I hope that by this point everyone reading this blog is an IT Professional or at least striving to be one. But how do you get together and get better at your job or how do you get a better job? About a year ago I started the Orlando IT Pro group and I started networking with people worldwide that were doing the same thing I was - trying to lead a group, trying to promote it and make people aware of its existance, trying to get people to attend, trying to get vendors to come in and talk to the people that sell and support their software and hardware. Those people helped our ITPRO community in Orlando grow immensely and to give back to the community that gave Orlando IT Pro its legs I decided to put together a how-to whitepaper that will help newer group leaders go through the steps I had to go through. Another 14 people gave up their time to be interviewed to make this a non-biased look at whats involved in running a user group. I hope it helps you as much as its helped me. http://www.vladville.com/articles/GuideToOrganizinganITPROGroup.pdf Update: You are likely reading this as a link from Harry Brelsford's SMB Newsletter so please allow me to make a slight correction and save you a ton of time: The guide you are about to download is a guide to all the resources available to you as a user group leader to better organize and run your group. In addition to all the resources it features 15 other successful SBS group leaders and which resources they rely on to make their groups work. This is not a guide on how or why to start your group.

To all the girls I've loved before…. Yes, all two of you. I'm taken. At 6:10 PM, EST on the shore of Seven Seas Lagoon I proposed marriage to the love of my life, Katie Rebholz. I asked her on the the beach facing the Katie's Cove at The Grand Floridian Resort & Spa in Disney World. We've been dating for over 8 years. So needless to say she was expecting this. I have done my best to continuously taunt her about it and even faked it several times so when I really did it, it would be a surprise. I bought the diamond separate from the ring (since she wanted a Scott Kay designer ring) so I used the box I got from diamond.com to taunt her for a while. Today is her 27th birthday so I took her to Downtown Disney ("to see a man about an apple" since her favourite candy is an Apple coated in 80,000 calories) where the inept Disney cast members couldn't figure out how to core an apple. I did my very romantic thing of biting the core out of each quarter and spitting it on the ground directly in front of us. I then proceeded to try and wash the caramel off my hands with $3 bottle of water. After a little love-fest I went down on one knee and was immediately called for my bluff. We walked past the wedding pavilion and I told her I was thinking about proposing to her on top of Contemporary Resort. She said, "Why not right here on the beach?" So we went to the beach, got into a swing, talked a bit about things and started making out. I've been telling her that the ring won't be done until some time in January, so I asked her again if she would marry me. She said yes. I asked if it was ok that I didn't have a ring… "Honey, you know me, I'm good for it."… she said yes. I got down on one knee and asked her to marry me. She said yes. I pulled out the camera and gave it to her, sort of to shake on things and close the deal. She seemed very amused by this. Then I fumbled around a little bit and said "I'll make this better, I think I also have a receipt and a few quarters in here" as I tried to find the box. Finally I pulled out the diamond and asked again. She said yes.

SenderID has been on my plate for quite some time and despite so many objections (by unknowledgeable people who claim it will never work) I've decided to publish an article on how to implement SenderID for your domain. You know how Exchange SP2 includes the ability to drop messages that fail SenderID checks? Well, this is how you actually determine which servers send mail as your domain, how you create the record, how you publish it through DNS. It's a 4 step process that will take you less than two minutes to create: Publishing SenderID records for Exchange SP2 IMFv2 There is also an Inside SBS podcast being recorded as I type this message so give them a listen, I asked Mark and Peter to talk about IMF.

SBS Weekly #10 was quite a unique experience. Susanne and Chris had to make do without Vlad this episode, but hopefully we still managed to come up with something useful to you. Items we covered include: * Lawsuit Concerning Mobile Security & Feature Pack * Outlook Junk Mail Filter Update * Intel's Dual-Core Yonah Chipset * CPC Combo Windows XP Tablet/Windows Mobile 5 device * Impact of Guidance Software Security Breach * Microsoft's 10 Resolutions For 2006 * Xbox 360 Rollout In Japan * Upcoming User Group Meetings UK - http://www.sbsbpi.co.uk * Manchester User Group - Dec. 19 * Kent User Group - Dec. 20 USA * Orlando IT Pro - Dec. 19th * Kansas City SUG - Dec. 20th * Alabama SMB UG - Dec. 20th * Michigan 70-282 Study Group Starting In January - http://www.misbs.com * Inside SBS #13 on Monday (IMF) – http://blogs.technet.com/sbs * SBS Show #11 w/Eriq Neale * Reminder About User Groups Around The World/Shoutout To Wayne Small – http://www.sbsgroups.com * Feedback About Vendors for UK Group Leaders Download SBS Show #10

