Karen Forster and Patrick McDermott, Director of IT for a school district in Utah, discuss IT in education from a unique perspective. The discussion will highlight Patrick’s highly innovative solutions in an isolated and economically challenged environment. Patrick says, “I am very familiar with operating in an environment that continually demands more from less. From my perspective, that’s what operating in the real world is all about. I don’t have a team of scores of developers awaiting their next instructions. I don’t have unlimited budgets. I don’t operate in a sterile environment where all of our data comes from the Northwind database. Instead, I have to use IT to help improve the education of our students in ways that maximize our limited resources.
Karen Forster, Vice President of www.PlatformVision.com, will discuss the impact of the economy on mid-sized business, IT infrastructure, and IT careers with Michael Dragone, MCDST, MCSE Messaging, MCTS, and MCITP. Mike is a systems engineer at Titleserv, Inc., a title insurance company in New York. Karen and Mike will look at issues ranging from investing in new technologies to save costs (and whether businesses are willing to invest now), to the value of certification, to avenues for career growth.
Karen Forster discusses virtualization and its role in reducing IT costs with Sean Deuby. Sean is a directory services MVP and a former design engineer on the directory services team with Intel Corporation. Sean has been blogging about Hyper-V and Microsoft’s virtualization solutions in the Platform Vision and Windows IT Pro Virtualization Faceoff at www.windowsitpro.com/faceoff.
Karen Forster and Orin Thomas discuss the effect the down economy has had on consulting and writing internationally. Orin is a security MVP and has authored or coauthored more than a dozen books for Microsoft Press. Orin, who is based in Australia, will talk about his work producing training materials for U.S. clients, as well as how the economy has affected the career market.
Karen Forster and Dan Holme discuss areas in which new skills are in demand in the current economy. Dan is a SharePoint MVP and director of consulting at Intellium. Dan will cover his fascinating work as NBC television Microsoft Technologies Consultant for the past two Winter Olympic games, as well as the Vancouver Games.
Karen Forster and Brian Lawton discuss the launch of SQL Server 2010 and the database market in the current economy. Brian is Director of Product Development at RDA and a specialist in BI and holds an MCDBA, MCSE, and MCSD certifications.
