2007 Meetings

For our November meeting we had a special treat, my friend, the father of the SBS2k Yahoo Group and one of the original SBS-MVP's Grey Lancaster did a live demo of the best thing to come from Microsoft since SBS itself, Windows Home Server. Everyone had a great time and I overheard quite a few folks planning thier WHS rollouts after Grey's presentation.

At Our October Meeting

For our October meeting which was lead by our Co-Leader Scott Harvey of RTP South, we had our very own Kay Tatum of Performance Dimensions, Inc. presenting on working with the new Office 2007, and how to get past the where did my tools go shock, and become productive. Kay has been working with Office 2007 since early in the beta, she participated in the Office 2007 Launch, and she knows the new Office better than anyone I know. I was sorry to miss it but I had to go directly from SMB Nation 2007 to Silicon Valley to install a new Intel S5000Pal based server.

In September we had a marketing guru coming in to give us a marketing 101 on what works, what doesn't and a high level what can we expect. Sara MacSween has been doing marketing for larger companies for a good number of years now and has decided to open up her own business, The Marketing Boutique. So not only can we pick up some tips on how to let the world know about our offerings, if you are interested in outsourcing your marketing, you can get in on the ground floor with a brand new outfit.

Speaking of SMB Nation, as of this writing they have sold over 400 seats and you still have a few days left to get the early bird discount.

We did not have a formal presentation in August, we started out to just have a round table of whatever ails ya, but the discussion went into WSUS early on and Chris Donaldson of Simple Network Solutions walked us through the ins and out of doing a hierarchal install of WSUS,

At Our is May Meeting

Well as promised at the April Charlotte SBS Meeting and Mobilize SMB Workshop; I will be doing a live demo of Storage Craft's Shadow Protect 3.0 IT Edition, I will be demonstrating the HIR (hardware independent restore) function taking an image of an SBS Server with CRM off a single processor desktop and restoring it to a dual Xeon server. Yes I have practiced it a bit and I have been able to do the complete backup and restore in a little over an hour. What you don't think it can be done, come to our meeting and see for yourself!

btw, I will be at the SBS Migration Small Business Disaster Planning Conference Memorial Weekend, I hope to see you there as well, I am sure you have heard that when Jeff throws a party, it is a must attend event :>) Oh I almost forgot, you could learn a bunch about DR preparedness in the process also.

At Our April Meeting

Yours Truly did a demonstration of the New Microsoft Office 2007 Groove.
We built a Groove site for the group to share information and practice with this great new technology. If you are a regular member and haven't received an invitation and want one send me a note I and I will get it to you.

At Our March Meeting

We had a great troubleshooting discussion, with many of the members volunteering tips and horror stories, you should have been there.

At for Our February Meeting

Well it is that time again a new month and a new meeting of the Triad SBS Group, that’s right tomorrow ( Tuesday ) at 6:00pm is our regular meeting.

We will be discussing plans for our Vista/2007 Office System Launch Event Table, you do remember it is the 13th of this month right? That's next Tuesday for those of you who may be math challenged :>)

btw, I understand the event is sold out through the official link, but there may be a few seats left if you come in through either TechNet Events or MSDN events, so if you waited to the last minute and now can't get registered, give this a try. http://www.technetevents.com/ http://www.msdnevents.com/

After that discussion we will have a round table regarding how we are approaching clients about the new solutions available now and any recent experiences with Vista and 2007 Office System.

We will also open up the floor to JR Tatum this month, who had asked for some time to talk to the group last month but we ran out of time, so this month we will get him in for sure.

Also so you can't say I didn't tell you here is news about the brand new Technology Assessment Toolkit from Kevin's Blog Post

I sure hope you can all make it to the meeting at our regular venue,

Fire Mountain Family Steakhouse 1180 S. Main Street, Kernersville, 27284, 336-996-0456

At Our Our January Meeting

First let me wish you a Prosperous and Healthy 2007!

Speaking of 2007 I believe we are going to hold the very first IT Pro Group meeting of the year, so let’s start the year off right with a good turnout on this coming Tuesday 1/2/2007 at our regular clubhouse otherwise known as Fire Mountain Restaurant.

We will have a dual focus meeting, first Michael Wharton is going to teach us the ins and outs of using Google Adwords, read his abstract below in red. I was also trying to have a marketing guru recently hired by one of my favorite clients come in and give another perspective, but he seems he is tied up on the second, maybe he will drop in another time.

After Michael finishes his presentation a few of the folks have asked for an open forum to discuss RSS Feeds, IE7 and how y’all keep up with what’s new in our rapidly changing environment. So bring your best tips and your most puzzling questions.

And then time permitting, I will give y’all a recap of what I found out applying the licensing info we gained at the last meeting, I have written 3 open value contracts since that meeting, thank you Missy!

Michael’s Abstract:

Low Cost Marketing using Google Adwords

You have used GOOGLE many times looking for information, products and

services. And on each search returned you may have you noticed on the right

side a list of companies (Sponsored Links) providing products and services

related to your search. What a great way for people to find your products

and services. Michael Wharton, Software Architect for Wharton Computer

Consulting will show how easy it is to have your company name listed for

only pennies a click and no cost for impressions. The Google Adwords

presentation will show how to set up a Google account, how to create a

campaign, set up a budget, look at your ROI and determine how efficient your

marketing campaign is.

See you at Fire Mountain Family Steakhouse 1180 S. Main Street, Kernersville, 27284, 336-996-0456