MR&D Forum Meeting 2007 Home Page

Since July 2002, thousands of people have helped each other at the Minasi Research & Development on-line forum, but that on-line interaction's not nearly as effective as exchanging ideas in person, so in the first week of May 2007, everyone's invited to join us in Virginia Beach for our second Forum Get-Together. 

Hosted by Mark Minasi and organized by James Summerlin, this meeting features 16 in-depth technical talks by Forum members and our guests Todd Lammle and Steve Riley on topics ranging from Windows futures, IPv6, virtual machines, security, Exchange, scripting, development, network analysis and more.  (But you just know that we'll learn even more between sessions and after hours while exchanging ideas!)

Technical Sessions

May 3, 2007

  • 8am - 9:45 AM: 8am - 9:45am: Mark Minasi: Livin' the Longhorn Life
  • 10am - 11:45am: Mark Minasi: Bitlocker: How to Lose a Laptop -- But Not Lose Data
  • 2pm - 12:59pm: lunch
  • 1pm - 2:45pm:  James Summerlin:  Powershell: Scripting and Automation via the Command Line
  • 3pm - 4:45pm:  Nathan Winters: Exchange 2007: How to be available for work 24/7/365.2422

May 4, 2007

  • 8am - 9:45am: Mark Minasi: Understanding User Account Control and Windows Integrity Control
  • 10am - 11:45am: Darren Mar Elia: Group Policy: How to Turn Your Network into a Police State
  • 12pm - 12:59pm: lunch
  • 1pm - 2:45pm: Aidan Finn: DFS/DFS-R and the New Print Management Console
  • 3pm - 4:45pm: Rhonda Layfield : Network Monitoring: That Packet Can Run, But it Can't Hide!

May 5, 2007

  • 8am - 9:45am: Aidan Finn: Wildlife Photography: Secrets from a Forum Master
  • 10am - 11:45am: Nathan Winters: What's New and Cool in VMWare
  • 12pm - 12:59pm: lunch
  • 1pm - 2:45pm: Curt Spanburgh: Kerberos: Controlling the Beast with Three Heads
  • 3pm - 4:45pm: Aidan Finn: System Center Configuration Manager 2007

May 6, 2007

  • 8am - 9:45am: Mark Minasi: The Accidental DBA
  • 10am - 11:45am: James Summerlin: The Accidental Developer - Part 1
  • 12pm - 12:49pm: lunch
  • 1pm - 2:45pm: Todd Lammle: click here to tell Todd what you'd like him to speak about
  • 3pm - 4:45pm: Steve Riley: Current Trends in Cyber-Attacks; An Update on the Bad Guys

Evening Events

All TBA...

Speakers

Aidan Finn

Talks: DFS/DFS-R and the new Print Management Console, System Center Configuration Manager 2007, Wildlife Photography

Aidan Finn has been working in IT infrastructure since 1996 as a consultant, administrator and contractor. Working for companies and clients such as Amdahl/DMR, Aer Lingus, Barclays Bank PLC, Hypo Real Estate Bank International, Paddy Power Bookmakers, Allianz and Fujitsu has given Aidan ample opportunity to work on large scale implementations including infrastructure deployment and enterprise management. Specialties include, Windows 2003, client deployment, Active Directory, SMS 2003 and MOM 2005. Aidan also likes to spend time looking at newer technologies while they are still in beta and release candidate stages, including Windows 2003 SP2, Forefront Client Security and System Center Configuration Manager 2007. He maintains a blog on http://joeelway.spaces.live.com and content includes news that is relevant to Microsoft networking, solutions that he has used and whitepapers on new technologies that he is looking at. Aidan spends his free time sitting in bogs and ditches trying to get photographs of unwilling wildlife subjects.

Todd Lammle

Talk:  Guys, seriously, IPv6 really is your friend!