Participating in a Microsoft launch event As you read the following I hope you keep the following in mind: I'm an IT Pro and I am absolutely shameless. I recently participated in a state-wide launch of a Microsoft product and themed our table around the holiday season - we had snow, stockings, Santa hat and more than 2000 pieces of candy. Total marketing expense outlet: $65.00 and a free UPS Store Santa hat. Orlando IT Pro association was recently invited by Culminis to participate in the regional launch of Microsoft SQL 2005, Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 and Microsoft Biztalk. We were the only town in Florida to hold the launch and consequently had over 2000 people register for the event at the Orange County and Convention Center in beautiful Orlando, Florida. We started promoting this event the very moment it was launched and even had Microsoft Technet speaker Blain Barton come to our group and demonstrate all the small-business relevant SQL 2005 topics. Blain is a very dynamic speaker and was able to cover the very basics and essentials of what SQL Server 2005 does all the way up to answering DBA questions for several members that were planning their migrations. Microsoft sent us five (5) copies of Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005 and Biztalk along with a banner and some swag to give away at the event. We also received free training on SQL 2005 from Microsoft. Because we had a highly successful in-group launch of SQL Server 2005 and we participated in another event with Culminis related to SQL 2005 (Tampa launch hosted by Windows IT Pro magazine) we were invited by Culminis to be a part of the launch. Culminis really took great care of us from the planning to scheduling and getting everything we needed – power, network, signs, etc. We had a central point of contact in John-Paul Parker who arranged and managed everything for us. All we were responsible for coming to the event, there was no hidden agenda of having to promote the event or participate in any other way (which we did anyhow because it turned out to be highly valuable to our members). Microsoft provided tables to other organizations (PASS, .NET group, etc) but in past the system administrator / infrastructure IT Pro was not represented at all. Culminis really helped us with that and from what I was able to tell almost everyone there was at least a system administrator, some were even developers. Such is the nature of the database admin, you have to be both. Needless to say, we were the poorest financially backed group there – Where we gave away cheap candy the INETA sponsored group (which even had the local Developer Evangelist present) was inviting attendees to a skybox after-party dinner at the nearby TGI Friday's. Again, Culminis really hooked us up. We had the best table in the house, directly in front of the entrance to the vendor hall and lunch area. It was obvious Microsoft had spent a ton of money on this event as did all the vendors. I felt slightly bad that we had gotten such a prime spot but I'll take it considering such a small budget and all the great stuff Orlando IT Pro does to support Microsoft products at absolutely no cost to Microsoft. Event Management Approach So how did we market Orlando IT Pro? The first smart thing I did was to wait for other SBS group leaders to provide their feedback on their individual SQL Server 2005 launches. I got great feedback from Tavis and Frank and was able to shoot higher than I was going to with my swag – I had originally only budgeted enough stuff for 500 people but once they told me that their events were maxed out I decided to go for the full count. Microsoft events suffer from a tremendous dropoff (especially the free events) in attendees vs. registrations so I still went into it a little conservatively. I know my fellow IT Pro's, we are down right allergic to pushy salesmen and garbage literature. I was not about to go in and kill a bunch of trees just to give someone extra weight to the swag-bag. Nope, I decided to get in the spirit of Christmas and instead hand out candy. Think about it, 12 foot table, 2000 people, in less than 8 hours. There was no way we could actually talk, it was going to be a line. Meaning, I had to load the swag into a shotgun and fire at the people anywhere near me. What I ended up doing is going to the local Big Lots to find a bunch of candy canes – the smaller the better. I was hoping to find them individually wrapped so I could staple them to our group information sheet. People cannot resist candy, it is something you just have an immediate use for and something you tend to be happy to find when you're doing cleaning. Perhaps I'm just a fatass but finding vendor marketing crap really pails in comparison to finding food in a giveaway. Either way, I was sure folks would love it. Candy was cheap, super cheap. I spent about $1.99 for each 100 pack of miniature mint candy canes. I also bought a dozen boxes of premium/huge candy canes so I could give it to the people that actually said hello to me. Again, I know my kind, I did not need a whole lot of it. I figured, if you're nice to me, I'll be nice to you and give you a bigger sugar rush. To the side is the actual bag of all the candy dumped into it, notice yet another plug for Microsoft for carrying around the candy. You would not imagine a few thousand candy canes would weight a lot but they did. On my way back from Big Lots I stopped by the UPS Store and got them to make 500 copies of my info sheet. While I was talking to the owner I noticed that he had a UPS Store santa hat. Now that would be neat, I could be Santa MCSE. With no shame I asked him to borrow the hat for a day – Something about him just finishing the holy month of Ramadan told me that he was not going to use the Santa hat a whole lot. The Event Setup You would be amazed at the