With Tech Ed Europe fast approaching there is a whole team of folks beavering away right now to make this the best Tech Ed ever.

Myself and a whole bunch of other folks are busy testing the Hands On Labs/ Instructor Led Labs that that will be available for delegates to run through.

So, hope to see you in Sunny Barcelona (one of my favourite cities in the world), and make this the best Tech Ed Europe ever.

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It was a very sad day for a lot of us when Microsoft decided to pull the plug on the Microsoft Management Summit (MMS), an event that had served us in the Systems Management community well over the years and of which I personally have many fond memories (and through which I made a great deal of good friends).

So imagine my delight when I heard that MMS was being revived but with a difference – no not the Microsoft Management Summit but the Midwest Management Summit (so yes MMS ;-))

This is a brand new event taking place 10th – 12th November being organised by the Minnesota System Center User Group which includes some of my dear friends and fellow MVPs.

However, this “new” MMS is very different to the old one. For a start it’s going to be limited to just 500 attendees to give you a chance for focused networking plus also more time to speak to the speakers to get your questions answered (rather than competing with several thousand folks).

The other big difference is the majority of the speakers are MVPs (~60 at last count), or those with real world, hands on experience with the System Center Suite such as ConfigMgr, OpsMrg, Scorch, PowerShell and many, many more.

But there’s more – You can still register for MMS before the prices go up this Friday, October 17^th.  Wait until after Friday and you will have to pay the higher conference fee and prevailing hotel room rates.

It’s shaping up to be a great event so get booking now before it sells out (which it inevitably will).

To find out more goto:

https://mmsmoa.com/

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So Wally’s planning another trip to the UK and will be presenting at Microsoft’s Cardinal Place in London on Saturday 9th November from 09:30 – 17:30. Here’s the detail from our friends at WMUG:

“The Windows Management User Group again welcomes Wally Mead, Senior Program Manager for the System Center 2012 Configuration Manager Product Group back to the UK for a day of System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager presentations and demos.

Wally will cover off new features in Configuration Manager 2012 R2 in his own inimitable way. The ‘godfather’ of SCCM ConfigMgr will return to the UK for our Saturday event laptop in hand ready to go deep on some of the great new features that we can use in the R2 release of “probably the most complicated product we have”.

Wally Mead has been with Microsoft for 19 years, starting in the Microsoft training group where he got his first exposure to systems management with SMS 1.0. He’s been in the Configuration Manager product group for the past 13 years, working on all versions of the SMS/Configuration Manager product. Currently he works with TAP customers beta testing Configuration Manager 2012, as well as developing hands-on lab materials for conferences and TechNet Virtual Hands-on labs.

If you have never seen Wally speak before you simply must attend. If you want to know about Configuration Manager then this is the event for you and best of all – it’s FREE!!!

Not only is it a FREE event we will have a number of excellent giveaways on offer on the day.

Here’s the initial agenda, please be aware that this may be subject to some change:

So what are you waiting for? Register now!!There are 100 seats available, and as always we expect these to fill up very quickly. Don’t delay or you may be disappointed.”

Unfortunately I can’t make it due to a prior engagement but it will be well worth attending and if you plan on doing so as space is limited I’d recommend you register ASAP here:

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As part of a week long cloud event organised by Microsoft UK and the UK and Ireland MVP Program, next Thursday (12th) is a day dedicated to “Empowering People-Centric IT” where I’ll be presenting a session on Unified Device Management with System Center and Windows Intune.

To find out more and sign up head on over to:

Hope to see you there.

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So Microsoft has announced the availability of Windows 8.1 Preview and because I’m at Tech Ed Europe all attendees are being given a copy on a USB drive.

If you want to find out more and get your hands on this latest version of Windows simply head over to the Windows 8.1 Preview site

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As announced by Brad Anderson during his keynote session at Tech Ed Europe 2013, the Preview versions of System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager and Endpoint Protection (amongst others) are now available for download at:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-system-center-2012-r2-configuration-manager-and-endpoint-protection

Download, enjoy and don’t forget to give Microsoft Feedback via Connect.

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Earlier this year with the announcement of Windows Server 2012 and SP1 for System Center, Microsoft requested that the MVP Community help raise awareness of these by blogging/ telling people about how they could download trial/ evaluations of this software.

In exchange for doing so if enough people downloaded the software Microsoft would give away various prizes at various click-through levels with the top prize being 2 x tickets to Tech Ed Europe in Madrid.

Well not only did we collectively smash the target set by Microsoft, I was lucky enough to be drawn out the hat for one of the top prize tickets to Tech Ed Europe next week in Madrid.

So if you’re going I’ll see you there and finally many, many thanks to everyone that clicked through on the links as without your help I’d be going nowhere.

Adios gracias.

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As part of “Blue” wave of releases, Microsoft has officially announced (so I no longer need to keep things secret), at TechEd North America an R2 version of System Center 2012 and a new release of Intune which will be even more tightly integrated. A public preview of R2 should be available around the end of this month which ties in with the public preview of Windows 8.1 with the products all being released by the end of this year.

In addition to the R2 release of System Center 2012 and new version of Intune, Microsoft is also planning to release a R2 version of Server 2012, Visual Studio 2013 and SQL 2014.

For more information see Mary Jo Foley’s “Microsoft’s ‘Blue’ servers: What’s coming when” article.

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Wally is stopping off in the UK on Friday 21st June at the Microsoft office in Cardinal Place, Victoria, London to present a whole day on ConfigMgr 2012 SP1 and Mobile Device Management.

If you want to attend this free event then simply drop by the WMUG site to register:

Only 100 places are available so make sure you get in fast to save disappointment and hope to see you there.

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My fellow MVP Robert Marshall is giving an overview session on Software Updates next Thursday evening (UK time), so if you want to learn more about this feature head on over to:

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