Categories
Conference

Spring Break 2014…

This year, I had the pleasure of spending Spring Break in Orlando, FL at the DevIntersections conference as a part of the SharePoint Intersection. It was nice to get back to Florida and connect with attendees and hear about their experiences as well as share some of the experiences I’ve had with SharePoint, Office 365 and the ever nebulous cloud.

For attendees (and anyone curious) I’ve uploaded the slides to SlideShare.

SharePoint Intersections – SP09 – Introduction to SharePoint 2013 for IT Pros
SharePoint Intersections – SP10 – Getting Started with Office 365 – Identity, Provisioning and Core SPO
SharePoint Intersections – SP11 – SharePoint and IaaS – The OnPrem in the Cloud

Definitely looking forward to the next event in Orlando next year, should be a great time of collaboration and sharing!

Categories
2012 R2 Windows Server

Windows Server 2012 R2 Update

**UPDATE** Oddly this portion of the update is no longer published in the TechNet Article. Hoping that it’s added back soon.

To coincide with the Microsoft Build conference and the announcement of Windows 8.1 Update, Microsoft will be releasing an update for Windows Server 2012 R2 per the published TechNet article on 2 April 2014 found here:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn645472.aspx

The most interesting of the three major updates as noted in the TechNet article is by far this:

Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) has added the capability for an administrator to enable signing in with an alternate login ID that is an attribute of the user object in Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS). This enables customers to adopt Azure Active Directory without modifying on-premises User Principal Names (UPNs). It also allows users to log in to the computer using an Office 365 email address instead of a UPN. This change does not affect the Active Directory schema. For more information, see Configuring Alternate Login ID.

If you start to think about the opportunities this provides for an additional way to store user identity without necessarily having to go through and completely change the naming schema that you’re using for your AD at the moment. Or at least that’s the way that I see it.

Looking forward to these bits being available on 8 April 2014 on the Download Center to begin testing this things out.

Official blog announcement from the Windows Server Product Team available here:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/windowsserver/archive/2014/04/02/windows-server-2012-r2-update-is-now-available-to-subscribers.aspx

Categories
Community

A pleasant surprise…

This morning I received a note from the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) program stating that I’d been selected as an MVP for technical expertise within the SharePoint Server community.

In a word a few words – stunned, flattered, honored.

I’m flattered and honored to have been recognized by Microsoft. Six years ago I would probably have told you that I never expected to really be that involved with the community – the SharePoint community was just starting to get on board with Twitter and connections were being made between individuals throughout the community across the country. I had met a few folks, Becky Isserman, Eric Harlan, Shadeed Eleazer, John Miller, Dan Lewis, Dux Raymond Sy,  Joel Oleson, Mike WatsonCathy Dew, Laura Rogers, Lori Gowin, Geoff Varosky, Michael Gannotti, Fabian Williams, Susan Lennon,  Rob Foster, Eric Shupps, and none other than Joel Ward.

Over the years I’ve made several other connections and friendships for a life time with folks like Scott Hoag, Joel Ward and Jason Himmelstein, Cathy Dew, Lori Gowin, Becky Isserman, and Isaac Stith and so many more that I think that I’d run out of room here 🙂

Needless to say, I want to say thank you to the SPS Events crew that I’ve been able to be a part of the past five years. Eric, Tasha, Susan and folks that helped start the group – thanks for giving me the opportunity to be a part of it. To the DC crew, I’d be remiss without saying thanks to Rachel and Adam (and Scott and Isaac of course).

So what changes? Nothing, really. I’m still Dan Usher. Still organizing SPSEvents DC with the help of the crew, still running the Reston SPUG that Scott and I started a bit over a year ago, still toying with Azure and Office 365 in my free waking hours.

I look forward to being able to be a part of the MVP community over this coming next year and hope to be able to continue to support the DC community. Let’s rock and roll friends!