Every day until Christmas we will be showcasing one of our community’s Virtual Business Card. You can access VBC here: http://mcpvirtualbusinesscard.com and submit them to [email protected] to be eligible to be included.
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The last day: Wayne Hoggett
https://www.mcpvirtualbusinesscard.com/VBCServer/b5b87eed-0f0a-44e1-b015-e22cf29fdf18/profile
From Wayne:
Day 11: Freddy Fuentes
https://www.mcpvirtualbusinesscard.com/VBCServer/FreddyFuentes/profile
From Freddy:
Day 10: Aaron Christenson
https://www.mcpvirtualbusinesscard.com/VBCServer/AaronChristenson/profile
Aaron put his little statement in his About Me section of the profile, but I ve copied it here:
Day 9: Scott Fabel
https://www.mcpvirtualbusinesscard.com/VBCServer/sfabel/profile
From Scott:
Please join us for a special Live Meeting series created specifically for managers of IT professionals and developers. Click below for more information and to register for:
Whatever Happened to the MCSE? (and What s This MCITP?) Thursday, January 28 at 8:00 A.M. Pacific Time (What time is this in my region?)
The Truth About Certification Exams Thursday, February 25 at 8:00 A.M. Pacific Time (What time is this in my region?)
p.s. My apologies, if you previously tried to register for these Live Meetings and received a message that the meeting was full. We were pleasantly surprised by the huge interest in these topics and have now expanded meeting capacity. Please try again to register. There should be no problems.
Day 8: Niall Merrigan
https://www.mcpvirtualbusinesscard.com/VBCServer/nmerrigan/profile
From Niall:
Day 7 - June Tabadero from Australia
June:
First, a Merry Xmas link from my company (Readify): click here
Lastly, I have been an MCP for more than a decade and Microsoft has done a great deal of protecting the brand and enhancing the program. It’s still remains as good way to benchmark and validate one’s skills and a good way to differentiate yourself from the rest. The VBC is another great marketing tool for MCPs: personal touch, global reach and most of all: it’s FREE!
Thanks June!
Day 6: Helmer Zandbergen
https://www.mcpvirtualbusinesscard.com/VBCServer/helmer/profile
From Helmer:
Hot off the presses (or more accurately, hot on the presses, since that’s exactly where it is right now):
Microsoft Official Course #6294, Planning and Managing Windows® 7 Desktop Deployments and Environments, is on its way to Learning Solutions Partners worldwide, available beginning January 4, 2010 (but available to MCTs today via the MCT Download Center). To find a CPLS that offers this course, click the “Search for Certified Learning Solutions Partners in your area” link on the right nav bar from the course syllabus.
Day 5 - Eric Olson
https://www.mcpvirtualbusinesscard.com/VBCServer/ericsolson/profile
Eric s words:
"Eric is currently a Sr. Systems Engineer working for L-3 Communications in Fayetteville, North Carolina. He is currently heavily involved in SharePoint 2007, Dynamics CRM 4.0, and creating highly available virtual infrastructures using Hyper-V. After attending his first SharePoint Conference 2009 in Las Vegas, NV... this year, he was a speaker at SharePoint Saturday - Raleigh ...also his first!
Day 4 - Japke Rosink
https://www.mcpvirtualbusinesscard.com/VBCServer/JapkeRosink/profile
Love the animated gif (did you know you can use animated gifs?)
Japke: "It is a great feeling to be part of the MCP community with lots of different technical disciplines within Microsoft s technology platforms. The Virtual Business Cards are just an additional layer of icing on a tasty cake. Ideal to have a "uniform" way for presenting yourself and your qualifications to others online, without having an issue with incompatible file formats or mixed up formatting."
We’re in the middle of our MCT Readiness session on Office 2010 right now, if you are not an MCT and if you want to dive in early too, here’s some really good news!
I was just given this FREE e-book by Microsoft Press, it’s so fresh that we have not yet uploaded it to any official web page yet, but we wanted to make sure you could download a copy before Christmas.
