Bletchley Park

Back in November I had the privilege to spend two days at Bletchley Park, the home of the legendary WWII code breakers and the National Museum of Computing, along with a number of the UK-based Microsoft MVPs. It's a place that I've personally wanted to visit for a number of years because my grandfather's wartime role was at a Wireless Intercept 'Y Station' that was listening in on Axis communications to be decrypted by the Government Code and Cipher School at Bletchley Park (the forerunner to GCHQ).

The two days were filled with presentations from Microsoft staff and MVPs in the ballroom, a team code breaking exercise around the grounds and huts, and a tour of the Museum. The modern content in the presentations was very interesting, but it was the history on display that was the star of the show. This is where many significant developments took place in the early days of computing, as well as work that has been credited with shortening the war and contributing greatly to Allied victory. The history is alive at Bletchley Park and there was a palpable energy in Hut 8, where Alan Turing and his team worked on the German naval Enigma codes.

The after dinner speaker at the end of day 1 was the Director of the National Museum of Computing, Dr David Hartley. He gave an excellent brief history of the pioneering computing done at Bletchley and across the UK, including Tommy Flowers' work and the Harwell Dekatron (aka WITCH); the oldest working stored-program computer in the world, which was recently restored to working order.

I have to say that visiting the National Museum of Computing with a group of people who were equally interested in computing history was a real pleasure. It's quite fantastic seeing the replica Colossus and Bombe machines, and the restored Dekatron, not only in the flesh, but in action! As well as these and many other large machines on display, the museum has an excellent selection of microcomputers (including a room of BBC Model B machines that can be used), peripherals, mobiles, software, books and magazines. I found some books that I used to own and some copies of the Let's Compute magazine that I had a subscription to as a boy. If you've been around computers for a long time, then you're going to find a bunch of things that bring back memories you'd forgotten you had. It's awesome. :-) 

If you're ever in the vicinity of Milton Keynes, I urge you to visit, enjoy and support this fascinating and important site. The Museum isn't fully open every day, so check the website when you plan your visit: www.tnmoc.org & www.bletchleypark.org.uk. You should take a guided tour of the museum and then browse in your own time - the staff are both knowledgeable and enthusiastic and really add to the experience.

If you're interested in finding out more about the wartime work carried out at Bletchley Park, I can highly recommend Sinclair McKay's "The Secret Life of Bletchley Park: The History of the Wartime Codebreaking Centre by the Men and Women Who Were There", which is available in paperback and on Kindle. I'm currently reading the follow-up to that book on my Kindle: "The Secret Listeners: How the Wartime Y Service Intercepted the Secret German Codes for Bletchley Park"

TheTekTonic Show

Last Sunday there was a seismic shift when my good friend Ben Lee and I recorded the zero-th episode of our new podcast, TheTekTonic Show. The idea is that it'll be a semi-regular dose of tech chat, not covering the news as such, but more to do with trends. Since both of us are IT Pros working largely in the Microsoft stack, you can expect a bias towards discussion of Microsoft products and corporate IT, but we're generally interested in all technology, and with all the BYOD, corporate IT and consumer tech are crossing over.

Our plan is to have guests on most episodes and we're putting together a diverse list of interesting people from across the industry for future recordings. We've also got to get an mp3 version and RSS feed sorted out, but for now, here's the recording of episode 0, where we discuss Microsoft's new update strategy and Blackberry's comeback. Please comment and give feedback, and if you think you'd like to be on the show in the future, let us know.

Microsoft Server & Cloud ICAB

If you're a dedicated IT professional or software developer working with Microsoft's server products, like Windows Server, Microsoft System Center and Microsoft Forefront then you may want to think about putting yourself forward as a member of the Server and Cloud International Customer Advisory Board (ICAB). I'm a member and I know a number of other very bright people who are contributing, so it's looking like a group that can provide Microsoft with some really good feedback and recommendations.

Here's the skinny in Microsoft's words:

We’re looking for developers and IT pros who use Windows Server and/or System Center to join the Microsoft Server & Cloud iX International Customer Advisory Board (ICAB). The ICAB is an invitation-only community of customers who advise Microsoft on improvements we can make to our product guidance. We ask our ICAB members to fill out two surveys a year and, from time to time, to weigh in on innovations in product guidance (like the articles on MSDN and TechNet). In return, we offer invitations to exclusive conference calls to discuss innovations coming out of our team, a private community board where you can network and discuss technology issues, and invitations to exclusive events at conferences like Tech Ed, the MVP Summit, and Management Summit. For more information, see http://msicab.com. If you are interested in joining the ICAB, email ICABNom@microsoft.com –and thanks very much. We look forward to hearing your thoughts on our products and guidance. 

