One of the best uses I have found for Powershell is for plugging gaps in holes left by GUI admin tools which don’t do everything that you want. Prior to Powershell you would typically have had to wait for the next service pack / full release / possibly ever before you had the functionality that you wanted.
I had an example of this recently with the GUI tool for WSUS 3.
Just got notification through of the various video available for Powershell Panel Discussion for the Teched Online website:
Download (High res - approx 900MB): http://microsofttech.fr.edgesuite.net/TechEdOnline/Videos/406_high.wmv
Or if you prefer not to crack your monitor / TV screen
Download (Low res): http://microsofttech.fr.edgesuite.net/TechEdOnline/Videos/406_low.wmv
Streaming (Low res): http://mfile.akamai.com/14853/wmv/microsofttec.download.akamai.com/14853/TechEdOnline/Videos/406_low.asx
What you get from the video that you might not have picked up on the audio is that we spent most of the time laughing which just goes to show how much fun everyone had doing it!
If you were at Teched Powershell Community Dinner then you will appreciate these two photos - the dare did actually take place!
All good things must come to an end I guess, so after an amazing week at Teched it was time to attend the last few sessions.
I attended a couple of sessions I have a particular interest in - WSUS 3.0, with Marc Shepard Program Manager. The sessions had promised some Powershell so I had taken along with me a script which I hadn’t quite finished off and asked Marc about it afterwards at the Ask the Experts stand.
After the TechEd Powershell Panel Discussion we all realised that none of us had arranged for a photo to be taken. :-(
We’re still waiting for the video, so thought we could screengrab something of that, but Tobias found that someone else had put a photo they had taken of it on their blog.
From left to right below:
Me, Ben Pearce, Richard Siddaway, Dmitry Sotnikov, James O’Neill, Tobias Weltner, Jeffrey Snover and MoW.
Posting the day after this time, will keep it brief. All you need to know is:
Powershell sessions all day with Jeffrey Snover and the exuberant Ben Pearce. Powershell community dinner, 18 attendees. Jeffrey + MoW = mental evening Got back so late it was time for the live stream of the Powerscripting podcast so thought I might as well stay up late and watch it for the first time - great fun.
So its late, this will be brief, but I had another brilliant day at Tech.ed. The highlight of course was the Powershell Panel Discussion.
I decided to get it out to the get-scripting podcast asap since it was so good, so there is a new episode with just that for content.
Apart from that I went to a couple of interesting Exchange 2007 sessions, an Operations Manager 2007 R2 session and had a nice dinner with some new friends.
So a bit more of a relaxed day today after yesterday’s panel discussion craziness.
Some great Powershell sessions today.
James O’Neill - how to get effective output from Powershell, in particular OpenXML - I really got challenged to give this a try for creating reports, it looks very useful and not too difficult.
http://blogs.technet.com/jamesone/archive/2008/11/05/slides-and-scripts-from-open-xml-powershell-reporting-session-in-barcelona.aspx
Plus I saw Jeffrey Snover present for the first time - it was awesome, all about stuff coming up in V2 of Powershell - there will be CTP3 of V2 in Dec 08.
The day flew by really. Wandered round Ramblas in the morning, checking out some of Barcelona.
Then the guy I met yesterday (Andy) offered to show me the ropes in getting the Metro to the conference centre which was really helpful.
Quick and easy registration, followed by some lunch and then the first session I went to, Steve Riley. This was amazing, a great presenter and he really made security interesting.
Tuesday Nov 4th 2 - 3 I will be hosting a Powershell Panel discussion on a stage adjacent to the Tech Talk Fishbowl.
Invited attendees include:
Dmitry Sotnikov - Powershell MVP
Richard Siddaway - Powershell MVP
MoW - Powershell MVP
James O’Neill - Microsoft
Some guy called Jeffrey
I will be recording the session for the get-scripting podcast, apparently it will also be videoed and available at the Teched Online website.