Follow this link to download the ebook, take a first look and start doing Amazing Things with Office 2010!
The blue bus saga continues..
When morning came, everyone was rested and had slept in their own beds for the last time and we were about to get the (mini)bus from the rental company. It was going to be a long day, we were going to travel to our event in Gothenburg and after that directly to Malmoe. In other words, we had many miles ahead of us today.
This is where we the speed record was achieved. Behind the wheel was Mangus Björk, Exchange MVP, who obviously either does not like being on a buses or just wanted to arrive before he left. Anyway, the rain poured down, and we got some 190 km/h om the speedometer, which we believe is now the official speed Get on the Bus Speed Record. The Community beats everyone once again. =)
Arriving at IHM Conference in Gothenburg chaos broke out, no one knew what to do and when to do it. But somehow the team s experience and the strong drive to deliver great content led to a very intimate evening with up-close discussions about Windows 2008 R2, Certification and Visual Studio 2010. Everyone who attended got not one, but two T-shirts with the E=MCp logo.
Our first session for the evening was Certification 101 by Tiberiu Covaci. One problem however; Tiberiu wasn t there... so Mattias Lind (SQL MCT) and Mikael Nyström (Deployment MVP) ran an improvised session about certification and how certification can help leverage a career. This turned out to be a much appreciated session since it was very up-close and personal and interactive.
After the introduction into certification Mikael Nyström took half of the audience and delivered a session about Windows 2008 R2 from a personal perspective. Being a very skilled presenter, Mikael decided to not use a single PPT-slide to get his points across. The session was basically an ode to "don ts". For instance, how to make a deployment project fail, which turned out to be one of the most appreciated sessions of the bus tour. The session wasn t even close to be "sales-intensive" but rather from a very real-life perspective.
Markus Rytterkull took care of the other half of the room, the Developers, and dove into Visual Studio 2010 and the news of .NET 4.0. Lots of coding examples and demos. MCTs seems to be very hands-on. At the same time Magnus Björk redelivered his top rated session from Stockholm about Exchange 2010 and the new features and changes in architechture in the product.
Straight after the event the bus left for Malmoe and Copenhagen. Everything was loaded back on the bus, and we even threw on a sponsor who brought some beer (not for the driver however). Arriving very late at night in Malmoe I had only booked half of the hotel rooms I thought I had.
In the next and last part of the blue bus saga I will introduce you to our winner, who got a free ticket to TechEd, and how we finally got to germany via Copenhagen.. and also treat you to our PPT-decks.
Day 3 - this time it comes from Miklos Cari in Bolivia
https://www.mcpvirtualbusinesscard.com/VBCServer/mcari/profile
From Miklos:
"I really like the VBC, since I am trainer, consultant and Test Manager; is very difficult to introduce me just with one card and is even more difficult to explain them what is each role, with the VBS I was able to create a card for each situation, the one that is here is for the IT Consultant since the people recognizes more quickly the IT Professional title than the MCTS for example, of course in the academic side and for training purposes (CPLS) the MCT Card is my preferred since they recognizes the title very quickly. Finally for my day to day job I have the MCTS card, since is more important to show that I am being involved in the different Microsoft Technologies."
I appreciate the compliment Miklos :)
Tomorrow is Thursday, and it will be this month’s Third Thursday. Each month, on the Third Thursday of that month, we run our MCT Readiness meetings. We dive into new technology, new courses, new ways of training students. I get up at 5:30 AM, race to work, open the LiveMeeting, I keep my eye on the ‘attendees’ button. How many MCTs will join, will we break our record (again :-)?
I look forward to tomorrow’s session where will dive deep into Office 2010 Beta. Our team discovers new features each day, we just came out of a presentation where we used all the new transitions in PowerPoint, it was a blast! Still, those are just the obvious features, tomorrow we dive deep, 2 hours long. Straight after that, we will go into Soft Skills, we’ll be looking at delivery methods and the different media we use.
So if you’re an MCT, consider this a gentle reminder; show starts 7AM PST or 3PM GMT. We record and store the sessions, but if you can attend live, it’s often a more rewarding experience.
