SBS Show 22 live from TechEd. We grabbed everyone left over after TechEd ended earlier today and brought you the SBS Show live from TechEd’s Security MVP executive office. By the time we were done not even the posters were left on the walls. Hope you enjoy it, we talk about the new technologies demonstrated at TechEd, general Microsoft technical direction for the next year, what we took from the event, working on SBS as a big-business employee and more. Joining me are Susan Bradley, Alun Johnson and Dave Sobel.

Download the SBS Show #22

http://www.vladville.com/sbsshow/sbsshow-episode22.mp3

Can you believe we’ve banged out 20 of these so far? I’m impressed. The little SBS Show has grown from “Man, how do I stop these illiterate people from shooting themselves in the face with SP2” to one of the only places in SMB where you can get the whole story. Even though its an expensive and time consuming process I have to admit its totally worth it. I get so much mail thanking us for putting this together, telling us how successful they have been with the info they got from the SBS Show, how much they enjoy listening, how they listened to all the episodes back-to-back during their drive to Vegas, how they had to buy an MP3 player because of the SBS Show. So thanks guys, thanks for the support and well over a million listeners that tuned in to the SBS Show. Thanks to all the awesome guests and cohosts that put their time into making the SBS Show such a success.

So go and get #20. Joining us this week is Bob Rebholz from Microsoft to discuss the Web 2.0. You know, we in the “dev” roles know what Web 2.0 means because we’ve been dealing with it for such a long time. But if you’re over 19 and in IT odds are you don’t know what Web 2.0 or Ajax or DOM/DHTML or any of these things mean. Digg what? Bob is the guy behind theworkingnetwork.com blog and recently transitioned over to microsoft.com to make information discovery easier for IT Pro’s digging around microsoft.com for solutions.

Sarah Perez (www.sarahintampa.com) is cohosting this week because she is my web 2.0 go-to person. I’m not sure how the heck I found her but she has been a constant inspiration as she constantly lives on the bleeding edge of web services. Plus she’s an SBSer! Little known detail is that she inspired the SBS Show with her own podcast. I thought about the podcast for a while before doing it but without her help and all the advice I never would have pulled it off. So thanks for the inspiration Sarah and thanks for the help with #20.

I’m just incredibly proud of our little SBS Show. Honestly, I hope this inspires you. I can’t tell you how many people have told me “I was thinking about doing that but you beat me to it!” – beat you to what? It’s not like we’re the 8PM show on NBC that you need to bump to get the attention, if you’ve got something to say and think you can contribute then go for it. This is not a competition guys, this is sharing and collaboration. Just do it.

Please welcome Susan Bradley to our SBS podcasting family. She has published her first podcast so give it a listen. It just might give you an idea about why your WSUS is downloading a 6.5 GB file overnight if you selected SQL 2005 & Service Packs to be automatically downloaded.

 http://www.acidplanet.com/artist.asp?podcasts=509847&t=1065

 RSS: http://www.acidplanet.com/podcasts/rss.asp?id=165    

Add it to your streamer.

Now, I just know the question thats going to come up - are you afraid she is going to steal your thunder? If I had a penny for every time I heard "Oh, I was going to do SBS Show but you beat me to it" I would be a much richer man. I know this is going to just shock you, but… we don't make any money on the SBS Show. Really, $0. As a matter of fact, yours truly has spent a ton of money, time and effort on the SBS Show to give people an opportunity to share their story. I absolutely love it when yet another person takes the time and effort to contribute their expertise and skill. It is all about sharing information, helping someone, somewhere. It is a good feeling. We love Eriq. We love the Inside SBS Guys. We love Exchange screencasts. I looooove Amanda Congdon. Sharing information is a good thing. Please do it. The satisfaction that comes out of helping strangers is amazing, getting their email after you've saved their day is even better. So get to it. No, we are not afraid of you. 

What are you gonna do, take away the hordes of attractive women that are throwing themselves at me because of the SBS Show?  

This German site recently held a contest to create a new logo for a podcast, the recorded/straeamed radio program. The SBS Show will proudly abuse this logo in addition to our own. Speaking of which, the SBS Show #20 will be our first all-international show with Susanne Dansey broadcasting from Amsterdam at SMB Nation Europe.

Let's face it, most problems with SBS happen when changes are made. Patches, hot fixes, service packs, migrations, upgrades. SBS PSS guys take on the topic and R2 issues in the latest Inside SBS Episode #17. They are drinking that sweet sweet Livemeeting coolade but don't let that turn you away, I'm listening to it right now and the voice quality is excellent. Download #17

Yeah, I'm still alive. I had a little two hour talk with fellow MVP Dana Epp and we ended up talking about something completely opposite of why he called me in the first place. Long story short, I've spent past four days working on learning how C# and mono integrate on Linux. Why, do Microsoft tools servers suck that bad? Not at all. The problem is application infrastructure sticker shock - and on the SQL side only. While I have no problem paying SQL Server fees for high traffic, high fault tollerance solution there are simply sites that do not need massive scalability or business intelligence or stored procedures - but they need to be up - always. Microsoft does not differentiate on size or feature set, one size fits all. So if you want to have a cluster with a 20 meg database you'll be paying the same as the big boys. Maybe they'll recognize that soon, it surely put IBM and Oracle into obsolescence for lower-end db driven sites. I also took some time off to gather some energy for the SBS Show. We're on verge of launching #20 and our audience is so huge that there is more pressure to put on not just informative but entertaining shows. Mark Stanfill has been blogging like a mad man over at SBS PSS lately and they have two webcasts with TS2. They are brave enough to put up a live webcast and answer questions on the fly Call em up and ask for a concise solution to ActiveSync Error: 05010014. I recently had a shaming with them over this error, will blog about it soon. On the TS2 front there is a new Community Server. They even have a live blogroll aggregator to which they have added the SBS Show! Thanks Fred! Now if we could only get JJ to blog more Tonight: If you've got a $100 and want to improve your IT business please check out my presentation to Washington DC SBS group, live at 7PM EST. The presentation is free but I'm going to show you how to blow $100 on eliminating some of the points that make SMB IT shops suck.