number of people who have no idea what SBS is. For those uninformed few I had a dozen SBS eval copies that I intended to use to drive traffic and entice people to sign up for the group. I also had a banner that Mike Iem sent me at some point and this was the first time I had an appropriate venue to use it at. SBSers are quite resourceful, to the left is the picture of Nils Titley nailing the Microsoft SBS banner to the table with his shoe. It does not get far more entertaining than that at a tech event. There are many fun things I could think of, standing behind a 12' table by myself selling nothing and doing nothing of any value is not at the top of the "fun" list. Everyone I recognized was dragged behind the table and forced to help. That actually had multiple benefits – because I was the only SBS group lead from Florida to show up I had guys from other Florida groups hang out with me so when they asked "do you have one in Palm Beach?" I could just pass them off to Brian and get them to sign up. Get someone to help you manage the sheets, pens and move candy and junk out the way. As people lean over to sign up for the group they put down their coffee and then bang the table with their 200lb bag of swag. We had several signup sheets and a few dozen pens which I knew were going to get stolen. There was actually one left by the time I took away signup sheets. Very important, never make anybody sign up for your mailing list, trust me, they don't want to be on it. Just politely explain to people as they pass by to either drop their business card or sign in so you can let them know about the group and where/when you meet. This way they can come, check out the meeting, or at the very worst case just remember you in the future when they lose their job that allows them to ignore social networking opportunities. Finally, I started stapling candy canes to the invitations. Invitations had little more than our phone number, web site address, topics of discussion and our purpose. True engineers love the sense of purpose and accomplishment, so bs mission statements just do not work. Kept it short and sweet and mentioned the words FREE and ORLANDO about a half a dozen times along with the URL to join us. Do not expect IT professionals to have business cards. I cannot stress that enough. Only people that deal with customers are handed business cards. In order to drag them to the table and entice them to sign up, I handed everyone that walked by (to get the stamp for a drawing) an invitation stapled to the candy. This gave me an opportunity to say the following to about 2000 people: "If you want to hang out with other Orlando IT Pro's either sign in or drop your business card in the stocking." – This is an enterprise developer & sysadmin crowd, the kind that the company never issues business cards to because they are an embarrassment to the company and should never see the light of day, much less be in any sort of identifiable contact with the customer. Why do you think 9/10 IT people you deal with don't have a business card? Don't expect one, so I had plenty of signup paper and pens to go around. As I looked around to my INETA neighbors during the flood of people waiting to find out what "Orlando Small Business Server User Group" was all about I noticed virtual deserts to the left and right of me – INETA, PASS and Microsoft Dynamics had very few people around. We on the other hand were swamped for solid three hours. Never pin sales people against IT professionals at a tech event. You won't sell, you won't close, you'll just embarrass yourself by getting a bunch of swag bandits looking for a cool gadget to take home as a prize. We were successful because we were only fishing for people that may be interested in what we do. We were not selling anything, we didn't care what the people that talked to us did, we didn't try to get any kind of a survey out of them. Basically we just gave away candy and chatted with the friendly folks while they were in the line. There is only so many times you can say "Sign up for our IT Pro group" so it takes some wit and humor but we made it through all the swag. I'm still going through the web site signups and follow-ups (because an overwhelming majority of people were from north and south of us) but we got a ton of names and raised interest for both our user group and Microsoft SBS. For relatively little that Microsoft gave up to have this table not go to a vendor they got over a dozen passionate people to stand and talk about SBS for several hours for absolutely nothing. No T&E, no swag, nothing. Not just that, but we gave away trial Microsoft products, used Microsoft materials and explained why they should be interested in Microsoft solutions for small business. We reached over 2,000 people who now have another venue of support to rely on, another free marketing outlet that local Microsoft PAM/SMS&P/TS2 sales channel can hit at absolutely no expense. Still think user groups do not contribute to Microsoft's bottom line? I beg to differ, just look up at what we were able to pull off. At just about $65 total cost we were able to reach more people than the local .NET and PASS groups combined. I would like to argue that we deserve more money than Microsoft Dynamics. We had a bigger audience and with our monthly meetings more IT Professionals will be able to influence the purchase of Microsoft Dynamics products. Our group provides more relevant content and we have much better presentations. That is one thing I can prove, please look to the right. This man was so bored that our Palm Beach UG leader kept on snapping pictures of him in hope that he would snap one just as the guy fell out of his chair. I suppose you can say they really killed, but I hope Microsoft sees the value in these groups and starts supporting IT Pro groups as much as they seem to support developers.

