There are lots of things to consider when writing an advanced function in PowerShell depending on what the function will be designed to accomplish, what operating system and PowerShell versions it will be written for, and who will be using it. During this session, PowerShell MVP Mike F Robbins will walk you through the top 10 items that he takes into consideration along with his thought process when creating advanced functions in PowerShell. We’ll briefly discuss comment based help, parameters, parameter validation, pipeline input, and error handling. This will NOT be a deep dive into any one of these topics as the focus of this session will be on writing advanced functions to maximize code reusability by minimizing static values. Prior experience with PowerShell is recommended.
I’m back from Techmentor Redmond 2015 which was my first public speaking talk ever. It went great. I met a ton of great people and really enjoyed myself. When speaking to IT pros one of the questions I typically ask them is “Are you blogging or sharing your knowledge?”. 9 times out of 10 I get a big, fat no. Why? It’s because they feel like they have nothing to share. They feel like no one would be interested in their ho-hum, mundane life as an IT guy. I always followup that comment with “How do you know?” which ultimately results in a shrug. You don’t know that your life isn’t interesting and can teach others something. Why are you making the decision for others? You’ve acquired lots of knowledge in your career. Don’t be stingy! Share it! As a personal challenge to you, I have a copy of Don Jones’ and Jeff Hicks’ Learn PowerShell Toolmaking in a Month of Lunches book. If you don’t have a blog today, start one. If you do and haven’t blogged in awhile, dust it off and start writing again. The first one to contact me on my blog Adam, The Automator with a link to their blog with at least 5 good posts will win the book. Don’t try to sneak those piddly little one paragraph posts by me just to get a free book! Minimum post length is 500 words. You have nothing to lose but perhaps a few hours of your time and some further opportunities in your career. Give back and you will be rewarded. P.S. Did you know I used to blog about selling used books on Amazon? Talk about a niche topic. At it’s peak it was getting over 1,000 readers/day. Now, don’t you think IT is just a wee bit bigger than that? If I can blog about selling used books and get 1,000 readers/day you can spend just an hour a week writing a blog post about your IT experiences and you will help more people than you think.
The PowerShell Summit is the number one conference where PowerShell enthusiasts gather and learn from each other in fast-paced, knowledge packed presentations. PowerShell experts from all over the world including MVP’s, Guru’s, community leaders and PowerShell team members, will once again join together for a few days in Bellevue, WA. to discuss and learn about maximizing PowerShell in the workplace. If you want to share your PowerShell expertise or story, then this is your official call to submit presentations for selection!
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.
Your cruise price includes most food on the ship - certain specialty restaurants may charge a la carte like a normal restaurant, or may have a small ($25-ish) per-person charge to dine there. If they have the per-person charge, everything on the menu is then included at no extra charge.
Your drinks cost extra - everything but water, tea, and plain coffee in most cases. Even soda is an extra price.
That’s why I want you to think really really hard about what I’m going to write next.
The North American PowerShell Summit 2016 will take place at the
Meydenbauer center in Bellevue WA. on April 4-6 2016. The Summit is a community event, with community based speakers. That means we need **you **to submit sessions. Members of the PowerShell team will be attending, and speaking, as in previous years as will a number of PowerShell MVPs. One of the goals of PowerShell.org is to help build the PowerShell community and that means helping and developing new speakers. You don’t have to be an established speaker to present at the Summit - just knowledgeable about your topic and enthusiastic about PowerShell.
I’m stupid-excited about PowerShell Cruise. Did you know you can register now for just $500, which is fully refundable up to a point? And that doing so NOW gets you awesome amenities like free Internet minutes or liquor packages? Did you know I’m speaking? Did you…
Wait. You probably have a ton of questions, especially if you’ve never cruised. So on Wednesday July 29, at 4pm Pacific, get your answers. Go to https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/4206318439550861826 to register for a webinar. I’ll host, and I’ll be joined by the event organizers, as well as the travel agency that’s handling the bookings. There’s literally no PowerShell Cruise question these brave souls can’t answer.
Jeffrey Langdon, Doug Finke, and untold others are putting together PoshCruise, a PowerShell Cruise Conference. I wanted to make sure everyone knew about it, because it (A) stands to be a lot of run, and (B) offers some special pricing through this month.
The “conference” itself is free - you just have to pay for your cruise. There’ll be presentations (I’m guessing mainly on the “at sea” days of the 7-day trip, although personally I’ve rented a beach cabana on Great Stirrup Cay and will hold forth on technical topics over tropical cocktails).
PowerShell.org was never meant to be a small group of people doing good - it was meant to be a place where all of us can do good for each other. And that’s why **everyone is invited to blog here. ** Yup, even you. If you’d like blogging permissions added to your account, just e-mail webmaster@ with your site username, and we’ll make it so. Now, I do realize that a lot of folks would much rather blog in their own space, and that’s totally, 100% cool. But, if you’d like to blog here, we only have a few rules.
I wanted to provide a quick wrap-up of the Annual Shareholder Meeting that we just concluded. We had a quorum of shareholder votes present online or by proxy, and we made some important decisions that I want to share with the community overall.
One, we voted to amend the organization’s Articles of Incorporation and Bylaws to make some important structural changes. These are absolutely in line with our original intent for the organization, and reflect how we’ve actually done things, but now they’re “law.” The first was to remove any legal possibility of corporate funds being paid out to shareholders; all corporate funds must be used only for corporate programs and operating expenses. We also voted that, in the event the corporation is completely dissolved, any remaining assets and proceeds will be donated to a 501(c)(3) charity.
PowerShell.org has come a long way, both spiritually and physically, since our inception in September of 2012. Let’s look at some screen grabs from the Internet Archive, and take a stroll through our history.
