Articles from December 2014 on PowerShell.org - Welcome Automaters!

NJ PowerShell Users Group Meeting: Presenter Doug Finke – Microsoft MVP

Tue, 30 Dec 2014 04:25:33 +0000

The NJ PowerShell User Group is having a meetup on Thursday, January 8th from 6:00 - 8:00 PM. If interested, please register through the Eventbrite website to track attendance for ordering pizza. For those attending online (Webex) we will send a follow-up email with the meeting link based on Eventbrite online registrants.Agenda: 6:00 – 6:30: Pizza and socializing 6:30 – 7:30: Presentation 7:30 - 8:00: Q & A

 Please note that the Webex meeting will start at 6:00 PM, but the actual presentation won't start until 6:30

In-Person attendees must register, print out their EventBrite ticket, and present it at the door. Walk-ins will not be permitted.

 **Presenter**: Doug Finke

**Bio: **Doug Finke, author of “PowerShell for Developers”, a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for PowerShell and works at Start-Automating, a company specializing in all aspects of PowerShell development, including consulting, training and tool building. Doug has been a developer and author working with numerous technologies. You can catch up with Doug at his blog Development in a Blink athttp://dougfinke.com/blog. Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Doug Finke takes us through PowerShell from a developer’s point of view. Doug shows techniques for integrating/debugging PowerShell from and to C# code as well as using PowerShell with a Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) application. He also addresses using reflection at the command line, object pipelining, and PowerShell’s REPL. Plus, time permitting, Doug will highlight some of the new features in the PowerShell v5 November Preview.Twitter:@DFinke

NJ PowerShell Meetup Coffee Bar and Conference room at Mathematica Policy Research

 ![Coffee Bar](https://cdn.evbuc.com/eventlogos/111855199/eventbritecoffeebar.png)

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PowerShell Summit N.A. 2015 Status Update & Info

Mon, 15 Dec 2014 20:01:34 +0000

As of this post, PowerShell Summit North America 2015 is full, and registration has been cut off. We’re taking some time to confirm our numbers and venue capacity; if we’re able to open additional seats, that will happen in January 2015. We will allow any additional capacity to be registered until one month prior to the Summit, or until it sells out, whichever comes first. We do not maintain a waiting list; please check here and on the @PSHSummit Twitter feed for any announcements.
For those already registered, we _do not have any official hotel recommendations. _You’re welcome to use the Summit Forum to see where others are staying, or to arrange for carpooling or other stuff. We certainly encourage all attendees to check the Forum for Q&A and other discussion - it’s never too early to start getting involved. On the hotel front, just look for hotels in downtown Charlotte, or near Microsoft Charlotte, based on your preferences. The reason there’s no official hotel is that there are numerous business-class hotels nearby, and after a close call last year we didn’t want to take the financial risk of booking out a room block.
Our intent at this time is to book the venue to fire code capacity, which is why we may be able to open additional slots after we confirm everything. That means _both venue rooms will be full at all times. _You will not be permitted to stand or sit in the aisles, back of the room, or block the doorways. If the session you hoped to attend is full, you’ll need to go to the other one. Keep in mind we’re recording everything, so you won’t miss out entirely.
The last sessions on all three days will only have a single session. We’ll position the speaker in one of the two rooms, and we’ll live-stream to the other room. This is where we plan to put Jeffrey Snover’s talks, both to accommodate what has historically been high interest in his sessions, and to accommodate his total inability to do a session in only 45 minutes :). If you don’t get a chair in the “live” room, you’ll need to join from the “overflow” room.
The two rooms are actually in different buildings, separated from each other by a driveway/courtyard arrangement. We’re suggesting that you not bring your ginormous 21" laptop, since it’ll just drag you down moving between sessions. Maybe stick with a Surface if you want to take notes and stuff. Although we’re recording everything, so… you know. Maybe just enjoy the session.
Lunches will be taken in the session rooms, with buffet setups in the hallways just outside each room.
Stay tuned for further details, and please use the Summit forum to ask questions.

JOB POSTING: Help us Run PowerShell.org

Mon, 08 Dec 2014 17:00:38 +0000

[UPDATE: We’ve gotten an outpouring of responses - I’m literally a bit teary-eyed right now - so I’ll work with the existing set of volunteers and post again should everyone realize what we’re asking and go running for the hills!]
We’re looking for a volunteer to take over regular maintenance of the PowerShell.org website. We may even have a small budget to make this a paid-contractor gig. Trick being, it’s gotta be done _regularly. _
The specifics:

Set up new user groups with pages (as needed)
Approve/Delete forums posts that are held for moderation (daily - this doesn’t happen often, though)
Moderate blog comments (daily)
Approve community-submitted calendar events (weekly)
Assist TechLetter team with setting up Forums topics for discussing upcoming TechLetter articles (monthly)
Identify Forums posts that have gone unanswered; raise awareness and recruit answers (often via Twitter) (at least weekly)

We’re not looking for this person to do actual WordPress maintenance at this stage. However, if you’re interested and do have WordPress experience, we could potentially tack that on. It wouldn’t be much more than approving WordPress and plugin updates on a scheduled basis, although we do have one PHP code hack that has to be maintained after core WordPress updates.
If you’re interested, please e-mail Admin right here at PowerShell.org. We’re hoping to have someone start in January. We’d obviously love a volunteer to step in and be our hero; if it goes well, we can divert some budget to making it a permanent gig. We know that sometimes the family finds it easier to have you donate your time if you’re getting a bit back in return. We’re planning to make a similar offer to other key positions, including our TechLetter Editors and TechSession Manager, in 2015 if we can.

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A Crowdsourced PowerShell Proficiency Exam

Thu, 04 Dec 2014 16:25:34 +0000

I wanted to call your attention to Smarterer, a company recently acquired by my employer, Pluralsight. Smarterer’s schtick (apart from vexing my auto-correct) is that the host crowdsourced technology assessments. In other words, the community decides what questions to ask someone in the test.
The magic is that their back-end engine, over time, figures out which questions are awesome and which ones suck, and adjusts the assessment accordingly. So as more people (especially qualified ones) take the test, the better it gets at identifying skilled people. It gives it a sort of built-in immunity against bad community-contributed questions, because those eventually filter out of the assessment that’s delivered to people. It’s pretty engaging, actually. I’ve had some fun taking some web development-oriented assessments, and surprised myself in a few places.
They’ve got a PowerShell assessment. Why not jump in, take it, and then add some questions of your own? Next time you need to interview someone for PowerShell chops, send ’em to Smarterer.