If you’re a student, this may explain why your MCT has bags under his/her eyes today or why class ended early (depending on time zone) :-). Your MCT may have some cool Office 2010 tips and tricks for you soon, Office 2010 lets you do Amazing Things, stay tuned!
It often amazes me what people ‘who know their stuff’ can do, we see Amazing Things nearly every day. Well, if you really want to put yourself to the test, go for the challenge below. A really cool competition, just click the banner. Really amazing, just check this one that won earlier:
What could you create for the Web if you only had 10 kilobytes of code? It s time to exercise your minimalist creativity and get back to basics - back to optimizing every little byte like your life depended on it! The MIX 10K Challenge is back, and this time we’ve upped the our game with an expanded set of web technologies and standards, including Gestalt, Silverlight, HTML5, and more. The Grand Prize winner will receive a trip to MIX10, and there are more great prizes for the Community Winner and Runners-Up. Learn more!
Our own Jim Clark answered certification questions on the Windows Team Blog
Cross posted from: http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/springboard/archive/2009/12/16/are-you-certifiable.aspx
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Now that Windows 7 has been released you may be interested in understanding what Microsoft Certifications are available, and how you can update your certification.
Jim Clark, Sr. Certification Manager for Microsoft Learning is here to answer some of the common questions.
Stephen: Are there any new certifications for Windows 7?
Jim: Yes, in addition to new versions of the Enterprise Desktop Support Technician Pro credential and the core configuring TS exam we have created a new credential with Windows 7 that is focused on the Enterprise Desktop Administrator.
Stephen: What is the difference between this new Enterprise Desktop Administrator (EDA) credential and the Enterprise Desktop Support Technician (EDST)?
Jim: Good question. The primary difference is that the EDST is focused on reacting to customer issues as a helpdesk or technical support responder?, but the EDA roles is focused on proactive desktop tasks that include designing, deploying, and managing. The EDA role is part of a design team that is looking into the future to determine what the desktop infrastructure will need to maintain, grow, or gain efficiency. This could be by upgrading or deploying a new OS, or modifying an existing deployment.
The simple answer is to look at these two credentials the same way we look at the Windows Server 2008 credentials:
Stephen: So those are the two Pro credentials for Windows 7, are there also new Technology Specialists (TS) exams for Windows 7?
Jim: Yes, there is one new TS exam that will support both the Enterprise Desktop Administrator (EDA), and the Enterprise Desktop Support Technician (EDST) credentials. That exam is 70-680: TS: Windows 7, Configuring. This exam is the backbone of our credentials and it validates all of the common how-to tasks associated with Windows 7. It is a requirement for both the EDA and EDST credentials.
Stephen: Will any of these new exams also count towards the Windows Server 2008 credentials?
Jim: Yes, the 70-680 TS: Windows 7, Configuring exam will count towards the Desktop requirement for the Enterprise Administrator Windows Server 2008 credential.
Stephen: How about people with the Vista EDST credential or even people with the XP DST credential, will they have a way to upgrade their credential to Windows 7?
Jim: Yes, we are creating an exam so that either XP DST’s or Vista EDST’s can take this one exam and become MCTS: Windows 7, Enterprise Desktop Support Technician certified. This upgrade exam will be out in early 2010.
Stephen: So what would you suggest is the first step to become Windows 7 certified?
Jim: If you are new to Windows client certification, or are not currently certified as either an XP DST or Vista EDST, then I recommend you take the 70-680: TS: Windows 7, Configuring exam. This exam is required for both of the Pro credentials and can be used for the desktop requirement for the Enterprise Administrator credential, so it’s the best place to start.
Stephen: Are there any other Windows 7 exams beyond the ones you’ve mentioned?
Jim: Yes, we also have an exam that is geared towards OEM Preinstallation specialists. This exam 70-683: TS: Windows 7, Preinstalling for OEMs is designed to validate skills of OEM vendors that preinstall Windows 7 on desktops and laptops for corporate or retail sales.
