Event: IT Camp Leeds Feb 28th

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Back in December Simon and I invited a few friends along to help us beta test a different kind of event, an IT Camp.  The idea is simply to do smaller, more interactive events where discussions and questions are encouraged.  The presenters, (Simon and I) being a bit more in the background.  The first of these events went down very well, but in this spirit of interaction we were keen to understand what we could do to make the camp even better.   Having made some changes based on the feedback from that test event we are now ready to go on the road and our events team are looking out for regional venues so we can come and see you rather than you travelling down to London or Reading.

There are actually four types of camps designed to complement the online resources we have on the Microsoft Virtual Academy site:

Camp 1. Server Virtualisation. This is for those unfamiliar with the latest version of Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 R2.  We will explore all the basics including networking and clustering and run through a short introduction to using System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012

Camp 2. An Introduction to Microsoft’s Private Cloud.  This builds on the first camp and explores all the  key features in System Center 2012 that enable cloud like processes and capabilities in your own data centre.

Camp 3. Server Migration.  Specifically the tricks and tools from migrating your various server workloads from Windows Server 2003 to 2008 R2,

Camp 4.  Consumerisation of IT.  This explores the issues and benefits of integrating your users’ own devices with your infrastructure, such as slates, smart phones and laptops.

You’ll see more coming out about this in the TechNet newsletter and the various dates and venues are on the IT Camps page on the UK TechDays site, shortly, but I wanted to specifically mention that the first of these camps will take place in Leeds on 28th Feb.  This will be a  Camp 1 server virtualisation event. Our plan on the day is to work together to build a Hyper-V cluster using your machines as well as our own kit. You don’t have to use your own machine if you don’t want to but if you have a laptop with 20Gb of free space on and 4Gb of RAM and it can run Hyper-V then we’ll take you thought the steps to set up Hyper-V without affecting what you have on there already.

If you follow the links you’ll see that this event is by invitation and this is because we want to try and ensure the right people attend as it is limited to 70 delegates.  So who are the right people?  For this event it will be Techie IT professional types, who are only now becoming interested in what Microsoft is doing with server virtualisation, perhaps because they are using something else or their business for whatever reason is only now considering a move to use this technology, i.e. it’s not really for Hyper-V experts.  If this sounds like you or a colleague then drop me an e-mail and I’ll send you the code, and you’re in.