Todd Lammle, CCNA/CCNP/CCSP/CCVP, CEH/CEFI, MCSE, FCC RF Licensed, popular Sybex author and trainer, has been involved in computers and networking with Fortune 500 companies for over two decades. He has worked for large companies such as Hughes Aircraft, Xerox, Texaco, Toshiba, Cisco, AAA and IBM, designing, installing and troubleshooting world-wide bounded and unbounded routed networks, and providing prevention techniques for hacking and forensic technologies. Todd has shared his networking knowledge and experience in more than 45 Sybex study guides, including his best selling Cisco CCNA Study Guide. Todd Lammle is President of GlobalNet Training and CEO of RouterSim, LLC.

Rhonda Layfield

Talk: Network monitoring:  That packet can run, but it can't hide!

Rhonda Layfield has been in the IT community for 25 years. She began her IT carreer in the US Navy as a communications specialist holding a top secret clearance. She is now an independent consultant and trainer who develops and teaches her own curriculum on Various Microsoft and VMWare Technologies. Rhonda has a passion for learning products at the packet level and sharing that knowledge in her classes with some of the most prestigious organizations and corporations around the world. Some of which include Dow Jones, the US Airforce, the US Army, IBM, Bank of America, Wachovia, Bell Atlantic and EDS. She is currently an NT/2000/2003 MCSE and MCT. Along with teaching she enjoys presenting at national conferences (TechMentor and Windows Connections) and contributing articles to various technical magazines and is also a co-author of Mastering Windows Server 2003 Upgrade Edition for SP1 & R2.

Mark Minasi

Talks: Cracking the DaVista Code, The Accidental DBA's Guide to MSDE and SQL Server Express, Understanding User Account Control and Windows Integrity Control, and Living the Longhorn Life:  What's New in Server 2007 or, Maybe, Server 2008

Guy who talks a lot.  See www.minasi.com for more.

Darren Mar-Elia

Talk: Group Policy: How to Turn Your Network into a Police State

Darren Mar-Elia is currently CTO and Founder of SDM Software, Inc., a startup focused on delivering innovative Group Policy management solutions. SDM Software is expecting to ship its first products by the end of 2006.

Prior to SDM, Darren was Sr. Director of Product Engineering for DesktopStandard, the first company to build 3rd party extensions to Group Policy. That company was acquired by Microsoft in September, 2006. Prior to joining DesktopStandard, Darren was Quest Software’s CTO for Windows Management. Darren has more than 18 years of experience in systems and network administration design and architecture. His focus and expertise has been on large-scale enterprise implementations of Windows infrastructures in distributed and data center environments. Prior to joining Quest, he worked as director of Windows architecture and planning for Charles Schwab & Co., Inc. In that capacity he was technical lead for the company’s Windows NT & 2000 design and migration efforts. He also held the roles of network engineer, web performance engineer and Novell LAN consultant in the 8 1/2 years he was at Schwab.

Darren has been a contributing editor for Windows IT Pro Magazine since 1997. He has written and contributed to eleven different books on Windows NT, XP, 2000 & 2003 including most recently, the "Windows Group Policy Guide", published by Microsoft Press, “The Definitive Guide to Windows 2000 Administration,” “The Definitive Guide to Windows 2000 Group Policy” and “The Tips & Tricks Guide to Group Policy,” all published online by Realtimepublishers.com. Darren is the author of “Guide to the Windows 2000 Registry,” published online by Windows & .NET Magazine, and is a contributing author of: “Mastering Win2K Server,” (Sybex), “NT Server 4.0 Advanced Technical Reference” (QUE) and “Special Edition: Using NT Server 4.0” (QUE). Darren also speaks frequently at conferences on Windows infrastructure topics.

 

Steve Riley

Talk: Ask not what the Empire can do for you but what you can do for the Empire!

Steve Riley is a senior program manager in Microsoft's Security Business Unit in Redmond, Washington, USA. Steve specializes in network and host security, communication protocols, network design, and information security policies and process. His customers include various ISPs and ASPs around the United States, as well as traditional enterprise IT customers, for whom he has conducted security assessments and risk analyses, deployed technologies for prevention and detection, and designed highly-available network architectures. Steve is a frequent and popular speaker at conferences worldwide. Besides lurking in the Internet's dark alleys and secret passages, he enjoys mountain biking, clubbing and the occasional rave, freely sharing his opinions about the intersection of technology and culture, and hanging with his family and friends in the center of the universe otherwise known as Seattle, Washington.

