The first day is over, and I truly enjoyed and never regretted that I registered for the Microsoft Management Summit 2009. I started the day by registering at the registration office where they gave me a nice bag and a large badge that has my name, company name and the country I’m visiting from!

I then went straight ahead to the Self-Paced Labs area because I couldn’t resist seeing all those computers arranged for the attendees to practice products or to explore or have hands on new products. I took a lab about installation of Operation Manager 2007 (Level 300) this lab was very useful because you know how to install all the components of Operation Manager starting from OpsMgr ’07, OpsMgr Reporting Services and OpsMgr Audit Collection Services; the lab time however was 50 minutes.

 Now if you notice from the above picture I was in area D, and the labs offered in area D are different than the labs and technologies offered in area C, or B see below for instance are the labs offered where I was setting, every attendee gets a computer with two monitors, a monitor for the VMs and another one for the lab documents.

 Then I moved to another floor where the breakout sessions are held, allover the place there are computers for the CommNet; where you enter your MMS username and password to check where is your next session located and what are the sessions that you have already booked a seat it! but because I’m a newbie at the MMS, I actually built my schedule a bit late because I thought that it is okay to attend any session you would like to at any time, but this was a mistake because sessions are actually have limited seats. However there is a long waiting list line in case you decided to attend a session that’s over booked.

The first session I attended was about Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V) which was a very interesting session.

The second session was named “A Freshman Orientation” and it is made for MMS new comers to learn you tips and tricks about it, it was really helpful and I benefit a lot from it. For instance, they gave us for major keys to benefit the most from the MMS, the first one was to ‘Connect’. The speaker emphasizes a lot about the value of connecting with other attendees; I actually tried it at any place, between sessions, at food tables and anywhere, and it is really a good technique.

The third one was about planning for Hyper-V Virtualization and server OS migration projects with Microsoft Assessment and Planning Tool 3.2. The session was thrown by Mr. Jay Sauls who’s a senior Program Manager in Microsoft, I happen to have a chat with him after the session, and I asked him the question that I always had debates about with my colleagues and co-worker, that’s if you need MAP when you have OpsMgr & ConfigMgr in an environment or any infrastructure management solutions? Well he emphasis that’s it is not necessary to have MAP installed in such cases especially that you can customize reports in ConfigMgr 2007; and he mentioned that it is also used when you are visiting an alien environment that you don’t know about –and even you customer- doesn’t know about his environment!

I briefed Jay very quickly about our community (VirManSec) and he offered to have a live meeting with us sometime to discuss further about MAP.

The fourth one was about extending and customizing System Center Service Manager, which I actually didn’t complete to the end because it was a level 400 session and I’m truly still learning Service Manager, however I skipped and found an available seat at the Configuring Desired Configuration Management if Configuration Manager 2007. It was very helpful.

The fifth and last session of the day was about “Zero Touch Installation using Microsoft Deployment Tool 2010 & System Center Configuration Manager 2007” we’ve seen in this session the new powerful features of MDT 2010 and the new USMT 4.0

After the sessions were over, the Expo was opened. Where all the sponsors and associated companies has booths in the area of the Expo, in there I really had the pleasure of meeting people I know but never saw. I met the famous Rod Trent he was one of the first people who announced VirManSec globally at his blog on MyITForum.

http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/rtrent/archive/2009/02/09/home-virmansec-community.aspx 

 and here is a picture of me and Rod

I also met the famous Wally Mead (MSFT) if you see any webcasts on the internet for ConfigMgr 2007 alright it was made by Wally mead!! A very nice guy and I had the chance to talk with him about localizing ConfigMgr 2007 (arabization) and he explained to me that this should be discussed also thoroughly with marketing team because it really costs a lot for products to be localized.

I-then- met my fellow MVP and friend Mr. Ed Aldrich who have lived in Saudi Arabia back in the 80s and he greeted me in Arabic (asalamo Alykom). I also had the chance to meet some of the fellow MVP.

Now within the Expo Area I couldn’t help it but to wish that Essam Hamdan and Fadi Alnaaji were with me, because HP was throwing a game about who scores more in the “Guitar Heroes” game, and these two maniac guys are really guitar heroes!! And I thought that if they were with us they would go home with the free X-Box.

And I also saw the AdminStudio booth and I told them that their product is really popular from where I come from. (you know the product that converts EXE to MSI files)

And here is a photo of my ‘Halal’ food, because when you register at the summit they ask you about the kind of food you want to eat, however this Halal food was so chilly, and I understood that they thought that Halal was an Indian word! 

This concludes my first day; now let me go check out the ‘Real’ Las Vegas.