@scottalanmiller said:
If you want to learn CRM basics and not a specific system, SugarCRM is very popular and is free and open source. You can install it on a Linux VM quite easily. Or you can install it to a system like A Small Orange with a single click. Getting access to a common CRM to play with it would be pretty easy. Then you can say that you have deployed it as well.
Azure has an out of the box SugarCRM in the Web App gallery 
The 5K at SW was probably one my favorite social, "on the side", parts of the conference (aside from the BBQ on the SCALE boat - f*%#, that was good BBQ lol). I met a few other people I hadn't met before and connected. I even got lost and did 2 extra miles with one of them! lol.
Anyway, yeah the dichotomy thing is at epidemic levels at SpiceWorld now. I've been to 4 of them over the past 5 years (missed one for my wedding in 2013), and I still sometimes feel like an "outsider", and that can be rough. I always try as hard as I can to get involved and such, but it can be hard for me at times (e.g. not knowing what to talk about, not knowing what to bring up, is what I'm saying stupid to the other person, am I not talking enough, etc...). For example - I've met Grey and spoken to him no less than 8-9 times and each time, he has no idea who I am. Same goes for people like Bob Beatty, Phil Moya, etc... It doesn't make them bad people - far from it, I think they are awesome. It just makes me second guess myself, like, what am I doing wrong that these people I've met and spoken to on multiple occasions don't remember me worth a damn? lol
Some people are just more socially engaged than others and you'll never get away from that in IT I think. I work with 50 devs as my users and 99% of them are completely socially awkward or SUPER introverted. It's just the way they are. IT folks aren't like that, usually, but there are some that tend to be.
@scottalanmiller said:
You are going to have to change your persona name everywhere now too! Something like "fomer-avi-networkguy".
Ugh, I know! That's probably the worst part lol.
@Minion-Queen said:
Yeah some people are bad with faces just like I am with names though.
I suppose, but I've had long, substantial, (and usually sober) conversations with some of these people on multiple occasions. I know not remembering me isn't intentional - these are all good people. I'm just saying that I second guess MYSELF asking what can I do differently other than set myself on fire to make myself more "rememberable" lol. 
I'll still be consulting for them, so maybe I can get away with it for a while longer
@Minion-Queen said:
That's where you went to the last night!
Ha yes! Back up to my room, I spoke to my wife for the first time all day and I was laying on my bed, said goodbye to her and then I said goodnight to the world lol.
I've struggled with this decision a lot lately, especially after your OBR10 posts in the past, so this article is awesome. Thanks Scott!
Glad to see you on here, @Chris !!!
I basically echo everyone else's sentiments here. The only swag I've ever found useful were USB sticks (of a USABLE size >8 GB), maybe pens, portable rechargers, and higher quality t-shirts (for example, the Adtran shirt at SW this year was of excellent quality I thought). At the end of every SW I've been to, most of it goes in the garbage (which is a shame on many levels).
@JaredBusch said:
@Ambarishrh said:
Useful. Wish mine support more memory. But biggest thing I need to do is replace the original HDD with an SSD.
We just put an SSD into an almost dead MacBook Pro from 2011 - it is a NEW machine and is totally useful again. We bumped the memory to max, put the SSD in, and replaced the battery. Incredible, the value that an SSD can add.
@scottalanmiller said:
In many cases I actually feel like people are shoving garbage into my hands as I walk around. I never ask for it, people insist that I take it. It is the rare exception that I am like "oh, can I have one of those?"
Like a giant block of Limburger cheese?
In case any of you like to maintain a local package of the latest Office build, they released the 2016 Deployment Tool for C2R configs.. Here you go! (less Googling for you lol)
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=49117&WT
I'm on my phone so I'm keeping this short until tomorrow morning, but I would love to have a session on a PKI deep dive. I think a lot of smaller shops (mine included) could benefit from this. Like it isn't something only for big companies. Simple two tier infrastructure could work for most applications at our size quite nicely. Just a first idea.;-)
Also found out a TINY bit more - there are routing issues with Time Warner and Verizon. No more details given but I'm still searching.
@scottalanmiller said:
- Python is heavily used in both software engineering as well as IT so it is very flexible as a career building language.
#truth - This was a big deal for Google when I was going for a Windows Sys Admin position with them.
@Dashrender said:
I love this! and this brought along another idea - how to setup enterprise WiFi (Windows centric), deployed via GPO using RADIUS, etc.
Even better! Maybe set up a track for this - like one session would be setting up the PKI and another follow-up session showing how to put it to good use in smaller environments.