You know you're big when you DDoS yourself with a podcast announcement. I'm currently shaming the front-end server that provides Vladville.com, check this out: -bash-3.00# uptime 10:42:57 up 21 days, 8:32, 2 users, load average: 113.25, 80.87, 86.13 -bash-3.00# netstat -na | more Segmentation fault Dual Xeon 3.0, 8 GB ram folks. There really is not a whole lot more I can throw at this. Please be patient.

Okay, I must admit the PSS guys have beat us up on this one. Despite our strong world-wide audience at the SBS Show even we are not cool enough to have a SAP telecast, check this out: http://blogs.technet.com/sbs_esp/archive/2006/03/06/421330.aspx Yes, thats a hispanic link to the Inside SBS Show podcast. Imagine my surprise. When I got off the floor, cleared the bump on my head and emailed el jefe of the Inside SBS I was given the following feedback:

El español no es el más dificil de las siete idiomas que hablo. ¿Pues, cuando vas a enseñar HappyFunBoy alguno de las lenguas slavicas y hacer un podcast que es merecedor de tu nombre? - El Guapo

So for all of you bitching and whining about the sound quality (which they fixed by the way), it could be worse. They could be doing this thing en Espanol! Check out their podcast which will be taped live, tomorrow, on client best practices. They are going to talk about licensing. Load your shotguns gentlemen! Here is a recent picture of Mark and Damian receiving their SBS Show shirts at Microsoft PSS @ Las Colinas (thats actually what Texas looks like for some of you that have never been): On a side note, SBS Show #18 will be out tomorrow. Amy Babinchak talks about ISA 2004 for you and your clients. If I had a penny every time I've had to explain what a firewall is, what is the difference between hardware and software, and how to sell it on more than security.. well, Amy knocked it right out. P.S. They are NOT doing the show in Spanish, its just a Spanish blog. Just to clear that up because Susan just forwarded this post to like 8 million people.

Susan Bradley, icon of the SBS community, is slowly but surely losing her mind. While it is an interesting plea for feedback to see what works and doesn't work in keeping people informed I think that there is only one place to consistnetly point the blame for you not being informed well enough: you. While it is true that there is a lot of information out there, it has never been easier to organize, discover, prioritize and store information than ever before. Again, it requires you to do something. Last week I was presenting at a Technet seminar in Orlando. One of our business partners was chatting with JJ who dragged me over to give some feedback on Swing Migration. Coincidentally, I just did an SBS Show on Swing Migration a week ago. Did he listen to it? No. His excuse? Too busy. So let me get this straight: I take time out of my busy day to produce content for the IT community that improves not just your technical but business skills as well but you're too busy to listen to it and demand a summary.. an itemized list with timestamps.. a way to search it.. AND you want me to talk you through the really important parts live? Sorry kids, you picked a wrong profession if thats in a set of your expectations. There is a reason we make more money than doctors, lawyers, engineers and nearly all other professions. It requires constant retraining. If thats not something you can set aside time for then don't look to Susan to organize it better for you, look to Susan Bradley to drive through your drivethrough window in her Mercedes Benz and ask you for your opinion on whether she should get crushed Oreo's or M&M's in her McDonalds Frosty.

My sidekick Chris seems to have his feathers ruffled by Technet providing more information in the form of podcasts. Let me share a little meeting my head had with a brick wall when I did what Technet is attempting to fail at: I was asked to convert some of Amy Babinchak's ISA webcasts into a podcast. These shows were over two hours in length and basically had a PowerPoint presentation with ISA demonstrations embedded in them. There is nothing in podcasting to help the "What we are clearly able to see on this console is…" Here is the problem — when do you listen to podcasts? While driving, in the gym, before bed, while walking to work.. believe me, I've heard them all. Without exception, you are doing something else, something where a 100% of your attention cannot be assigned to the podcast at hand. The only way podcasts work in technical fields is when they are approached in terms of a conversation. Let's get together and have a geek lunch, talk about technology. Works great, even if its a head above what everyone else is doing. Try doing that with a 200-300 level webcast - technical or sales - and you will lose people. Recently we had a TS2 conference call where people were asked "What would make this podcast/webcast #1" after admitting that webcasts are little more than a background noise. The answer was, at best, sketchy. Media can only capture audiences if it is entertaining and insightful. A very high level course gets muted when a phone call comes in. A very entertaining dribble gets ALT+F4'ed by anybody seriously at work. Doubt that? Look at the next webcast you are in, check out the seating chart. I bet you they reach less than 30. SBS Show and Inside SBS reach thousands, weekly. We collectively beat an average Microsoft webcast attendance by at least a factor of 1,000 (that means multiply by 1,000) — I hope TechNet takes a note of what makes these podcasts successful before they start massive dumps of incoherent LiveMeeting death-by-powerpoint and instead allocate resources where they can actually help. For example, give Mark more money for Inside SBS. The notion that you will be able to reach more people that already do not care about your webcasts by trying to overlap their R&R time will likely lead to Level 300 webcasts getting cut off by lip-syncing talents of Ashlee Simpson on your audiences iPod.