be found here.
It’s almost time to head off to IT/Dev Connections. This year, the conference will take place from September 15-19 in the Aria Resort in Las Vegas, USA. IT/Dev connections is a widely recognized independent, multi-disciplinary conference with tracks for Development, Exchange, SharePoint, SQL Server and Windows related topics.
For the Exchange track, I will be co-hosting a session with long-time Exchange MVP and compatriot Jaap Wesselius, on PowerShell Tips & Tricks for Exchange. In 60 minutes we will show and demonstrate some Exchange-related PowerShell tricks, which are immediately usable in the daily life of Exchange admins.
PowerShell Tips and Tricks for Exchange
When: 9/18/2014, 1:00 PM- 2:15 PM
Room: Bluethorn 1/2
Note that Jaap also has a session earlier that day, Autodiscover – What’s the deal, which starts at 9:00 in Bluethorn 1/2 as well.
Other Exchange MVP fellows as well as members of the Product Group are lined up to provide some great content. Information on the sessions in the Exchange track can be found here. It appears you can still register for the event here, use SOCIAL14 for a $200 discount.
When you are attending IT/Dev Connections, do not hesitate to come up and say hi.Â
I hope to see you there!
What started out as a pleasant and rewarding journey on November 24th, 2009 reached another milestone today. This blog, containing just over 440 posts, went through the 1 million views mark in the past 24 hours. Together with the 1350 Twitter followers, seeing my small community contributions help you guys (or girls) out is keeping me motivated. A big thanks to all of you and keep coming back!
Happy new year to all my dear readers and followers. It’s been again a busy and interesting year for various reasons:
The end of a year is also a time of lists. I’d like to share with you some of EighTwOne statistics of 2013, in the blog’s 4th year running. The statistics come directly from the site and without additional observations apart from that Exchange 2010 still seems to be highly popular when looking for information.
Apart from the Archives, Versions, Builds and Dates, Schema Versions and Toolkit pages, these were the Top Posts of 2013:
All time Top Posts:
All time Top Scripts:
Top 5 visitor countries of 2013:
Top 5 referrers of 2013:
Top 5 search terms of 2013:
Today is the day I returned from my inaugural MVP Global Summit 2013, the one often being tagged the November edition as there were two summits this year. Apart from some discomforts like back issues and jetlag, the summit lived well up to my expectations of being the place to meet fellow (Exchange) MVPs, engage product groups and with regards to the contents presented or discussed (which for obvious reasons I can’t disclose as they are under NDA). Only thing I can mention on the sessions is that the last panel discussion was hilarious as the MVPs turned it into a drinking game where all MVPs took a sip of their beverages when a PG member mentioned “That is great feedback” or “Yammer”. Epic.
The summit was well organized, hotels were great and relatively close to each other and transportation frequent from the hotel to the summit locations on Microsoft campus. Evenings were filled by regional or global events for meeting people or catching up while enjoying food and drinks. The closing party was held in the Seattle Aquarium with great people, good food, music, the Bumbys, caricature drawing, seals and a ferris wheel. And for some reason, all my evenings always ended up with the Exchange and Lync MVPs at the infamous Joey’s. Good times.
Being one of The UC Architects contributors, I got to meet some of the fellows in real life, like Michael van Hoorenbeeck, Serkan Varoglu (and the missus), Pat Richard, StĂĄle Hansen, Tim Harrington and Tom Arbuthnot. Other people I got to meet or catch up with – I’ll probably forgot a few – were people like Jeff Guillet, Jason Sherry, Paul Robichaux, Magnus Björk, Siegfried Jagott, J. Peter Bruzzese, Justin Morris, Norbert Klenner, Johan Delimon, Didier van Hoye, Peter de Tender, Ken Lasko, Damian Scoles and Martina Miskovic; the latter two being a first time MVP as well, like myself.
Provided I get re-awarded in October and depending on when it wil take place, I am really looking forward seeing my old and new friends again at the next summit. But first things first, I hope to catch up with some of them at MEC 2014 in March/April, 2014. For now, a big thank you to the MVP Award program, the MVP Global Summit organization, my MVP lead for Benelux and Nordics, William Jansen, and last but not least the product groups for providing great content, interaction and finding time to engage with MVPs.
Note that while I was at the summit, Microsoft announced that Exchange 2013 Service Pack 1 is set for early 2014. It will be part of cross-product SP1 release, as Office 2013 SP1 was also announced for the same timeframe. Major changes to expect in Exchange 2013 SP1, besides the usual fixes and improvements, are support for Windows Server 2012 R2 and Edge server role; the latter being especially of interest to shops who want to standardize on Windows Server 2012 R2 as they will then be able to deploy all Exchange roles using the same OS.
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