Don Jones

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Don Jones

372 articles published

2 min read

Win a Free 4-Day Pass to PowerShell and DevOps Summit 2016!

Want to attend the newly expanded, 4-day PowerShell and DevOps Summit coming to Bellevue, WA in April 2016? Well you can - if you make your own community contribution! Our TechLetter newsletter is looking for articles. And, November is of course NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month. But we aren’t looking for a novel - just newsletter articles! So we’ll call it National PowerShell and DevOps Article Writing Month (NaPoshDoArWriMo). Er.

3 min read

2015-October Scripting Games Puzzle

Our October 2015 puzzle might take us beyond the realm of one-liners, but it circles back to the August 2015 theme of retrieving information from the web. This is another scenario that actually has a lot of real-world applications, in that there’s a lot of practical uses in the work environment for this technique. 

2 min read

Speaking at PowerShell Summit 2016: Topic Ideas for Aspiring Speakers

Our call for topics for PowerShell and DevOps Global Summit 2016 is open until November 1st, and I thought I’d share some ideas for the kind of 400-level content we’re looking for. First, to submit abstracts, pre-register as a speaker candidate. Be sure to fill in the brief demographic information presented, and then add any information for the Attendee Directory that you’d like. When you’re done with that, select Abstracts from the menu at the tippy-top of the page, and enter your session information.

1 min read

Call for Topics Extended: PowerShell and DevOps Global Summit 2016

In light of our recent announcement regarding the future of PowerShell Summit, we are extending the call for topics to the end of October, 2015. We invite speakers to re-visit their existing proposals and indicate the desired length of their session. For example, simply add “[45min]” to the session abstract if you feel your session is suitable for our traditional 45-minute time slot. Or, indicate an alternative of [90min] or [120min].

12 min read

Future of PowerShell Summit in Europe and North America

As we kick off PowerShell Summit Europe 2015, I wanted to share some decisions we’ve made regarding the future of the event. When we first launched PowerShell Summit in 2013, our goal was to be the spiritual successor of the former “PowerShell Deep Dive” events held as part of Quest’s The Experts Conference (TEC) event. Dell’s acquisition of Quest eliminated TEC, and PowerShell.org worked with the PowerShell product team to create the Summit.

2 min read

DevOps: A Practical Example

If you look at DevOps as a means of removing hurdles between coders and users, there’s almost no better real-world, practical example than Amazon Elastic Beanstalk. If you’re not familiar with EBS, look into it - it’s kinda cool. EBS isn’t suitable for every situation, to be sure. It’s mainly useful for Linux VMs, running Web sites, in fact, which isn’t 100% of your workloads. But the idea is pretty awesome.

3 min read

20115-September Scripting Games Puzzle

Our September 2015 puzzle is another one-liner, to help get you out of Summer Mood and back into Work Mode. This time, it’s a pretty real-world scenario, designed to test your understanding of the pipeline and how data can be manipulated within it. You’ll need to really grasp pipeline parameter binding to make this work in the shortest command possible.

2 min read

TEST IT: New IISAdministration Module

It’s no secret that Microsoft’s WebAdministration module isn’t universally loved. It’s functionality isn’t deep, and it doesn’t play well in the PowerShell pipeline. There are also a number of things in it that run really slowly, making bulk administration a pain. Last week, Baris Caglar announced that Windows 10 contains a new IISAdministration module, which is a rough draft of what is hoped to be a final module in Windows Server 2016.

3 min read

2015-August Scripting Games Puzzle

Our August 2015 puzzler tests your ability to retrieve data from the Web. If you’ve never done this before, it can be a real brain-bender - but don’t overthink it; experts can probably pull this off in a one-liner if they’re using a newer version of PowerShell!

2 min read

[UPDATED] Even Vaguely Considering PowerShell Cruise? READ THIS RIGHT NOW.

It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of next year’s PowerShell Cruise and am excited for the folks who are organizing it. Tonight’s webinar (which they’ll post to their YouTube channel) will be a chance for you to learn more. But. If you’ve never cruised before, you may not be aware of how the majority of the cruise industry works: Your cruise price includes your room, and is based on two people staying in the room together.