Since I'm all about mobility today I think it warrants a little discussion on what is without doubt the most popular web application on the web today - Gmail (though I am playing with Microsoft Live.com webmail and wow, they really give Google a run for their money). So what about Gmail and mobility - well, until now you had an option of syncing your phone with Gmail via provided pop3 download feature. However, if you know the joys of browsing via GPRS on two bars or less you know how painful getting mail on mobile devices is. Well, Gmail went mobile. Now you can browse around your Gmail inbox as easilly as you go through your SMS messages. So check out Gmail Mobile. Now on the other end stands the 500lb gorilla of Microsoft Outlook and there are some great news on that end too. First off, and totally unrelated to Outlook, is the great news that IMF updates are now being distributed through WSUS so you don't have to go fish every other week for IMF content filter updates. But back to Outlook - the latest Outlook Junk Filter update is available for download and you if you got junk mail you need this. Even if you're an ExchangeDefender customer and you don't rely on IMF/Outlook to take care of your spam you need to download this update - I have received a TON of support calls with really weird things happening since the last Outlook junk mail update so please put this on the top of your to-do list.

Now I know you've heard that expression but the folks over at Microsoft Mobile are really saying it today. Research in Motion, the maker of a popular business communication brick Blackberry, has been in a patent lawsuit for a very long time allowing Microsoft to grow and become a serious contender in the mobile business communication. However, Microsoft was always criticized for having no push support for email or centralized security for its mobile devices. All that changed with the release of Exchange 2003 SP2 which integrated management interfaces for mobile security, management, push email and more. Now the only missing piece of the puzzle is the software that goes onto the Windows Mobile device called Microsoft Mobile Security and Feature Pack (MSFP) which enables the device to work with the Exchange server to establish a security poliy, push email and get wiped remotely. Microsoft released this piece to its OEM's (guys actually making the phone or handheld device) for testing and development in November and we were told to expect it in the first quarter of 2006. But yesterday a former Microsoft partner and an ISV decided to file a lawsuit contending that technology behind MSFP is covered by their patents. They put out this press release just days after RIM lost their patent fight. Ouch, talk about karma. Now this part made me laugh because it comes on the heels of the post I wrote just yesterday:

"For more than a decade, small, innovative companies in Silicon Valley and elsewhere have lived in fear of the day Microsoft decides to enter their market," Bogosian said. "They are a big, powerful, wealthy company, but they have no real growth, even in their most profitable divisions. They want to show investors that they can sustain growth in a new, developing market, like mobile access to email and data, but they cannot be permitted to do that by misappropriating another company's intellectual property." "Innovative companies have been pummeled out of existence or into minor players after Microsoft decided to enter their markets," Bogosian added. "Netscape and RealNetworks are among the best known examples. Courts around the world have ruled time after time against Microsoft, saying that it has acted either inappropriately or in violation of the law, especially concerning how they have treated competing companies. We will not let that happen to Visto."