Stephen: Are any of the exams live now?
Jim: Yes, all of the exams (except the upgrade exam) are live now. Anyone can register to take an exam at www.prometric.com.
Stephen: Where can I learn more about Windows 7 certification?
Jim: Best place to start is the Windows Client Certification portal. This page will link you to all the Exam Preparation Guides for the Windows 7 exams. If you decide you would like training before you take the exams then here Windows – Training Portal is the place to start or to get the latest information around the world of training and certification, check out the Born To Learn Blog.
NOTE: Until Dec 31st enjoy 15 to 25 percent off select Microsoft Certification exams. Click here for details.
System note - we pushed another update out tonight. This one fixes the issue where clicked links opened within the card itself and errors when creating a card. Additionally, we revamped the certification selector to fix any lost information issues.
For fixes to cards, please make sure you re-save your card so that the changes can be applied. We re working on a feature where if any changes like this happens in the future, they will be retroactively applied to all existing cards.
It s almost the end of day 2 here in Redmond so I figure should post the next card, this time all the way from Iceland!
https://www.mcpvirtualbusinesscard.com/VBCServer/sighar/profile
From Sigurdur s words -
"I love to teach. To see that glimmer of understanding light up in the faces of the students is what it is all about."
Well said! Thanks Sigurdur!
Every day until Christmas we will be showcasing one of our community s Virtual Business Card. You can access VBC here: http://mcpvirtualbusinesscard.com and submit them to [email protected] to be eligible to be included.
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Sorry for the delay - got tied up with something yesterday so I wasn t able to post the first VBC for 12 Days. So here it is the first card!
https://www.mcpvirtualbusinesscard.com/VBCServer/SRMcEvoy/profile
From Steven s:
I am IT application specialist who has years of experience in the non-for-profit sector who has now moved over to corporate work. Certifications were essential in proving my past experience to help in getting a corporate job. I see myself as a chief grunt and bottle washer, my job is to make the vision happen, or figure out what is needed to make it happen. Like a sergeant in the army my job is to get things done, and done well. My goals are to be a lifelong learner, to continue to grow my skill set both professionally and personally. To be a student of both the profession and life. Certifications help both to keep me learning and growing.
Thanks Steven!
At about 9PM last night I get an IM from Helmer, telling me that the beta code for 693 is giving the error message “Promotion not found.” Helmer tells me that Freddie in Canada was able to register. So I know that (a) I put the correct registration start date in the notification; and (b) I put the correct beta code in the notification. I experience a short-lived sense of relief that I didn’t screw up the notifications. I promptly send an e-mail to Prometric about the issue.
Relief quickly makes way for panic as I realize that nobody who can sort this out is online at 9PM on a Sunday night. Or at least, nobody from Microsoft Learning and none of our usual contacts at Prometric.
Unfortunately, I don’t have a direct line to wake up anyone from Prometric in the middle of the night. Yet, anyway.
However, help comes from an unexpected source: my SME friends. Bas calls Prometric and informs me of the explanation he received from them: some European countries were mistakenly left off the list for where the beta code could be used. Over the course of the next several hours, many other SMEs send e-mails to [email protected], and from their reports I piece together what is happening, and then respond to everyone with the status. Helmer starts a discussion on his blog, where folks post updates as they learn more. He also directs folks to report the issue here on Born to Learn.
Unfortunately, Prometric’s customer service in Europe was unable to fix the problem immediately—they had to wait until Prometric’s head offices opened in the morning (morning on the U.S. East Coast,that is). Folks were understandably concerned that nobody from Europe will be able to register before the seats fill up.
This morning I started receiving e-mails from folks in Europe that they were finally able to register. I sent a notification to SMEs in affected countries who had received the beta code legitimately the first time that they should try again.
Speaking of legitimate beta codes: we did have at least one leak I know of this time. The good news is that it was removed pretty quickly by the forum admin—due to the diligent bad post reports of people like you. And I’m not seeing the beta code posted anywhere as I write this post.
