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So, as you may know, I have an ongoing hobby project called _Creating HTML Reports in PowerShell. _I’m working on an update for next year, and one of the things I’ve been looking at are embedded charts within the report. Problem is, I don’t know what people would actually chart. Now… I’m going to ask you for ideas, but you need to read this whole post before you go popping a comment in.
A long time ago… about a year, in fact… Jason Helmick and I started talking about a community-owned PowerShell “certification.” It went nowhere. Well, not very far.
Some background on exams: Microsoft, in my opinion, will never do a PowerShell cert. I say this having been part owner of a company that did outsourced exam development for the company. The deal is that Microsoft tries to certify _job tasks, _not _tools. _Nobody (well, maybe me) wakes up thinking, “gonna do me some PowerShell today.” No, PowerShell is the means to an end: “gonna automate me some user creation today” is more likely. And Microsoft tries to certify that end. PowerShell’s an important tool, and it already shows up on certification exams here and there.
For the most part, I agree with Microsoft’s reasoning, there. The argument can be summarized as saying “bosses don’t hire IT pros based on their ability to operate a low-level tool, they hire them to perform job tasks, which encompasses the tool.” Except that, in the case of PowerShell, I think it’d be tremendously useful for an employer to use PowerShell expertise as a discriminating factor in hiring. I mean, “someone who can automate stuff” is more valuable than “someone who can only do stuff manually,” in any situation.
So “PowerShell Verified” was intended to be a way for someone to prove - at least to themselves - that they’ve taken their PowerShell skills _to the minimum level necessary to be an effective automator. _Not a guru. Not an expert. Not Poshoholic. _Minimally effective, _who could then grow from there with experience.
So that’s what I’m going to put together.
I want to explain why I’m not using the word “Certification,” though. In my mind, certifications come from, mainly, first-parties like Microsoft. Microsoft has to jump through a lot of hoops to make sure their exam content is accurate, legally defensible, blah blah blah. They worry about security, brain dumps, and other stuff that diminishes the value of the certification. I don’t have that kind of bandwidth or their resources, so in many ways my little program will be less effective than a “real” certification. Plus, few bosses will give a rat’s patooty what that Don Jones guy said about your skillz (I can’t even convince bosses to buy you guys 12-core 64GB workstations for your desk). So my “Verified” program is going to be _low stakes, _meaning you take it to prove something to _
yourself
_.
Here’s how this is going to go.
To cap off the 2013 PowerShell Summit the PowerShell Team is going to host a half day Windows PowerShell scenario walkthrough. This is designed to not only familiarize folks with specific PowerShell features, but also to help the team see how you interact with these features. The event will take place on April 24 from 1pm - 5pm. Â During this time we will collectively solve a problem from the ground up using many of the new features in Windows PowerShell 3.
As we’ve been finalizing our speaker and session collection, we’ve been able to release a small block of Summit tickets into the general admission pool. Also, the end of October saw the expiration of a set-aside block for PowerShell MVPs, releasing that block’s unsold tickets back into the general admission pool as well. As it stands, the G.A. pool now has 57 tickets, of which we’ve sold 24. That leaves 33 tickets left for the April 22-24 event at Microsoft’s corporate headquarters in Redmond, WA.
Idera’s gone and made PowerShell Plus free. Given that it’s been updated to support PowerShell v3, this will probably become many folks’ go-to editor (PowerGUI, the former champ, is more or less out of development and hasn’t been updated for v3). Idera says: “Idera is dedicated to providing products that help our customers and community members be successful in their jobs,” said Rick Pleczko, CEO of Idera. “PowerShell Plus is a proven and essential productivity tool so we wanted to get it into the hands of IT professionals everywhere.
One of the ballyhooed new features in PowerShell v3 is the new “simplified” syntax for Where-Object and ForEach-Object. I’m going to focus on the former for this article. In essence, instead of doing this: Get-Service | Where-Object { $_.Status -eq 'Running' } You can now do this also: Get-Service | Where Status -eq Running Last week, I had the opportunity to include this new syntax in a class I was teaching - mainly to beginners - and I came away with mixed feelings.
For more than 200 weeks now (there’s an episode a week), Jon Walz and Hal Rottenberg have been bringing us the PowerScripting Podcast. It’s become an almost official “voice” of and for the PowerShell community. In it, the two don’t focus much on technical tips or anything like that. Instead, the highlight is a weekly interview with a mover and shaker in the PowerShell community. For me, they put a face on the community.
I’ve written a new, short, totally free eBook that explains how to build multi-sectional HTML reports in Windows PowerShell. This is something I’ll be building on in the future, as I have time, to add additional formatting capabilities, and even interactivity. But what’s there now should be a great start! Check it out and let me know what you think. It’s on the free ebook list at https://powershell.org/ebooks.
I’ve finished updating a new revision of _Secrets of PowerShell Remoting; _you’ll find PDF and EPUB versions attached to this post in a ZIP file. Note that these are “check builds,” meaning I’m putting these out there in the hopes folks can run through them on their computers and e-readers to let me know if anything looks weird. You can just drop a comment right here if you find anything.
Voting is open! As you know, the PowerShell Summit North America 2013 is coming in April 2013, and we’re relying on you to tell us what sessions you’d like to see there. We’ve already accepted dozens of proposed sessions, and we’re ready for you to vote. Go ahead and take the survey now. (opens in a new window/tab) While voting, you can technically choose as many sessions as you want - but remember that we can’t present them all, so try to pick no more than 20 sessions as your “favorites.