Fin de siècle

FinDeSiecleIt all started more than 10 years ago, on October 1st 2011. So much have happened since that day… I’m pretty sure a lot of these things were either direct or indirect result of that single event. E-mail from support@mvpaward.com not only made my day – it was a beginning of the crazy ride that ended this week. Ten years full of meeting interesting people, travelling the world, co-authoring, authoring, presenting. That day I became the first Polish PowerShell MVP and man – I was over the moon. Now that this part of my life is over (well, technically I can return next year, so lets say over for now), I though I would like to reflect on these 10 years and try to look a bit into the future.

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PSConfEU – lessons learned

Question - Ewa Bielawska, 3PowerShell Conference Europe was closed more than a month ago, but that time was filled with the content from that conference. For the first time you don’t need to remember where to find videos – it’s actually quite hard to forget it. Thanks to Tobias all videos from this PowerShell conference can be found under URL (surprise – surprise!) PowerShell.video Smile What is great about these videos from my point of view (a speaker that is not as experienced as many other presenters, with pretty wide margin for potential improvements) is the fact that most of the sessions where record with picture in picture technology – you can see both the screen shared by the speaker and the presenter in person. In other words: I can learn from example (by watching the best) and from my own mistakes.

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My PSConfEU wish-list

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PowerShell Conference Europe is just around the corner. Slides are ready, demos work as expected, repos are hot from pushed commits. Or something along these lines… Winking smile This year I’m going to join this great event again. With the same role as last year – as one of the people that will present about various topics. But presenting is only tiny part of the whole picture. After all – I’m free to join other sessions too! And with multiple tracks available to all attendees and speakers it’s not really an easy choice to make. I decided to blog about few sessions I’m planning to see, and few that I will miss… for reasons that are obvious to anybody who ever attended any conference in a role of a speaker.

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Back to Hannover!

Conference Slogan Blue_700x570Time flies when you are having fun! I’m am sure having fun these days. Another year started and so did preparations for PowerShell Conference EU. We are going to re-visit Hannover and I must say I’m already counting down days. Last year’s conference was a total blast. It all started with big BANG and even though later there were some small issues, it was awesome. The only problem organizers will face this year is to leave up to the expectations. And the bar is high, so it will not be easy to jump over it…

Same as last year I have sessions scheduled, but this year I have three of them.

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Expensive dot-sourcing

dot-sourcingToday a very short post about a concern that I would like to share. It all started at work, when our internal module went up to something like 12 seconds to load. And you my ask yourself: what is the big deal here? Well picture this:

Boss stands behind you and asks you: hey, do we have any JIRA tickets about this change you did last week? Can you find them for me?

Not expecting any issues, you type PowerShell command that should let you perform a quick JIRA search in CLI, proud of your own creation and simplicity of it. You type in the command name, a parameter that allows you to specify J<TAB>QL and… you wait…

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Back on stage – Experts Live

ExpertsLiveLogoIt’s been a while since I had an opportunity to stand in front of the audience and present about PowerShell. The last time I did was in May this year, when I took part in PowerShell Conference EU. Not long ago I did present for Polish audience, but that was a remote session. Main difference is obviously the fact, that presenting to people you see in front of you makes it more two-way communication than a one-way monologue that remote session usually end up being. And even though I got some awesome questions during this presentation, it’s also easier to interact with presenter/ audience when you still get to talk to each other after you are done presenting – some of the most interesting and involved questions are the questions asked after the session.

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PowerShell Conference EU 2016

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Last year I took part in PowerShell Community Konferenz that took place in Essen/ Ruhr and was total blast. The only issue I had with last year event was the fact that my German is… as good as my Dutch. So unless German session was full of demos and code – I was not able to follow it. Fortunately, most of the sessions were actually of the kind I could follow even if they were presented in languages I hadn’t heard in my life. I can read code, even if variables may seem obfuscated. Apart from that there was very nice line-up of people who presented in English, including super-stars of my PowerShell world like Aleksandar Nikolić or Bruce Payette.

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The only golf I play

x-defaultI’m a PowerShell geek. And I fancy one-liners (a lot). When I participated in the Scripting Games in 2011 I did try to solve any advanced problem with one-liner and once that was complete, I would start investing time in making it a proper function/module. That’s why whenever I see PowerShell golf contest popping up somewhere I’m always up for the game. I usually don’t win these but sole process involved in making something as short as possible (it also becomes cryptic, but that’s just a side effect) is well worth it.
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I can run, but I can’t hide…

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When I started my first real job in IT (almost 15 years ago) it felt a bit odd. At that time I was spending most of my time on Linux, yet my work required mainly Windows skills. My work colleague knew my background so I got task that supposed to be “gateway drug” to get me back on Windows side: updating backup script that was written in batch. Pure batch: I was not allowed  to install any of the *nix tool’s ports to aid me in this project. And there were few significant requirements, and new one arrived every now and than.

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OMI: revisited

Omaha

Initial plan was different, but it looks like next Tuesday (well, more like Wednesday in my time zone…) I’m going to present about OMI for the third time. This time I will present for Omaha PowerShell User Group. You can find meeting details (and sign up) here. I must say I’m super-excited. This group is relatively “fresh” (this will be their 2nd meeting). It’s lead by Jacob Benson and Boe Prox. And Boe is a person that I “know” for years. We never met in person, but he was one of few people I virtually known in my early PowerShell community days. That plus the fact that I learned a ton from his blog. No surprises, blog title says it all, right? Puszczam oczko

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