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We’re already planning for the 2014 Summit… you have to get way out in front of these things to secure space, plan a budget, and more. Here’s what we know: We’ll definitely still be in the Seattle metro area. That’s the best way to ensure participation from the PowerShell team, since it doesn’t require them to leave town for days at a time. We’ll be in April 2014. We’re going to try for April 14-16 to avoid Easter, or April 28-30.
When I wrote Microsoft course 10325A, their original 5-day Windows PowerShell course, I saved variables until Module 11. My thought at the time was to focus on teaching just what students needed for what they were about to do - and no more. “Just in time learning” can be effective, because it lets you immediately experiment with whatever you’ve just learned, and helps minimize the need to store up concepts for later use.
I’ve been working to update my three free PowerShell ebooks for this month: Secrets of PowerShell Remoting Creating HTML Reports in PowerShell Making Historical and Trend Reports in PowerShell The updated versions will be made available to subscribers of the PowerShell.org TechLetter on January 15th. If you’re not already signed up to receive this, you can [sign up right now][1]. The January issue will also feature a walkthrough article of how I started creating a new, better ConvertTo-HTML command, which gets used in the ebook on HTML reporting.
Microsoft’s a big company, and that makes it a big target for lawsuits. We all know that. But what doesn’t always sink in is how careful the company has to be. For example, in Microsoft Official Curriculum course 10961, Automating Administration with Windows PowerShell 3.0, I have to type Windows PowerShell every single time. I’ve actually been using “the shell” a lot, just to break things up a bit. We all casually refer to the shell as PowerShell, but Microsoft never does.
Microsoft course 10961, which will be a 5-day course on PowerShell 3.0, is officially in development! We received signoff on the outline this week, and I’ve submitted a first module for review. A big part of that review is making sure I’m using the template properly, as the authoring tool is fairly complex. It does, however, offer (more-or-less) one-touch publishing of the student manual, instructor slide deck, OneNote trainer pack, Lab Answer Key, and other documents, so it’s worth a bit of complexity.
In September 2012, we incorporated PowerShell.org, Inc., and founded PowerShell.org. Our goal was to provide a solid Q&A forum, and to act as a portal to the rest of the PowerShell community. By any measure, we’ve had a great first showing. We have more than a dozen shareholders in PowerShell.org, Inc., making this the first community-owned PowerShell organization ever. We’ve signed on three Platinum sponsors - CBT Nuggets, SAPIEN Technologies, and Interface Technical Training.
As I write this, we’re close to sign-off on the outline of 10961A, which is a new 5-day Microsoft course on PowerShell v3. I sat down yesterday and starting doing some detailed-level design work on the proposed Module 9, which will cover PowerShell Remoting. I love Remoting (and yes, I capitalize the “R” when referring to the specific feature, much as I would for Workflow). And although I’ve taught Remoting over and over and over since it was introduced in v2, although with this course I’m trying something a bit new.
My company has been contracted by Microsoft to design and author Microsoft Official Curriculum (MOC) course 10961A, Automating Administration with Windows PowerShell v3. While there is no announced release date I can share, I did want to share some of the experience. As I write this, 10961A’s proposed outline is going through several review cycles. In the meantime, I wanted to sit down and start doing some detail-level design on some of the more complex labs in the course - the most complex of which is a proposed Module 10, consisting of little more than a big, 2-hour lab where you write a script to provision a newly installed Server Core computer.
As I write this, we’re down to one ticket for the PowerShell Summit North America 2013. So what do you do if you really wanted to go, but miss that last, golden ticket? Cry a Little Let’s face it, this was totally avoidable. It’s probably your boss’ fault for not approving the expense, and so some subtle retribution may be in order. Burn the coffee for a week. Reboot domain controllers randomly.
I’ve written previously about my frustration with reporting in PowerShell - how I see admins struggle with ugly, low-level COM code to manipulate Excel spreadsheets, just so they can get nice-looking reports with a degree of automation. Enough. The right thing to do is put your data in SQL Server, and use SQL Server Reporting Services to generate awesome looking reports, complete with charts and graphs. With the right setup, you can completely automate data collection, report generation, and delivery.