PowerShell + DevOps Global Summit Videos Online

The session recordings are now online! We did miss a few of the videos. The few 2-hour sessions scheduled in Room 406 were not recorded (and weren’t planned to be; we only have two sets of recording equipment, although for 2017 we’re adding a third set). And, we had a couple that had video problems on-site and weren’t recordable. We hope you’ll appreciate that our priority on-site is to provide a great experience for the people who were there, and stopping everything to make sure we get a recording isn’t always practical. As always, recordings are on a best-effort basis. As far as we know, we missed one of Matt Graeber’s sessions, Lee Holmes’ session, and the Microsoft general session from Kenneth Hansen and Angel Cavelo.
A new experiment this year should come online by July 2016. Pluralsight showed up with two film crews, and captured live HD video, and audio right from the speakers’ mic, in rooms 404 and 405, which were our main session rooms. Those recordings, which will combine the live video with our screen captures, will be available in the Pluralsight library for all Pluralsight subscribers. Registered attendees of the event will receive free access to those as well, by means of a “slice” of the Pluralsight library.
Note that last-minute registration transferees will not be automatically included in that, as we’ll be sending the library information to the originally registered person. In addition, for attendees who did not provide complete contact information (like, if someone else registered you), the notification will go to the contact information we do have. We don’t have the ability to update that list at this point, sorry.

2016-March Scripting Games Wrap-Up

Carlo really put a brain-twister out for our March 2016 Puzzle. Also, as a note, we’re eagerly awaiting submissions of next month’s puzzle, so don’t delay in handing that in. Here’s how you can contribute to the community’s favorite scripting game.

Official Solution

It’s probably easiest just to share his solutions as actual script files, so here’s both the Beginner and Advanced versions that he provided, as a ZIP:
Solutions
Carlo also provided some notes on his thinking:
Just a precision concerning the regex: the idea I had was to ‘force’ competitors to think in terms of Unicode categories and block ranges (unknown concept to most I bet).
Without digging, some people could come up with an expression like this, which is NOT what we want:

Calling all Scripting Games Puzzles!

Have you been enjoying our monthly Scripting Games puzzles? Want to keep them going?
Then it’s time to jump in and contribute! PowerShell.org is a community site, which means it only works when community makes it work! So come up with your Scripting Games puzzles (you’ve seen the different kinds we’ve done)! Your submission should include:

• The puzzle itself. This can include a narrative, example output you want people to achieve, etc.
• The solution (in code form, and it’s fine if you put this on GitHub or in a Gist too), along with a narrative of how and why the solution achieves the goal(s).

Ideally, we’d love it if you could also review some of the entries for your puzzle and provide some commentary on ones that you found noteworthy.
Submit your puzzle to Dan Iverson, our newly minted GamesMaster, via email to gamesmaster@ (and you should be able to figure out our domain name, as you’re on our site, right?). We’re looking for an April puzzle and beyond! For months where we have no entry, we’ll post a “taking a break” at the top of the month, just so you know.
Don’t let us down! Personally, I’d love for this to become enough of a thing that we can start awarding not only top entrants (I have been tracking entries each month), but top puzzle authors - and maybe invite them to a PowerShell Summit where we’ll do a live Scripting Games event one evening! But it only happens if you help make it happen!

2016-March Scripting Games Puzzle

Our March 2016 puzzle comes from Carlo Mancini. We’re actively interested in receiving Scripting Games puzzles from members of the community - submit yours, along with an official solution, to us at admin@ via email!

Official PowerShell + DevOps Global Summit 2016 Agenda Now Available

The agenda is available on the official event page! Please note that this is subject to change, but we’ll update that same copy so you can just refer to it. We’ll have handouts on site, but we recommend having an offline copy of the PDF, or your own printout, as a backup. It’s worth reviewing this in advance, so you can start planning your own personal agenda. Don’t forget that the registration site (https://eventloom.com/event/home/PSNA16) allows you to set your own personal agenda (after logging in), and provides a mobile-friendly view at the event.

PowerShellSummit.org Registration Status & Extension

So, we have 3 seats left, which isn’t much - and we contacted our venue, and they said they they’d let us bring in those people more last-minute (in terms of us setting food and space requirements), but there’s a small uncharge of $100 per person. So those last three seats are on sale at PowerShellSummit.org, through the morning of March 11th, and the new pricing should go into effect sometime tonight. In the meantime, if you happen to show up and the lower price is still there, go for it. But… only three seats. Good luck!

Last Chance for PowerShellSummit.org Registration

Here’s a sort of last call: Registration ends on March 1st, 2016, giving you just about ten days from today (Feb 18th). Additionally, we’ve got just around 24 seats remaining. About 5 of those are available as 3-day seats, and about 19 as 4-day seats. We’ll try and slide that availability around so you’re not forced into one or the other, but this is basically last call for attendees either way. Hope we’ll see you there!

