Welcome to Vladfire, my new video blog. 

With the recent degradation in the quality of service provided in the lower ends of the IT market many IT Professionals have called for some minimum barriers to entry. Unfortunately, there is not much that separates your Joe Plumber, Susan Accountant, Bubba MCSA and the sad thing is that the Susan Accountant is probably the best suited of all three because she has the willingness to learn. On the face, it’s difficult to spot a crook when you don’t know what you’re looking for and many have turned to Microsoft to provide an answer, the bottom so to speak.

Well, Microsoft has done just that in the form of the World Wide Partner Conference. It is, seemingly, a worthless series of keynotes and launches with a parade of powerless mid-level product managers hoping their positions exist 12 months from now. However, under that glamorous painting of receptions, keynotes, awards and parties there is an interesting aspect of powerful executive networking.. global networking, with people that have been successful enough to both build an IT business and be able to leave it for a week and drop a few thousand dollars in the process of getting there. Obviously this is a filter that doesn’t let your average “We’re a certified partner, my dog is an MCSE” and also limits other individuals that might take away from the value of such powerful networking: community leaders, user group members, etc. Virtually everyone is on equal footing up in Boston, virtually everyone paid the same price for the opportunity to network with people on their level.

So there is your bar, how do you like it? Are you above it? Are you below it?

I’m somewhat conflicted on whether to blog about it or not. Here is my take on the events – if someone invited me and I had a good time, I’m going to talk about it. I feel that’s fair. If I didn’t have a good time I’d just keep my mouth shut and not come back again. Had both happen. But I am looking at this vladville.com blog and its thirty thousand folks and I’m thinking two things:

“Why should I promote a Microsoft event for free to such a large audience?” 

“Would it be a conflict of interest for me to use OWN funds and then provide a free report on what I learned to the generally anonymous public?”
 

It’s looking like a no. At which point does community stop and business begins?

ActiveSync 4.2 is out. Now the thousands of you that have come to the Vladville wiki in search of resulution to the popular problem 85010014 will finally be able to sync without disabling SSL. Go get it ! 

Changes in ActiveSync 4.2 help resolve connectivity related issues with Microsoft Outlook, proxies, partnerships, and connectivity.

• Microsoft Outlook Improvements: Resolves issues relating to error code 85010014.
• Proxy/DTPT interaction Improvements: Improved auto configuration of device Connection Manager settings when desktop has no proxy path to the internet.
• Improved Desktop Pass Thru behavior with ISA proxy failures.
• Partnership improvements: Better resolution of multiple devices with the same name syncing with the same desktop.
• Connectivity Improvements: Better handling of VPN clients (resolve unbinding of protocols from our RNDIS adapter). New auto detection of connectivity failure with user diagnostic alerts.

The beauty of this business is that if you're serious about it (and realize it takes getting out of your cave to learn and network) you can meet some wonderful people and talk to them about things other than shop. Most of the time they are wildly different from what you'd imagine from reading their books, newsgroup posts, emails… crazy blog rants. Such is the case with Harry Brelsford, famous small business server evangelist, author, conference organizer….. and well, the best damn food magnet out there. I'm always stunned how easilly he can find a good place to eat at, no matter where he is. So a few years back Harry introduced me to Texas de Brazil in Orlando. It's just slightly ironic that I live on the same street as this restaurant but never even saw it. So I had a pretty crappy dozen or so days, we've been working on a company-wide migration: the second biggest one ever. Let's just say the last time we had this big of a jump in infrastructure change was when I moved ownwebnow.com from a single server in a colo. All in all it was a very pretty migration but days of sleep deprivation, stress, uncertainty ("documented uncertainty", with the downtime expectations and all) is enough to crack anyone. But Katie was awesome and she took me to Texas de Brazil and things are all good now. Really, really looking forward to Boston though.

About the 4th of July post.. The phones have been ringing off the hook here. I think I may have, in all my ranting, somehow implied that unless you do business with me you're somehow a leach. Far from it, I'm a reasonable person, I understand there are business cases or previous contracts where you just couldn't do business with OWN even if you wanted to. Not to mention if you really hated my guts and didn't want to in the first place. Both are perfectly fine. But don't call me, ask for help with your Exchange box and then tell me that you're going to keep on looking at other solutions. Don't email me for help with Postini and get an attutide when I tell you that I have no interest in helping you. While I am honored that so many of you gave us a call and wanted to do business with us, please, it is absolutely not what I was trying to say and you're more than welcome to enjoy everything I put out here for free without a second thought. If I expected to make money off of Vladville it would be plastered with ads and I would charge you for looking at advertising, like ZDnet does. Publishing is not my business, I just do high end geek stuff. 

So hope to see some of you up at WWPC. I'll be there Sunday – Friday, 

First and perhaps geographically the closest, Chris Rue has finally moved off Blogger and to Own Web Now. Welcome to the club. His site is on Word Press now and markedly less flaming than it used to be. He however, still is. Check it out at his site

Second, RocketBoom.com’s Amanda Congdon is moving on. I am not sure of the drama but suffice to say I will dearly miss her on the daily RB updates. RocketBoom was one place I could go to day-to-day to get out of my little tunnel and see.. well, weird stuff.

Lastly, Harry is also jumping off the SBS Ship, dropping both his SBS MVP and his SBS newsletter. Don’t worry about Harry though, he is moving on up with the launch of the SMB Partner Community magazine which you can get for free if you’re an SBSC.

