Every year I say this, but genuinely it was a great surprise when Microsoft renewed me as an MVP in Cloud and Datacenter for the fourth year running!

In my last post I spoke about my delight at being selected to speak at PowerShell Conference Europe 2022. I don’t usually do a post-event write-up but this year, this event, was special. And I wanted to say a few things about it.

PowerShell Conference Europe is one of my favourite conferences of the year. I am delighted that I have been selected to give two talks at this year’s event in June, at a new location!

I always find it useful to learn about what others are using in their office desk setup, and why. After purchasing a new monitor I thought it was a good opportunity to finally sit down and write about my office setup, what I use and why.

The first year of PackagingCon was 2021 and I had the pleasure of speaking! First year, and I was there.

Really happy to introduce the concept of a Windows package manager, with my talk titled What Is Chocolatey, The Package Manager For Windows? to a predominantly Linux and Mac audience.

Using custom WinRM ports when configuring Windows computers with Ansible can cause problems if you don’t know the rules for configuring the ports or just assume you do.

This last year has been a difficult one for events, conferences, and user groups. A lot have just shut up their doors and are waiting for the current COVID-19 pandemic to settle down again. As a result, there has not been too many speaking opportunities to come across, even virtually.

When I was awarded the Microsoft Certified Trainer last year, I talked about how it had been on my wish list for some time and how I was blown away by the award. Well, guess what … I use the word humble a lot, but I truly am humbled to once again be part of the Microsoft Certified Trainer program. I said it all last year, so I’ll keep this short.

On 14 January I will be presenting, virtually, to the Glasgow Data User Group. This will be the first time I have presented The What, Where and Why of Git to an audience.

Like most people in IT, I’ve taken my fair share of courses and workshops. Back when I started in IT, online courses were not really a thing (it’s true, kids) so they were all taken in person. I was always in awe in how the trainers casually handled the class, the questions and easily talk in depth about their subject. Working primarily in the Windows ecosystem, many of the trainers were Microsoft certified.