Planning for PowerShell+DevOps Global Summit 2017… Need Your Opinion

So, we’re already doing some planning for the 2017, 2018, and 2019 events. Because, you know. We do that around here ;).
One thing we’re considering is an option to lock-in venue pricing for that three-year period, helping to ensure we can keep our pricing at around $950 for a 3-day event. Doing so requires a hotel room block lock-in as well. On the plus side, that’ll lock in hotel pricing for 3 years too, which is great in terms of affordability and predictability. It’s scary, because we’re committing to paying for those rooms whether people sleep in ’em or not. Another upside is bringing all or most attendees together into one hotel, along with our speakers.
So what we’re considering is opening 2017 registration by only offering packages of either 3 or 4 days (it’ll be your pick) which are _inclusive of your hotel room. _This would be at a Marriott property, and we could provide receipts/invoices that showed the conference/travel expense breakout, if you needed. So up front, you’d only be able to buy that complete package. The package would also likely include something like a Sunday night meet ’n’ greet at the hotel - again, only open to people staying there.
Closer to the event, say in the 60 days before, we’d open registration to ticket-only sales, for however many seats we had remaining.
This is obviously an unabashed attempt to reduce risk by “forcing” people into the hotel package. Realizing that some people might not be able to book “inclusive” packages due to company policies, we’d try to also offer an option where you could buy just a ticket early-on, but were required to book your room in our block. Honestly, this is all about making sure we fill the block.
Our feeling is that a 3-day package would be around $1500 including hotel (3 nights), and you’d have the option of booking on additional nights if you wanted to. it’d be about $2300 for a 4-day/4-night package, if we do the pre-con day again (which is likely as it’s been our most popular option for 2016).
Another advantage of having our rates and dates locked in so far out is that we could let attendees put down a (refundable) deposit for 2017, 2018, and/or 2019 - locking in your seat before registration even opens, so you don’t have to worry about hitting the website at midnight sharp the day sales open ;). Now that we’re a nonprofit, collecting that in advance is much more do-able.
Anyway… we’d like some input from the community. Take a quick, one-question poll to tell us what you think.

2016-February Scripting Games Puzzle

Although we have a couple of puzzles queued up, we’ll be taking a brief break for the month of February 2016. So, no puzzle this month!
However, **we are in need of puzzles, including sample solutions and explanations. **This is a community effort, so if you’ve never contributed - now’s a great time to start! Drop an email to admin@ this domain. Include a ZIP file with your puzzle, solution, and explanation - all in plain-text files, please. You can include screen shots, as needed, as PNG files.
We’re also in need of a Games Master, who can collect monthly puzzles, queue them up for publishing, and scan reader submissions for noteworthy entries. Drop an e-mail if you’re interested.
Belong to a user group? Why not spend some time in your next meeting coming up with a puzzle or two that your group can submit? Make them easy or tricky, fun or devilish - it’s up to you. A user group could also collectively take on the Games Master role, giving you an important activity (reviewing entries and queuing them for publishing) at each monthly group meeting.
Become a contributor, and help keep this highly visible part of the PowerShell community up and running!

PowerShellSummit.org Registration Status for 2-Feb-2016 (also, recordings)

OK, here’s a quick update of where we’re at with registration for PowerShell + DevOps Global Summit 2016.
We’d originally scheduled 150 seats for the April event, inclusive of speakers. Yesterday (1st Feb) we opened 3-day sales (previously, only 4-day seats had been available), and are now at 126 total attendees. So we’ve got 24 seats of our original space remaining.
The venue assures us that we can accommodate at least another 25 people, possible as many as 50 more. So we’re working with them to make that happen - in the meantime, I strongly recommend you register soon if you plan to attend. It looks like, no matter what, we’ll be in a sellout situation again this year.
Now, keep in mind that we’ve greatly expanded the event this year. We’re running three full-day pre-conference workshops (that’s what you get for the extra day in the 4-day pass). We’re having an informal gathering on Sunday evening (after the pre-cons) at the Courtyard Downtown Bellevue, a bar crawl Monday night, and a reception with the WMF team on Tuesday evening. In addition to two tracks of content, we have a third track which will run some extra-long sessions (although not all day). We’re also welcoming the WMF team on Tuesday after lunch for a “State of the Shell” address by two of the main team leaders, followed by “Lightning Demos” from a variety of team members. It’s a lot of content.
As always, we’ll be recording most of the sessions. Basically, the pre-con sessions won’t be recorded, nor will the extra-long “bonus” sessions in the third track (we only have two sets of recording gear). All of what we do record will go on YouTube as usual. However, this year, Pluralsight will be on-hand with camera crews in our two main rooms, and they’ll be producing recordings that include screen capture as well as live video of the speakers. Those “better” recordings will go into the Pluralsight library, and everyone attending in person will receive free access to those even if you don’t have a subscription. For anyone not attending, you can either access our screen-caps on YouTube for free, or use a Pluralsight subscription to access the nicer videos. This is an experiment with Pluralsight and we appreciate their support!
Oh, and we’ll also be offering Verified Effective exams (no computer required!) on Wednesday, to anyone who’s interested (no advance registration required).
Anyway, as you can see, it’s going to be a busy-busy-busy Summit, and it’s looking firmly to be a sellout, even if we’re able to secure the extra space at the venue. So register right the heck now if you plan to attend. If you’re just now getting around to talking the boss into it - well, honestly, you shoulda started back in November ;). At $950 for the 3-day pass, though, this is probably the best educational deal you or your company will ever find, and more than a few people see enough value to pay their own way every year.
So I hope we’ll see you there!