News

What's on the Technology Horizon? Find out This Fall

TechMentor and VSLive! conferences offer in-depth training and important updates on today's most important technologies.

• By Scott Bekker
• 08/01/2008

The events are designed to provide intensive instruction in a variety of high-profile technologies and insight into key trends. For dates, venues and registration information, see "Events at a Glance," this page.

Following are highlights that may be of particular interest to Microsoft partners:

TechMentor
Keynoters for the New York show, to be held Sept. 7-10, are nationally recognized authors and consultants Don Jones and Mark Minasi.

Jones, a columnist for Microsoft TechNet magazine and former columnist for RCP's sister publication Redmond magazine, will discuss the IT skills that attendees should master now to stay on track for success in the next decade. Minasi, author of 26 technical books, will assess how well Microsoft did in delivering Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 and highlight little-known features of each product.

In-depth workshops will cover, among many other topics, migrating from XP to Vista, using Windows PowerShell, designing a virtualization environment and dealing with compliance issues.

Don Jones will also deliver a keynote address at the Las Vegas event, to be held Oct. 13-17. He'll be joined by Greg Shields, an author, consultant, contributor to Redmond and columnist for another RCP sister publication, Virtualization Review magazine.

The event will also feature topics such as free tools for Group Policy management, security and auditing issues and best practices for system recovery.

VSLive!
The New York event, to be colocated with TechMentor, will feature a moderated Q&A with Mary Jo Foley. The veteran IT journalist and blogger will discuss the topic of her just-published book "Microsoft 2.0: How Microsoft Plans to Stay Relevant in the Post-Gates Era."

Expert-led workshops will range from navigating Microsoft's Software plus Services landscape to discovering BizTalk Services.

Keynote details for the Las Vegas event, to be colocated with TechMentor,and for the Dallas event, scheduled for Dec. 7-10, were still being worked out at press time. Both conferences are expected to cover technologies such as Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008, Silverlight and more.