The Joys of "She’s Geeky" Bay Area #5

Oh, how time files and I've spent another weekend with the women inspired to attend She's Geeky - Bay Area #5 (http://www.shesgeeky.org/).  Appropriately held at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, my Friday morning began with an impromptu "around the water cooler" session at a common area table.

That's the cool thing about She's Geeky, or probably any unConference you might attend. If you aren't interested in a session that is scheduled for a time frame, it's pretty easy to find someone else in the same situation and have a great conversation anyway.  And if there is something you are dying to talk about, it's totally within your power to announce it, pick a time slot and make it happen.

Your session might be packed, or you might find yourself in a great brainstorming session with another woman or two. Whatever the outcome it was the outcome that was meant to be.  Jessica DeVita https://twitter.com/#!/UberGeekGirl) and I hosted a session on Disaster Recovery.  We didn't have much of a plan going into it, but once we were joined by two other women, we spent an hour talking about all different things that need to be consider when protecting your important data and paperwork at home or a work.  I think the purchase of some waterproof paper might be in my future.

And it's not all about what interest you in the here and now, or what you are working on at the office. You can also tap into the geeky interests of others to learn a new skill or get a taste of a completely different hobby.

On Saturday, I sat in on a hands-on session where I learned to solder.  Not something I'll need everyday, but it was fun to do something new and you never know when you might have to break out some solder for a home repair.  I'm certainly not an expert after one resistor, but now the tools and concepts aren't completely foreign to me.

As the weekend came to a close, I also enjoyed a fun lunchtime chat about Systems Administration and Operations, participated a great session on privacy and content management lead by @identitywoman, attended popular talk about dressing for success and picked up some good tips for working with cross-functional teams. 

At past She's Geeky events, I've learned about wine tasting and had the opportunity to hear about the "geek factor" behind backyard bee-keeping. With all the information that is at our fingertips via the Internet, it's still very easy to find yourself in a world filtered to your liking, where you a surrounded by people with similar interests and views.  She's Geeky gives you a great chance to spend an hour on something completely outside of your realm and find inspiration from other great women in science and technology fields.

She's Geeky is held annually in the Bay Area with another annually event some place else in the United States (DC, Twin Cities and New York have been past locations). Check out the website for information about the upcoming events or review some of the notes that were taken from sessions this weekend. 

I’m already looking forward to next year.

Recovering Exchange 2010 - Notes from the Field

With Exchange 2007/2010 more tightly integrated with Active Directory, recovering a server after a loss of hardware can be significantly easier than with previous version of Exchange. This is a boon for those of us in smaller offices where only one Exchange Server exists, holding multiple roles.

Check out this TechNet article with the basics for recovering Exchange 2010. However, there are some little tips that would be helpful, especially when you might be working under a stressful situtation to restore your mail system.

1. Make sure you know where your install directory is if Exchange isn't installed in the default location.  If you don't have it written down as part of your disaster recovery documentation, you can get that information out of Active Directory using ADSIEDIT.
2. Make sure you know the additional syntax for "setup /m:RecoverServer" switch. If you need to change the target directory the proper syntax is /t:"D:\Microsoft\Exchange\V14" or whatever your custom path happens to be.
3. If you are planning on using the /InstallWindowsComponents switch to save some time with getting your IIS settings just right, make sure you've preinstalled the .NET Framework 3.5.1 feature set first.
4. Don't forget to preinstall the Office 2010 Filter Packs. You don't need them to complete the setup, but you will be reminded about them as a requirement. 
5. Make sure you install your remote agent (or whatever components are necessary) for your backup software. Once the Exchange installation is restored, you'll need to mark your databases as "This database can be overwritten by a restore" so that you can restore the user data.

As always, planning ahead will save you in times of trouble.  Happy disaster recovery planning (and testing)!

Start Marking Your Calendar for 2012 Events!

If you like to fill up your calendar with events geared toward the tech community or you've got some training budget lined up for 2012, look no further than some of these tried and true events that are coming up in the first half of this year. Prices vary from free to several thousand, depending on your travel needs.

Pacific IT Professionals in LA (1/24, Santa Monica, CA) - Meeting the 4th Tuesday of every month, the LA chapter of PacITPros never ceases to bring lively discussions to the table. This month, Joey Snow will be speaking on Windows 2008 R2 Migration Tools. Join and attend for free!

She's Geeky (1/27 - 1/29, Mountain View, CA) - Back in Mountain View at the Computer History Museum, She's Geeky is a great way to meet new faces in the STEM fields. This unConference give you a chance to learn from a collection of really smart women and practice your skills of leading a group session yourself if you've got a topic you'd like to share.

San Jose Tech-Security Conference (2/2, Santa Clara, CA) - I enjoyed this low cost security centered event last year when there was one held in San Francisco.  This event is held in various locations during the year. So if the Bay Area isn't your home base, you are likely to find another date in your area!

Pacific IT Professionals in SF (2/7, San Francisco, CA) - Meeting the 1st Tuesday of every month, PacITPros has been bringing IT Pros together for over 20 years.

RSA Conference (2/27 - 3/2, San Francisco, CA) - A San Francisco staple, RSA never fails to disappoint.  Even if you can only swing an Expo Plus pass, you'll have access to lots of informative keynotes and the large expo hall.

Security B-Sides (2/27 - 2/28, San Francisco, CA) - A free security event hosted near the Moscone center earlier in the same week of the RSA conference.  A great way to complement your RSA Expo Pass!

TechDays SF (3/22 - 3/23, San Francisco, CA) - A two day event with over three dozen sessions planned covering a variety of tech topics of interest to IT Professionals.

Microsoft Management Summit (4/16 - 4/20, Las Vegas, NV) - Geared toward managing your Microsoft enterprise, MMS brings you the latest technical training for desktop and device management as well as data center and cloud technology solutions.

Microsoft TechEd (6/11 - 6/14, Orlando, FL) - As a 7 or 8 year alumni of TechEd, I always look forward to this conference. The expo hall and Technical Learning Center always provides opportunities to connect to vendors and Microsoft employees.  Community areas bring MVPs, User Groups and other IT Pros together.  And don't forget the crazy number of sessions you can choose from.

Welcome 2012! Now Start Planning for 2013 and Beyond.

As you file away your planner for 2011 and crack open that fresh page to January 2012, you might want to highlight a few of these special dates for the future.  Here are some upcoming "end of life" dates for some Microsoft products you might still have floating around on your network. Some will be supported for several more years, but it never hurts to keep your eye on the horizon.

 

These dates are the end of support life for the product as a whole, so start thinking about your budget cycles and internal support needs for the next few years.

• Windows XP - 4/8/2014
• Windows Vista - 4/11/2017
• Server 2003 - 7/14/2015
• Exchange Server 2007 - 4/11/2017
• SQL Server 2000 - 4/9/2013
• SQL Server 2005 - 4/12/2016
• Office 2003 - 4/8/2014
• Office 2007 - 10/10/2017

These dates are for specific service packs for these products, so be sure to install the latest available service pack, if you haven't already.

• SP 3 for SQL Server 2005 -1/10/2012
• SP 1 for Exchange 2010 - 1/8/2013
• SP 2 for Office 2007 - 1/8/2013

For more information about other Microsoft Server products, check out the Lifecycle Info for Server Products list.