It’s a little too early to say whether this story has a happy ending. At the moment, there are still seats available for 71-693, so I’m hoping that the folks in Europe who tried to register when it first opened will all get a seat. We’ll be monitoring this situation to determine if any adjustment is needed. (On a side note, I’ll add a comment to this post after I get confirmation that it has filled.) We really do regret the inconvenience this has caused. We’ll be working with Prometric on a solution to prevent this from happening again.
So some of you are probably wondering, what silver lining could there possibly be in this story? It’s this: we really are a community. We connected and muddled through this situation together. And the one documented leak of the beta code was quickly identified and squashed by the community.
What’s more, we’ve identified the need for a proverbial red telephone between MSL and Prometric to help improve response times for unexpected issues.
Just wanted to let you know that we updated VBC Friday night PST. Included in the update were the following -
Logo enhancements - we added a few missing logos (only MOS is still missing) and we improved the quality on all of the logos. There shouldn t be any more squished logos. I think it should have improved all your cards automatically, but if you still see some issues resave your card.
Updated share page - we added some clarifications to the share page.
Mailto bug fix - we fixed the javascript card where it was using mailto improperly.
Ensured profile pages will not be crawled - there were concerns that putting private information on the profile page would result in Bing or Google crawling them - we ve ensured that search engines will not crawl all profile pages.
Changed "cell" to "mobile" - yeah, cell is too American =)
Avatar selection fix - when selecting your avatar, it will load to the side of your card so you can see how your card looks as you re selecting your avatar.
Thanks for your feedback!
Gang, CLR via C#, Third Edition (ISBN: 9780735627048), by Jeffrey Richter, is proceeding very very well. We’re 99% sure it will be available in the middle of February 2010!
Because the book is coming soon, we’d like to post information originally shared by Jeffrey about how the third edition differs from the second edition:
Jeffrey here. Last week I submitted the reaming chapters for my new book. It is now being edited and should be available right around the time that Visual Studio 2010 launches (March 22, 2010).
One place you can order it is here: http://www.amazon.com/CLR-via-C-Third-Pro-Developer/dp/0735627045
I know that many people will ask me what are the differences between the 2nd edition and the 3rd edition and so I thought I d create this blog post to address this.
Overall, every chapter has been modified making the text clearer, fixing any known mistakes and I’ve added more 64-bit coverage as this hardware is becoming more commonplace. I ve also embellished a lot of text to reflect new things that I ve learned in the last 5 years since the previous edition of the book was published. In addition, since the 2nd Edition of the book covered version 2.0 of the .NET Framework and C#, the new book adds coverage of versions 3.0, 3.5 and 4.0.
Also, I always thought I’d write a Threading Book showing how to properly architect software to build responsive and scalable applications and components in today’s world of multi-core computers. However, I decided to just include this other book’s content in the 3rd Edition of CLR via C# and so Part 5 of the book has five pretty lengthy chapters related to Threading. These chapters (like all chapters in the book) are very prescriptive. That is, I don’t just explain what is in the .NET Framework and how to use it. I explain when to use it and why as well as pitfalls associated with various constructs. I have written a lot of threading material over the past 20+ years and this is all new material presented in an all new way that I think will resonate well with software developers. The 2nd edition of CLR via C# had two chapters related to threading; the five new chapters contain a small part of that material but the new chapters are basically rewritten and add all of the new stuff that is being introduces with .NET 4.0.
Below is the Table of Contents for CLR via C#, 3rd Edition and a brief description of what has been added to each chapter since the 2nd Edition.
Added about discussion about C#’s /optimize and /debug switches and how they relate to each other.
Improved discussion about Win32 manifest information and version resource information.
Added discussion of TypeForwardedToAttribute and TypeForwardedFromAttribute.
No new topics.
Enhanced discussion of checked and unchecked code and added discussion of new BigInteger type. Also added discussion of C# 4.0’s dynamic primitive type.
Added discussion of extension methods and partial methods.
Added discussion of optional/named parameters and implicitly-typed local variables.
