Articles from December 2013 on PowerShell.org - Welcome Automaters!

State of the Org, ending 2013

Mon, 30 Dec 2013 19:24:37 +0000

I wanted to take a moment and wish everyone a very happy new year, and to do a sort of wrap-up of 2013 from PowerShell.org’s perspective.
We started 2013 with a bang, including our first-ever PowerShell Summit North America, held on-campus at Microsoft in Redmond. We’ll be returning to the Seattle area in April 2014 for PowerShell Summit North America 2014, and are planning the first PowerShell Summit Europe 2014 in Amsterdam in September. For the N.A. show, we need about 50 more Summit attendees to break even, and can accommodate about 100 more than we’ve currently got registered.
We ran a very successful Scripting Games that kicked off just as the Summit was ending. Thousands participated, tens of thousands of dollars in prizes were handed out, and most importantly the Games made the transition from being a much-loved child of the Microsoft Scripting Guys to being a community-owned event that can hopefully continue forever. We’ve got the first Winter Scripting Games in a loooong time starting in just a few days, in fact.
In the wake of The Scripting Games, we ran a summer-long series of Great Debates, and your comments on those informed the first-ever Community Book of PowerShell Practices, now offered as a free ebook.
PowerShell.org, Inc. closed its first fiscal year at the end of June 2013, and financially we lost just a bit of money. Don’t worry - that was always more or less the intent; we’re not running the corporation to make a buck, but rather to more-or-less break even. At the moment, we have $29,988.25 in our checking account, most of which is earmarked for Summit 2014 expenses.
We’re now providing hosting services for about 17 local and regional user groups, giving them a spot to post upcoming meeting dates, post-meeting file attachments, and other details. We’re hoping this helps raise awareness of the efforts they’re all making to have a strong local PowerShell support system in place.
2013 also saw the PowerScripting Podcast become a welcome part of PowerShell.org. Host Jon Walz also got his first MVP Award, a long-awaited and well-deserved honor that he now shares with co-host Hal Rottenberg. Everyone appreciates the hard work they do, and we at PowerShell.org wanted to make sure they had the resources to keep doing it (equipment ain’t free), so we offered to help out when they needed, and they graciously accepted. We’re delighted to be working with them.
PowerShell.org played an important role in developing Microsoft’s official entry-level PowerShell training, course 10961, by giving the authors (e.g., me) a place to survey folks about topic, level of coverage, and more, and to solicit feedback on the “A” and “B” revs while updating the course for PowerShell v4. This site (and all of you) also played an important role in selecting topics for the advanced-level training, course 10962, which will be developed in 2014. Finally, you all helped provide feedback for Microsoft Courseware Marketplace course 55039, which covers PowerShell scripting and toolmaking. When you see a survey posted here, jump in - it makes a very real difference in some very important projects!
2013 was also the year we Moved to Azure, spinning up an Azure-hosted CentOS VM that’s now running the site. It’s gotten faster, is a bit easier to maintain, and is a heck of a lot more highly available thanks to Microsoft’s cloud hosting.
I’m extremely proud to have had so many folks jump in and help out this year. Dave Wyatt, Matt Penny, Matt Johnson, Mike Shepard, and Nicholas Getchell have all taken on curator roles for the free ebooks we offer on PowerShell.org. They’re doing a wonderful job in making sure those titles stay updated - so much so, that we’re now just linking to the books’ GitHub repository, where you can download the DOC files directly. Dave Wyatt has also been posting some incredibly detailed and informative blog posts that I hope you’re reading - I really appreciate his contributions here. I also want to thank Matt Tilford, Chris Hunt, and Mark Keisling, who have taken on editorial duties for the TechLetter newsletter. Our aim is to put out a solid, informative, technically deep monthly offering and these guys are absolutely on the job. I hope you’re subscribed, because if you aren’t, you’re missing out. Finally, MVP Steven Murawski has made PowerShell.org his home for Desired State Configuration (DSC) blogs and code, and he’s been prolific. His employer, StackExchange, has been an early adopter of the DSC technology, and Steven’s been sharing pretty much everything he’s learned.
We’ve had some transitions in 2013. Board member and co-founder Kirk Munro has had to step away from day-to-day duties with PowerShell.org, although he remains a member of the board. Board member Jason Helmick has stepped into a second-in-command position, and is more or less running the North America Summit from an operational perspective. Jason earned his first MVP Award this year, giving us an all-MVP Board that also includes myself, Jeffery Hicks, and Richard Siddaway.
I’m extremely proud of everything we’ve accomplished. I’m delighted that so many folks are jumping into the forums and offering answers to questions - it’s a massive relief on my own workload, and there are some damn smart folks offering their help to the community for free. In fact, we plan to recognize some of them in our first-ever PowerShell Heroes award, scheduled for January 2014. We’re also going to make good on a promise I made when we started this site: our above-and-beyond contributors are going to become part-owners of this community with an award of stock in PowerShell.org, Inc. That’ll give them some concrete control over the community they’re helping to build. Look for that mid-2014, when we near the end of our fiscal year.
For 2014, I’d like to thank our returning sponsors, SAPIEN Technologies and Interface Technical Training. These folks give a lot, financially, to help make this site work. Please show them your appreciation in every way you can. In 2014, my company, Concentrated Tech, is also coming aboard as a sponsor, and I’ll be offering my first-ever public PowerShell training.
I think 2014 should be a great year, both for PowerShell.org and for the broader PowerShell community that we’re trying to serve. If you’re new here, or you’ve just been lurking, please jump in and help. Write an article about something you learned, answer a question in the forums, or volunteer to help out. We’re all in this together, and the stronger a community we all make _together, _the more we’ll be able to support each other when needs arise.
I look forward to serving you in 2014!
Don Jones
President and CEO

