Macedonian ITPro User Group Meeting (January 2021)

As planned, we kicked of 2021 with user group meeting. As planned for last week, with Gorana, Vlatko and Vladimir , this session was about Microsoft 365. 

The session was presented by Gorana and Vladimir, and the topic was "Security best practices in Microsoft Teams" (an session they did on Modern Workplace Conference Paris 2021). 

It was an overview of Microsoft 365 security, with specifics on Microsoft Teams Admin Center, Policies, Security and Compliance.

Macedonian ITPro User Group Meeting (December 2020)

Last week we had our monthly meeting, which seems it will be the last one for 2020. We did a short overview of the activates so far, and shared some of the plans for 2021. I have co-hosted the event with Gorana, Vlatko and Vladimir (the usual suspects) 😃😃😃

Our guest speaker was Marjan Stamatovski, Trainer and Consultant in Glasspaper (Norway). He did a session titled "Threat hunting with Azure Sentinel". 

After the short overview of the technology behind the service and its capabilities, and then jumped in the demonstration of Sentinel and what it can do for SecOps.

We also had a surprise guest, Mr. Scott Schnoll popped in on our session. 😃😃😃

His visit was short, after all the session was in Macedonian Language.

Macedonian IT Pro User Group Meeting (October 2020)

We have been running our community meetings via Teams, for a while. The current conditions, this s our safest tool to hold regular monthly meetings and hang out. this months meeting of the MK IT Pro User Group was providing a glimpse on Microsot Ignite 2020. 

 The unfortunate things is, that we only had 90 minutes to do it. :) My fellow MVP Gorana Konevska-Jankoska, co-hosted the event with me, and Vladimir Meloski and Vlatko Ivanovski were moderating the sessions.

We talked about all the good stuff from Microsoft 365, Microsot Teams, Azure, and Security. We had some cool discussion, and laughs with the attendees

Copy of the presentation can be found HERE.

Macedonian IT Pro User Group Meeting (May 2020)

We finished our third virtual IT Pro user group meeting. With the help of Microsoft Teams, we managed to gather 30 people, in late afternoon session.

Host support provided by Vladimir Meloski, Gorana Konevska-Jankoska, Vlatko Ivanosvki, and myself.

We had a guest speaker from Croatia - Nenad Trajkovski who did a session named "Typical pitfalls and traps in IT Project Management". Fantastic session, based on Nenad's life experience, combined with real life examples.

The session gathered fantastic response from the audience, as well as high marks. Looking forward on hosting our next endeavor in June.

Macedonian ITPro User Group Meeting (March 2020)

We finished our first virtual IT Pro user group meeting. Thanks to our friends at Microsoft Teams, we managed to maintain the attention of 30 people, for 2 hours. :)

We combined the session, with different aspect of technology and experiences from 4 MVP's - Vladimir Meloski who spoke about Cloud Security in Business Productivity environment; Gorana Konevska-Jankoska spoke about Microsoft Teams; Vlatko Ivanosvki spoke about DevOps in #WFH mode.

I spoke about Cloud Adoption Framework for Azure, in light of the #WFH model, and how to achieve quick wins by expanding infrastructure and services to the Azure these days. In addition to that, I hosted the session this time.

We gathered valuable feedback, had a quality discussion. Waiting for our next endeavor! :)


Link to the slides  can be found here.

Security preview of Microsoft 365 Enterprise

I did an Microsoft 365 Security overview session, combined with demos and quite extensive discussion, with group of IT Pros that work in Public Safety and Judicial Sector. (They are not keen on taking pictures of them, even in compliance with GDPR:))

We did a extensive overview of Microsoft 365 Security features, in four segments - Compliance, Secure Access and Identity, AI and Automation, and Security Operations Center (SOC). Spiced things up with some demos on Compliance Manager, Data Retention and Protection Policies,  Azure AD, Conditional Access, MFA, and Security Center and Sentinel.

I personally liked the Q&A and discussion session we had during the day, it gave u the opportunity to go beyond the slides and demos, and discuss some real life issues they are facing, and how cloud tech can support their efforts.

The presentation can be downloaded on the following link

Workshop: Azure Expert Training (Feb 3-4, Gothenburg, Sweden)

Another session on Microsoft Azure, this time for our Swedish partners. It was a 2 day workshop organized by Ingram Micro Sweden. The group was compiled of experienced IT Pros. Primary focus of the training is on Infrastructure-as-a-Service model, with demos and hands on labs focusing on predefined scenarios in operating, planning, creating and configuring the IaaS environment.

