Day Two of #PSHSummit 2018 - Getting Smart
Posted on April 10, 2018 • 4 minutes • 712 words
No comments about the plumbing or anything today, having gotten over the initial shock. If you missed yesterday’s recap, please do check it out !
As a reminder, I’m doing these posts daily during the night after the days' sessions. These posts are being done using hand written notes and whatever memory I can spare so please do forgive any glaring errors!
Today’s mission was to get the office copy of Windows PowerShell TFM signed. Mission complete:
Be the Master
This was a side session, so there wasn’t any AV in the room and it was a more conversational type atmosphere. I’ve already read Be the Master , and have been keeping up on the additions coming in the second edition as well as testing out the “The Grind” workbook.
If you haven’t read it, grab a copy. It’s a good read (I finished it in one sitting .)
In short, the book is advocating for reintroducing the Master/Apprentice type relationships for passing on knowledge (specifically in IT, but really any industry could benefit.)
It also tries to instill the idea that you don’t need to be an expert in something to start teaching. There is something you know that someone else doesn’t. Someone taught you something for nothing and now you have an unpaid debt/obligation to pass something onto the next person, and so on.
I picked up a physical copy of the book while I was there too, sales going to ITWorks !
DSC vs. “The Others” - A Song of Configuration Management
Missy knows her some DSC, she wrote the book . This talk, however, explored Chef and Puppet then looked at how those offerings compared. It wasn’t the type of thing where at the end we were told “this is the product you should use!”
Rather, it was an exploration of the basics of each and the hurdles Missy faced when learning each of them.
There was a lot to unpack from this talk, but I walked away knowing that I’ll be looking into Puppet when I get home. It looks like it strikes a good balance between a fully featured product (which DSC is not) and being able to easily use DSC resources.
Connecting the Dots with PowerShell
I’ve heard about Neo4j before. I’ve seen Warren’s PSNeo4j module around and about. But it’d never really clicked for me what these actually were or what they were used for.
Warren demo’ed a Configuration Management Database, which did a great job of showing off Neo4j and graph databases in general.
This will be the first thing I look at when home. It looks like it could solve a very specific problem which has been no end of trouble. I’m really looking forward to diving into it!
Community Lightning Demos
These were awesome! Rapid fire, 5-10 minute demos with a bunch of people coming up on stage to show off what they’re working on. With Jeffrey Snover in the front row, no less!
Unfortunately, it didn’t come around to my turn. I had prepped a BurntToast demo, but as someone with a full session I was on an overflow list. It got close, to the point where I had my slides open and ready to run up if it got to me. Bummed, but if anyone is interested I may be persuaded to do it at lunch or whenever.
There ended up being sixteen speakers, and I made a lot of notes and took a bunch of pictures. I’m not going to go through all of them here though, it’s way too much typing!
I will quickly shout out Andrew (again).
He detailed his first OSS contribution on GitHub. Props for getting up there Andrew, and thanks for the shout out (I may have “gently prodded” him into getting onto GitHub)!
And Now to Practice
This post will be going live a lot earlier than yesterday’s one. But my night’s not over! I need to do a run through of my presentation before tomorrow. Fingers crossed: I’ve not tested my demos in this country, I’m not superstitious but… that’s not something I’m leaving to chance!
Also, remember that if you’re looking for PowerShell help , you can find it on Twitter using #PSHelp !
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