Introducing the Judges for Winter 2014 Scripting Games

Sat, 28 Dec 2013 15:50:47 +0000

In the last few years there has been a long list of people judging the Scripting Games. Those people were expected to view as many entries as possible, preferably all, and score the entries as well as providing feedback on the individual entries. That is a ton of work especially when you consider that the judges were all volunteers.
This time round we’re attempting to spread the load somewhat. Mike Robbins has done a superb job recruiting coaches for the Its their job to look at the entries and make suggestions and hints to the teams - if the teams wish to take advantage of this option. Looking at the list of coaches - I know I would take advantage of their assistance if I was competing.
That leaves judging. This time we’re using a small group of judges. We have prepared scoring criteria for the events with some additional style points available to the judges. This will make MOST of the scoring objective but we’ve a bit of subjectivity available for individual judges to pick out, and hopefully comment on, things they like or don’t like.
The judges are all very experienced PowerShell practitioners with more books written, talks given, blog posts created and classes taught between them than anyone would want to count. In alphabetical order your judges for the Winter 2014 Scripting Games are:
Don Jones - founder and CEO of powershell.org. Author of several PowerShell books including the highly recommended Learn PowerShell v3 in a Month of Lunches and co-author of PowerShell in Depth. Don is a PowerShell MVP, PowerShell educator, columnist and course creator.
Jason Helmick - Board member of powershell.org. A PowerShell MVP and author of Learn IIS in a Month of Lunches which includes lots of PowerShell. Jason also delivered the recent two-part Introducing PowerShell MVA sessions with Jeffrey Snover. PowerShell educator, columnist and speaker.
Jeffery Hicks - Board member of powershell.org. PowerShell MVP. Co-author of PowerShell in Depth, lead editor of PowerShell Deep Dives and author of other PowerShell books. Jeffrey is also a PowerShell columnist and educator
Ed Wilson - The Scripting Guy. Ed runs the Hey! Scripting Guy Author of several PowerShell books including Windows PowerShell Best Practices and Windows PowerShell Scripting Guide. Ed also delivers PowerShell classes and is a much in demand speaker.
The list of judges is completed by
Richard Siddaway - Board member of powershell.org. PowerShell MVP. Co-author of PowerShell in Depth and author of PowerShell in Practice and PowerShell and WMI. Frequent blogger on PowerShell related topics.
Between them the judges have accumulated over 30 years of PowerShell experience that is focussed on judging the Games. They are all looking forward to the Games and hope to see your entries.

January Charlotte PowerShell User Group Meeting

Fri, 27 Dec 2013 14:15:39 +0000

Our monthly meeting will be held on January 2nd, 2014. This years Scripting Games is a team based event. What better place to find/join a team than a User Group meeting? We look forward to seeing you there.

Here is some additional information about the Winter Scripting Games:

Articles from December 2013 on PowerShell.org - Welcome Automaters!

State of the Org, ending 2013

Introducing the Judges for Winter 2014 Scripting Games

January Charlotte PowerShell User Group Meeting

Teams can consist of between 2 to 6 Scripters and official registration opens on Jan 2nd.

Introducing the Coaches of the 2014 Winter Scripting Games

My outline for accelerated PowerShell training

Coaches and Judges Selected for Winter Scripting Games

How "Quick and Dirty" Becomes "Permanent and Annoying."

Charlotte Powershell User Group Holiday-themed Scripting Games

PhillyPoSH 12/05/2013 meeting summary and presentation materials

Scheduled site downtime