Added discussion of automatically-implemented properties, properties and the Visual Studio debugger, object and collection initializers, anonymous types, the System.Tuple type and the ExpandoObject type.
Added discussion of events and thread-safety as well as showing a cool extension method to simplify the raising of an event.
Added discussion of delegate and interface generic type argument variance.
Added coverage of new Enum and Type methods to access enumerated type instances.
Added new section on initializing array elements.
Added discussion of using generic delegates to avoid defining new delegate types. Also added discussion of lambda expressions.
Added discussion on performance.
This chapter has been completely rewritten. It is now about exception handling and state management. It includes discussions of code contracts and constrained execution regions (CERs). It also includes a new section on trade-offs between writing productive code and reliable code.
Added discussion of C#’s fixed state and how it works to pin objects in the heap. Rewrote the code for weak delegates so you can use them with any class that exposes an event (the class doesn’t have to support weak delegates itself). Added discussion on the new ConditionalWeakTable class, GC Collection modes, Full GC notifications, garbage collection modes and latency modes. I also include a new sample showing how your application can receive notifications whenever Generation 0 or 2 collections occur.
Added discussion of side-by-side support allowing multiple CLRs to be loaded in a single process. Added section on the performance of using MarshalByRefObject-derived types. Substantially rewrote the section on cross-AppDomain communication. Added section on AppDomain Monitoring and first chance exception notifications. Updated the section on the AppDomainManager class.
Added section on how to deploy a single file with dependent assemblies embedded inside it. Added section comparing reflection invoke vs bind/invoke vs bind/create delegate/invoke vs C#’s dynamic type.
This is a whole new chapter that was not in the 2nd Edition.
Whole new chapter motivating why Windows supports threads, thread overhead, CPU trends, NUMA Architectures, the relationship between CLR threads and Windows threads, the Thread class, reasons to use threads, thread scheduling and priorities, foreground thread vs background threads.
Whole new chapter explaining the CLR’s thread pool. This chapter covers all the new .NET 4.0 constructs including cooperative cancelation, Tasks, the aralle class, parallel language integrated query, timers, how the thread pool manages its threads, cache lines and false sharing.
Whole new chapter explaining how Windows performs synchronous and asynchronous I/O operations. Then, I go into the CLR’s Asynchronous Programming Model, my AsyncEnumerator class, the APM and exceptions, Applications and their threading models, implementing a service asynchronously, the APM and Compute-bound operations, APM considerations, I/O request priorities, converting the APM to a Task, the event-based Asynchronous Pattern, programming model soup.
Whole new chapter discusses class libraries and thread safety, primitive user-mode, kernel-mode constructs, and data alignment.
Whole new chapter discussion various hybrid constructs such as ManualResetEventSlim, SemaphoreSlim, CountdownEvent, Barrier, ReaderWriterLock(Slim), OneManyResourceLock, Monitor, 3 ways to solve the double-check locking technique, .NET 4.0’s Lazy and LazyInitializer classes, the condition variable pattern, .NET 4.0’s concurrent collection classes, the ReaderWriterGate and SyncGate classes.
> > > > >
Jeffrey’s original post is here. You can follow Jeffrey at http://www.wintellect.com/cs/blogs/jeffreyr/default.aspx.
We’ll post more about the book in the coming weeks.
Skills and employability, the two go hand in hand more than ever. You may want to check the Microsoft Europe site and find out what Microsoft is doing to support employability.
See Microsoft and the eSkills impact: Lutz Ziob, General Manager of Microsoft Learning, speaks of the importance of ICT skills for the European economy and workforce.
And of course we were excited to find this video too :-).
You’ve probably heard me share my excitement over the growth in our MCT Community. Right now, there are 16,337 MCTs in 150+ countries.
As the MCT Community Lead, I receive a large number of emails from people who want to know more about our program. So I designed a flyer, called it ‘14,000 reasons to become an MCT’ (and ended up updating the flyer’s title 3 months later, and now need to do that again :-)).