Fourth of July weekend is a great time to do major infrastructure migrations but also a time where even I get to take some time off and reflect on what I’m doing. I was, to say the least, struggling last week with work and all of my hobbies that turned into profitable lines of business and I talked to my mentor Albert who had this brilliant tidbit:

Albert: Are you making money?

Vlad: Yes…?

Albert: Then you’re not going to enjoy it. When you’re making money it is a job and you will have to deal with it even when you don’t want to.

Over the last year I’ve had the pleasure of doing a lot of fun things but many of those have had such phenomenal success, beyond my wildest expectations, that I now must find new venues to have fun with because the old “fun” has come not just with the incredible nagging but also with an occasional spit in my face. Such as this weekend, 218 email messages asking if I’m alive. 218 people wondering, among other things, where I’m at, how I’m doing, when the next SBS Show will be available, etc. For those of you lifeless bastards here is a little picture. It’s called “the outside”:

This is the picture of space shuttle Discovery taking flight. Seeing the launch of a Space Shuttle is not one of the things you see often and with the way things are going over at NASA perhaps the last time a space shuttle has ever left Florida for space. This is very inspiring, not just for me but also for the community that heavilly relies on the space program.

Last week I had an enormous pleasure of hanging out with my partners and customers in South Florida. At one point I was attacked with a slew of features that they wanted in my product – I drove back home at 10 PM and between 3 AM and morning I had that functionality integrated into ExchangeDefender. I’ve shared before that one of the greatest pleasures I have is seeing people that benefit from my hard work and that actually solve problems. Code really is poetry, and when it all works as designed reliably and efficiently… it’s quite an amazing sight.

Now about this blog…

Vladville is both a blessing and a curse.

On one hand there are roughly 38,000 of you reading this page every day, excluding SBS Show and Vladville. One thing I do know is that we do not have 38,000 customers. Add another thousand or so downloads of the SBS Show a day and an ungodly number of RSS hits and you’ve got one big… Well, thats up to discussion but its quite clear I need to step up my game as far as articles are concerned, I’m glad they are helping so many of you.

It’s going to change…

As I have mentioned before this site came from the mailing list I ran for roughly 5,000+ partners Own Web Now Corp has. I’m not a fake person, to the extent that you know exactly what I think of you within 30 seconds into the conversation. I believe in honesty, call me crazy.

Over the past year or so I’ve covered major technology events, brought you some of the biggest movers and shakers in the SMB space and given you some op-ed pieces so you know how I’m lining up my business with the changing landscape of this industry. Every little bit of insight helps.

Close to a year ago I spoke to a friend of mine, let’s call her Beatrice for example, and she didn’t quite agree with my community ideas. There is nothing wrong with sharing, but at some point you need to get something in return too. How much work goes into becoming an MCSE? How much studying, books, videos and lab experiments does it take? How much time? And people expect you to give it away for free?

I shook that off because I honestly believed that by encouraging people they will turn around and become contributors. I also imagined I’d get something in return as well. Well, the SBS Show dental plan rocks but it does not pay the bandwidth bills. Still, I pushed forward.

But friend after friend came up and just smacked me in my face. Bryan, Scott, Scott R, Bob Belon, one guy after another seeing what happens to me when I hit these events and get surrounded by a bunch of leeches. They tried they hardest to ask me, Hey, are you blind?

Well, apparently I was. What kind of broke the back were the endless open hand asking for the next SBS Show, asking where I was, asking for help…. but never looking to do business with me. What’s worse is that there were even some with the decensy to call me and ask me to beat some competitive programs to ExchangeDefender…. You have no idea how much fun it is to hear this:

Oh, I love the SBS Show. I love all you do, it’s great. But you know, this is business, I have to do what’s best for the customer.

Anotherwords, screw you for doing all that free work and helping me out – I need to look out for myself.

No more talk

I’m done telling people that they need to be true professionals in this business. I am done with invitations to the local TS2 events. I’m done trying to constantly promote people and in Indy/TS2’s words: I’m not his daddy.

So as Vladville goes into its second year I’m going to work a little harder on actual professional content and less on talking about what is not professional, what is required to become one, what to avoid, etc. I’m going to work harder on more articles, some video stuff, meaningful event coverage, etc. But I’m also not going to let some of this stuff be taken for granted. Make no mistake, Vladville is not a business. But when there are business topics to be discussed you can rest assured they will only be open to the Own Web Now Corp partners and customers. I’m very dedicated to my business and very willing to help you get better at yours. But for that to happen this needs to be a two way street. In 2006/2007 Vladville just expect a little more, and if you’re with me, expect a lot more.

The key to being “louder” is great marketing. Microsoft often gets beaten up over their poor consumer product marketing (sans the Xbox of course) so they either intentionally or most likey unintentionally produced the following pitch for Windows Media Player 11 (image to the right).

Nigel, director of WMP11 marketing team told me about the marketing concept behind Windows Media Player 11:

“You see, most blokes will be playing at 10. You’re on 10, all the way up, all the way up…Where can you go from there? Nowhere. What we do, is if we need that extra push over the cliff…Eleven. One louder.” 

Hello Cleveland! God I love Brits. The maketing strategy? Brilliant! I can really go on forever, sleep deprivation is really making everything funny.