Speaking at Exchange Connections 2014

I’m excited to say that I’ll be presenting at Exchange Connections 2014, coming up this fall at the Aria in Las Vegas.

Tony posted the complete list of speakers and session titles a couple of days ago. I’m doing three sessions:

• “Who Wears the Pants In Your Datacenter: Taming Managed Availability”: an all-new session in which the phrase “you’re not the boss of me” will feature prominently. You might want to prepare by reading my Windows IT Pro article on MA, sort of to set the table.
• “Just Like Lemmings: Mass Migration to Office 365”: an all-new session that discusses the hows and whys of moving large volumes of mailbox and PST data into the service, using both Microsoft and third-party tools. (On the sometimes-contentious topic of public folder migration, I plead ignorance; see Sigi Jagott’s session if you want to know more). There is a big gap between theory and practice here and I plan to shine some light into it.
• “Deep Dive: Exchange 2013 and Lync 2013 Integration” covers the nuts and bolts of how to tie Lync and Exchange 2013 together. Frankly, if you saw me present on this topic at DellWorld, MEC, or Lync Conference, you don’t need to attend this iteration. However, every time I’ve presented it, the room has been packed to capacity, so there’s clearly still demand for the material!

Exchange Connections always has a more relaxed, intimate feeling about it than the bigger Microsoft-themed conferences. This is in part because it’s not a Microsoft event and in part because it is considerably smaller. As a speaker, I really enjoy the chance to engage more deeply with the attendees than is possible at mega-events. If you’re planning to be there, great— and, if not, you should change your plans!