Day 1 was focused on Azure Fundamentals: Welcome and introduction, Azure Portal, Resource Groups, Storage Accounts, Virtual networks and Network Interfaces (incl PIP, VPN, Gateways and Peering), Network Security Groups, Virtual Machines, VM Extensions, Scale and Availability Sets, Load Balancer, Traffic Manager. 

Day 2, after the wrap up of Day 1 and discussion, we jump started with Frank Smits session on the Cloud Adoption and the 4R's that are important for Ingram Micro Partners. The rest of the day was reserved for EasyAzure Blueprints - WordPress Multi-tier app, Acronis Backup Blueprints Remote Desktop Services (Small Business Server Replacement) and CheckPoint Blueprints. We spiced up things with short presentation on what's new in Microsoft azure or what's coming in near future, as well as Azure Calculator session.

KUDOS to Tony Arlestal for organizing this and inviting me for the workshop. Had quite a few discussion on solution designs, real world problems, and did quite a brainstorming with the group. 

 

MK IT Pro User Group meeting – November 2019

Oh yeah, we finally managed to gather the troops together. After running around, like busy bees, watching "million" hours of great and high quality material from Ignite 2019, the short wrap up was prepped and ready for presentation.

The usual suspects involved, Gorana and Vladimir, and me-self :) we got together on a cloudy afternoon, to discuss what's new in Microsoft Cloud. :)

We did a overview of major announcements, referred to great session from Microsoft Ignite, on topics of Azure and Microsoft/Office 365. While Gorana maintained focus on Microsoft Teams, I was concentrating on news around Azure, with focus on the Satya Nadella keynote, most of the infrastructure and security announcements.

Well, did not manage to cover all the topics/news/announcements of course, but still it was a fun journey. :)

Till the next time, December 2019, to wrap up the year.

Cloud Solution Provider Disti Bootcamp (Microsoft and Ingram Micro, June 25th- June 26th)

With cooperation of the local office of Microsoft, we held 2 separate events for our Kosovo and North Macedonia Partners.

The first event, was held at the Kosovo Innovation Center (ICK) on June 25th, and the second one, in North Macedonia, at Ingram Micro Offices, on June 26th.

Topics discussed were the changes in Microsoft Partner Program, held by my colleague Marija Gjorgjievska, with emphasis on migrating to the new Partner Center and how to become an Indirect CSP Re-seller.

On both events, I did a session/overview on Microsoft Cloud Services - what's new and what's going on. Emphasis was on Managed Solution Provider model, achieving transformation and growth by adopting the cloud economy model, end of life of Windows server 2008/ SQL Server 2008 and Microsoft 365.

Link's to the presentations can be found here - both for Kosovo and North Macedonia Event.

Global DevOps boot camp (#GDBC) (June 15th)

Just as last year, in cooperation with the local Microsoft .NET Community group, we have organized the Global DevOps Boot camp 2019 event. Kudos to Vlatko Ivanovski, who was driving the process.




A group of 40 enthusiast gathered on Saturday, to take part of this years challenge. this years "theme" was "You Build It, You Run It" (https://globaldevopsbootcamp.com/). 




People behind the event, introduced new concept this year, evolving around the 3 important phases of DevOps projects:

• Detect. Get insights into how your system behaves to make you and your users aware of any anomalies.
• Respond. Connect with your users to make sure users are aware of the issue.
• Recover. Action remediation to get your system back into operation.

The bootcamps will kick-off with an exclusive keynote from Niall Murphy (Director of Engineering for Azure Cloud Services and Site Reliability Engineering), followed by a local keynote - by Vlatko Ivanovski - which will go deeper on the challenges you’ll face during the day, and then get stuck in to the challenges in the hackathon.

It was a fun day with activites, challenges, bunch of people that dug in into the problems at hand. Can't wait for nest year

Microsoft & Cisco Event (March 12th, Tirana, Albania)

As part of our activities in the region, we held a mini conference on March 12th in Tirana. this was a joint Ingram Micro, Microsoft and Cisco event, focused on networking, security and interconnectivity.

 I did a presentation on Microsoft Azure Network and its capabilities, ability to either running workloads in the cloud or enabling hybrid connectivity between the on-prem and cloud datacenters.

Copy of the presentation can be found here