Now mind you, my article was written from a standpoint of a software publisher and a small business owner so my look was more on the changing face of software and big business competition. I think we all can learn and owe it to our companies to see the big picture and see how remarkably successful companies are trying to eliminate their competitors. Visto is on the receiving end of that equation, and really going after Microsoft on this one. So there is your business lesson for the day - either learn to compete and negotiate or CYA with patents and hope the lawyers you have will work on contingency basis. Good luck with the lawsuit boys, statistics are against you. And if someone has some spare cash to sue Microsoft could you please demand immediate release of MSFP? How you settle with Visto is between you and them, but I need to get my spam a lot faster than I do now. (No, I still don't have it, do not email asking for it..) Come on, someone go to Taiwan and crack the whip on HTC already!

The SBS Show #10 will be recorded at some point tomorrow but will be an interesting departure from the norm in that I will not be a part of it. Because I did not bring my headset Chris & Susanne will give this show a go on their own and bring you the latest SBS news you need to know. So you know the drill - if you have an SBS group meeting coming up or if you'd like an SBS take on something you saw in the news… ping Chris or Susanne and get them to chat about it.

Title like that will surely bring in at least a dozen Microsoft emails, which is the norm anytime I bring up something that negatively impacts Microsoft. This time folks its not me — it's Google. The remainder of this article is written from a standpoint of an MCSE, Microsoft Partner, Microsoft Certified Small Business Specialist and an ISV making some money off the Microsoft platform. Google's Aussie engineer Glen Murphy posted an insightful piece on his journey to Google and the atmosphere and people he works with today. If you read the article carefully you'll notice that there is a team of people at Google dedicated to working on a free web browser. In just five weeks upon his arrival the team he works on has immersed him in Firefox source and they managed to develop, approve, document and publish a stable extension to Firefox that allows for automatic blog comment retrieval of the page you are looking at. Similar to what Technorati search does, and similar to TheWorkingNetwork.com Stefan and Bob are working on at Microsoft. Find something interesting online, look at the status bar and see all the other bloggers comments on it. How is that for instant reputation and popularity indication? Quite similar to the project TheWorkingNetwork.com is up to but I have only met one human being that has heard of TheWorkingNetwork.com, while I had 16 messages in my inbox regarding this Google-Firefox plugin less than eight hours after its release. It's all about support, and doing as little of it as humanly possible. And therein lies the key to the end of Microsoft desktop dominance. No single vendor is capable of defeating Microsoft. No single body of standards, no government or continent can stop Microsoft from competing aggressively and pushing their agenda. I think they have realized that. Sorry IBM, cute commercials but I am not basing my applications on bloated middleware. Sorry Sun, here is your $2 billion, go die. Sorry Real Networks, even adult entertainment sites do not use your format anymore, and we all know that the adult entertainment industry only uses the best technology out there. Sorry Google, your search is nice but most of your traffic is still done on a Microsoft platform. I'm just handing out condolences today, I could go forever. But I'll stop here: Sorry Microsoft, but I think they've got it! I think that companies have finally realized that they alone cannot defeat Microsoft. So what they have started doing is putting their R&D resources behind popular open-source projects to bring them to the same feature level as Microsoft. Consumers love them, system administrators jump at the opportunity to use them, they are priced just right (free) and have huge networks of support. And support is key. By donating the code to the open and popular projects these companies drop off the liability, support and all the other hassle that gooes along with publishing software. IBM has lead the way in this, contributing both to Linux and to Apache in a very big way. There was a little bump in the road with SCO that many believe had a very nice backing by someone mentioned over and over in this article but the outcome was far from what they expected, I'm sure. It has lead to more corporate contributions into free software - operating systems, CRM, web browsers, web servers, office productivity software. Developers are creative creatures, every now and then they work on fun projects - so if company cannot make money by selling it, why not give it to some other popular project and gain a ton of goodwill? Well, it’s been going on for a while and lately in a very big way. IBM and Google are on the front lines of contributing code to projects that people are absolutely in love with. They are not stuck supporting them for 10+ years like Microsoft and I as an ISV know that my ability to compete with Microsoft in a software world is limited to Microsofts ignorance of my niche. Once Microsoft decides to move towards my audience, I'm dead. Same goes for Real, Intuit, IBM, Oracle, Google, Sony and any other company. Microsoft can outspend you, out-advertise you and even pretend to defeat you with an inferior product. So how do you fight it? So you want to kill Microsoft with a personal organizer? Killing it with a personal organizer, game console, crm or anything like that is like killing a dog by giving it a flea bath. Lets look at personal organizers, like Palm vs. Windows Mobile. These "me-too" Microsoft products have traditionally lost immense amounts of cash in hope of at least establishing presence in that sector. OVer time, they may become a dominant. Encourage third party vendors to support your software, sell devices with your productivity stuff on them while going deep into red. Now, why would a manufacturer back such an initiative with Microsoft? Because they know that there are only two Microsoft cash cows that will never go away: Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office. Those suites are where the Microsoft money is strongest at, and if your device plays with those you will have far better sales than if you back something that does not integrate with them well. Microsoft Pocket PC was a laughable proposition even a year ago because it required so many reboots and would require complete re-install if the battery ran down. Fast forward a few months to Windows Mobile 5 and its a dominant gadget on the market. Stable and people love it. The same way they love Firefox and Google. So if you're thinking about going up against Microsoft, using a PIM organizer approach may not be that brilliant of an idea. The key to destroying Microsoft is by attacking its cash cows (Windows, Office) and forcing it to defend its 90% market dominance without expanding into other segments. As the "desktop" becomes less and less prevalent platform and we move to the web (or web 2.0 if you like) the need for Microsoft Windows may not be that big. Can you tell a big difference between IE and Mozilla just by looking at how it renders a page? Not really. So if you do all your work on the web, who cares what is underneath it? It could be Linux. It could be OS X. If you're using only 5% of the features of your Office suite, is it worth $350 per seat to you? What if a free office suite (openoffice.org) were to provide your most used features along with the ability to view and edit Microsoft documents? Before you carve out the tombstone Now, sit back and look at your desktop. Are you running OpenOffice and Linux? According to the site stats for Vladville there is an 85% chance that you are not. Why not? Well, no reason to as of yet. So all things considered, it is up to Microsoft to shoot itself in the foot with what Vista and Office 12 bring to the table. Developers and ISV's are moving to the Web, as is Microsoft, so if Firefox and Google are more popular and moving in the same direction with free vs. Microsoft pricing, what will make you install Linux on your desktop? At this point, it’s really up to Microsoft to lose with how they roll out Vista. Just watch.