23rd September, Newcastle: Three fantastic Microsoft enterprise IT presentations

We are very pleased to be able to announce a stellar line up of technical presentations and speakers from Microsoft at the September VBUG Newcastle IT Pro meeting...

The Dynamic Desktop Experience – Windows 7, Windows XP Mode, App-V, MDT, MDOP and System Center (Dan Oliver)

Windows 7 offers Microsoft’s customers with an opportunity to deliver a platform that releases new capabilities that deliver real business benefit and significantly reduced cost of ownership. The challenge for most companies is that deploying and migrating desktops is time consuming and traditionally offers service continuity risks with Application Compatibility that can prevent progress. This presentation will show capabilities, architectures and strategies that allow companies to move forward cost effectively to the benefits of a modern operating system. Level: 100

Dan Oliver is a Pre Sales Architect within Microsoft UK’s Speciality Technology Unit with some 14 years’ experience of Microsoft-based solutions primarily in the virtualization and systems management fields. Dan has a background that covers a broad spectrum of industry sectors ranging from Financial, Telecoms, Partners, Legal, Professional Services and Healthcare. Dan has also had the opportunity to work as a Chief Technology Officer for the Faculty of Advocates in the Scottish Legal Sector.

Novell and Lotus Notes – Migrating to Microsoft (Conrad Sidey)

The business value of implementing Microsoft technologies like Active Directory, Exchange 2007 and SharePoint are clearly understood within Microsoft. For our customers that are still running their organisation on technologies like Novell and Lotus Notes they are starting to gain an understanding of the value of migrating to Microsoft technologies. The purpose behind this presentation is to provide the technical community with an insight into leading a project and architecting a solution to migrate environment that are running both Novell Netware and Lotus Notes. The presentation will discuss envisioning & planning of a Novell and Notes migration project, approaches to undertaking the migration depending upon the business drivers, providing an overview of the approach we are taking in migrating a UK Local City Council while providing coexistence, as well as presenting a number of migration & coexistence recommendations or lessons learnt from the project. Level: 200

Conrad Sidey is a Solution Architect within Microsoft Consulting Services with some 17 years’ experience of Microsoft-based solutions primarily in the infrastructure field. Conrad has a background that covers a broad spectrum of industry sectors ranging from Financial and Insurance, Manufacturing, Aero-Engineering, Defence, UK and European Government Agencies, Power Generators, Retail and Brewing. Conrad has also had the opportunity to work with large scale outsourcing services providers.

Implementing the “Black Box” – Performance Monitoring and Analysis for proactive and reactive support, server baselining and capacity planning (Richard Diver)

All current versions of Windows come with a free tool that can prevent server downtime and solve many mysteries – Perfmon!

A little bit of practice with this tool can really help to solve issues with servers that may not even be performance related. Working at the OS level, you can find cause to most performance bottlenecks regardless of server function (Exchange, DC, Web etc).

This is something that has even more focus in future versions of Windows; a brief overview of these benefits will be shown also! Level: 300

Richard Diver is a Premier Field Engineer with 10 years experience implementing and supporting a range of Microsoft technologies, specialising in Active Directory, Server Platform and Virtualisation.

Wrap up Q&A with all presenters at the end.

Location: Room 118, Claremont Tower, Newcastle University, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, NE1 7RU, GB

Time: 18:45

Price: FREE

Please register for your place at the VBUG site so we can make sure we have enough space and refreshments. :-)

Postscript: Key Features in Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 event

Last Wednesday we had a great evening covering some of the great enterprise features of Microsoft's upcoming OSs. In a last minute speaker change Richard Fennell did a great presentation that was very well received by an enthusiastic audience (it seems over half the crowd are running Windows 7 RC as their main OS right now, and all of the others had at least tried it!).

We're hoping to record future presentations, but unfortunately couldn't make it happen on this occasion. You can see the slide deck though.

We're going to take a break in August, so there won't be a VBUG Newcastle event next month, we are going to be working on putting together a great set of events for developers and IT pros from September onwards. Keep checking here and Andrew Westgarth's blog for details.