If you are considering joining the MCT Community, you will find that flyer and a full program overview here. MCTs need to meet some requirements; you need to be Microsoft Certified, you need to have proven presentation skills. We then offer a wide range of benefits; full access to our learning products, free TechNet Plus Direct, a free license to Camtasia Studio and Snagit, etc. And you become part of the worldwide MCT Community; you can share experiences, tips and tricks with MCTs from all over the world. We support MCTs preparing for new technology and new courses through our MCT Readiness program: a library of recorded presentations that help you prepare for new training projects, with new sessions added each month.
Many new MCTs, many new benefits, so we ran an MCT readiness session for new MCTs to talk new MCTs through the program. This was presented by MCT Christopher Harrison, the session has greatly helped new MCTs get the most out of the program. If you are considering joining the MCT Program, why not take a look at this recording?
Things every new MCT should know (but is afraid to ask) was recorded in September – hearing Christopher refer to 15K MCTs makes me realize how fast our numbers have grown this year.
By the Microsoft Forefront TMG 2010 Administrator’s Companion Authors
In March 2008 we got together to brainstorm an idea about this book and from day one we realized that we would have some interesting challenges to overcome, such as chapter rewrites as the product evolved. However we knew that once we fine tuned our chapter design and writing assignments we will have a great content to offer. One of the best parts of this project is that each one of us came from a different personal and technical background. We have all worked with Microsoft Edge technology for long time, Jim and Yuri since Proxy 2.0 and Mohit since ISA 2000. Our skills also were built based on experience in the field from different regions (Jim from USA, Mohit from India, and Yuri from Brazil).
Jim Harrison retired from the US Navy in 1998 and joined the ISA Server Sustained Engineering Team as a QFE tester in January 2003, however his background on Proxy comes way back when Jim was a tester in the Windows Media server team. Mohit Saxena was a Technical lead for Windows Networking Team in Microsoft Bangalore and at that time ISA server was being supported by the EPS Networking Team. Mohit moved to USA in 2007 to work for the ISA Escalation Team at Microsoft Sammamish, WA. Yuri Diogenes used to work for a Microsoft Gold Partner in Brazil as a Support Engineer and in his spare time he was a Professor at a local university. Yuri moved to USA in 2003 to work at Enterprise Platform Support at Microsoft Las Colinas, TX, and moved to ISA Escalation Team in 2007.
After we had been writing for a couple of months, Tom Shinder joined the team as Technical Reviewer. This was the piece of the puzzle that was missing to make this book a really great reading experience. Tom brought his writing experience aligned with his ISA/TMG expertise to the table and made our writing efforts much smoother and consistent. In November 2008 we got together during the TMG Customer Technical Preview Meeting in Seattle where we were able to discuss about how TMG was moving forward as a product and also about the book.
Left to right (Yuri Diogenes, Mohit Saxena, Jim Harrison, and Tom Shinder)
We all shared a common goal in ensuring that the content was as clear and concise as possible. In June 2008 Jim and Yuri launched the Portal Tales from the Edge, to share technical articles for the Forefront Edge Security Community. Later other engineers (including Mohit Saxena) from the Forefront Edge Team also started to contribute to the portal. The authors also worked in other projects together, such as the TMG Malware Inspection article for TechNet Magazine February 2009 issue. We kept ourselves busy and you probably realized by now that we had less hours of sleep throughout those 18 months writing this book.
We traced an important goal right in the beginning: to write a book in which we can share our real-life experiences with edge planning, deployment, and troubleshooting. Because we work on a daily basis supporting ISA Server and Forefront TMG, we knew exactly what the TMG administrator would need to know. Each chapter that we wrote had this vision of bringing our troubleshooting experience to the reader and sharing our own life experience; you will see that in sections called “Real World.”
We typically divided each chapter into three sections so that each author had a chance to contribute his experience and knowledge on that particular subject. This was like having three lead guitars players in a band with Tom acting as the drummer, keeping us all together in time. Make sure to pre-order yours at Amazon.com.