Business

Today I was fortunate enough to present at the Toronto VMUG. That’s two talks that I’ve given at the TO VMUG this year - not bad considering I only started ‘participating’ in the vCommunity earlier this year! As always, I see these opportunities not only as a way to give back to the community but also as a way to practice and develop my own skills. I am constantly trying to improve my public speaking - I have found that the key for me is to be able to turn my presentations into a conversation (admittedly it is a one-sided conversation). It still takes me a bit of time to ‘slip into’ that mode, but I’m definitely getting better at it. ...

Something that I think is often over looked when it comes to backups is security. I’m not referring to physical security (e.g. locking the media up in a vault), but rather making sure that the backups aren’t being abused. There are plenty of horror stories kicking around about folks who have their backups wiped out. This might be due to a malicious admin, bad hardware, or (more and more common) something like Cryptolocker. ...

I’ve been having some discussions within my organization as of late with regards to how IT can help the business outside of the traditional break/fix scenarios. In the past our IT has been involved with all sorts of non-typical projects including (but not limited to) installing communications gear on-site at jet fuel line install at a major airport, assisting in environment monitoring in a skyscraper, and being involved with a window replacement project (glass windows, not MS Windows). ...