As mentioned earlier, Amy and I joined Eric Ligman for a quick chat about how we've been successful with SBSC. I got a number of questions (and congratulations) about the whole event so here is the quick braindump for those of you that could not follow my plugging. If you want to know about Microsoft incentives available to you as a small business specialist there are several places to look. First is Eric Ligman's blog covering SBSC for USA. Now if you would like to hold an event in a Microsoft truck there is the ability to reserve a multimedia bus and Chris Rue will tell you how to make the most out of it on over 8 posts on the subjects - with pictures and booth babes. If you want to know how Microsoft will invest money in your business to help you deploy Office, Windows, SBS and other Microsoft solutions you need to keep an eye on Microsoft incentives (http://www.microsoftincentives.com) and Mike Marshall, the tireless manager of TS2 that is the live Google of Microsoft incentives. Now once you've seen it all and you need to order, its time to check out the www.ms-gearup.com and check out the license configurator. But how do you get to this point? Well, you need to study. Beatrice and Harry will get you started, and the community will help you push through it. As a matter of fact, Magical M&M's host the smallbizserver.net forum where Beatrice and Harry are administrators of their very own SBSC chat board. So if you have a question, they will find someone to answer it. Business or technical. But more about the community. First of all, our pope, THE Susan Bradley is the #1 SBSC resource on the Internet, perhaps should be ranked above Microsoft partner site because she is honest. Look at her to give it to you right between the eyes. If you can handle that, go and find your own Susan Bradley in the local community - www.sbsgroups.com are a great resource of all the SBS user groups world-wide, so come out and hang out with us. We'll show you how to do SBS right. If you're in UK there is tremendous support, but if you're elsewhere and would still like the majestic voice of British parlament there is an alternative: SBS Show. As one of the SBS product managers said it the best: The SBS world is flat. It is. There are no boundaries in providing a solid product and service to the small to medium business customers. We are better and we help each other get better. Technically, financially….. So….sip on that koolade…. I mean, watch that webcast: http://blogs.msdn.com/mssmallbiz/archive/2005/12/13/503299.aspx -Vlad in DC!