Curt Spanburgh

Talk: Kerberos: Controlling the Beast with Three Heads

Curt Spanburgh is a consultant/system engineer for Solutions Consulting Group, a Microsoft Business Solutions Gold Partner in Southern California. He has worked with Microsoft applications for more than 15 years and monitors a Microsoft Business Solutions forum on the Mark Minasi Help Forum at http://www.Minasi.com.

He has worked with Microsoft Dynamics CRM since Beta 1.0  and Dynamics Great Plains since 1998.  He has been published in Windows IT Pro Magazine. Solutions Consulting Group provides ERP and CRM solutions for the Southwest United States.

James Summerlin

Talks: The Accidental Developer - Part 1, and Powershell: Scripting and automation via the command line

James Summerlin is 33 years old and has been working with computers since 1997. He has a bachelor's of science in Computer Science from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and currently consultants for small to medium sized offices - mostly in the medical field. James Summerlin works for Professional Data Management, Inc. located in Goldsboro, North Carolina.

Nathan Winters

Talk: VMWare: The latest and greatest you need to know

Nathan Winters is a Principal Consultant for b2Lateral Ltd; a Microsoft Gold Partner based in London, UK. Nathan has been working in I.T. for four years and specialises in Exchange, Active Directory and Virtualisation. Recent work has included an Exchange 2007 design for a 2000 user network and a large multisite migration from GroupWise 6.5 to Exchange 2003.

Midway through 2006 Nathan founded the Microsoft Messaging and Mobility User Group UK (http://www.mmmug.co.uk) which holds regular meetings in the UK to discuss topics related to Exchange. In January this year MMMUG co-hosted the Community EVO Launch in the UK at MS HQ. Nathan’s articles have been published by Penton Media (Exchange and Outlook Administrator newsletter), Microsoft (TechNet Industry Insiders) and on the MMMUG website.

 

Location, Travel and Registration

The meetings take place at the Courtyard by Marriott, an oceanfront Virginia Beach hotel.  Address:

2501 Atlantic Avenue
Virginia Beach, VA 23451
Sales Office (757) 417-6029
http://www.courtyardoceanfront.com/home.html

When registering, please say that you are with the "Minasi group," or the room rates go up and they won't rent us the meeting room.  Room rates are $149/night, with optional Sunday late checkout for an extra $75.  (That doesn't count the usual heavy slathering of added Federal, state, county, city, street and other taxes, of course.)

Travel

Virginia Beach is in the southeastern corner of Virginia.  It is the 42nd most populous US city, outpacing such better-known cities as Oakland, Omaha, Miami, Raleigh, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and many others.  (This irritates those cities, but inasmuch as VAB contains the huge Oceania Naval Airbase, we are fully prepared to retaliate to any attempts to knock us off our beloved 42nd spot.)

You can drive to Virginia Beach via US 64 East to US 264 East.  The Marriott's page has more driving details at http://www.courtyardoceanfront.com/map.html.

To fly to Virginia Beach, go to either the Norfolk International Airport (airport code ORF, Web site http://www.norfolkairport.com) and from there it's about a 35 minute taxi ride that'll cost about $50, not including tip.  Or fly into Newport News / Williamsburg airport (http://www.nnwairport.com), which is smaller and about 45 minutes' drive further.  (Sorry, we don't have a guess on the cost of ground transport from Newport News.)

Registration

We're charging $250/head to cover meeting room expenses, duplication expenses and the dinner at Mark's farm one evening.  Click here to register.  It's the "seminar registration" page because it was just easier and cheaper to put the registration on that page.  Just be sure to choose the "MR&D 2007 Forum Meeting."  You can pay with checks, purchase orders and credit cards, but in any case we need payment before the event, and thanks for your help... and for joining us!  (And if you're coming from outside of the US or Canada, then just ignore the need for a zip code, apologies -- we're using the software that we use for our public seminars, which only take place in the US and Canada.  Just punch in anything for a zip.  The credit card system won't work either because of the zip code issue, but if you e-mail Jean Snead (assistant@minasi.com) then she can handle a credit card manually.  Apologies for the trouble, again thanks for joining us!)