Once again, I'm invited to speak at the IT Community User Group Meetup in the City of Križevci, Croatia. The meetup will be held on March 25th, 2023.
IT Community User Group Križevci
IT Community User Group Križevci brings together IT professionals and enthusiasts for computers, servers and IT in general with the goal of exchanging knowledge and socializing among colleagues.
The group operates under the auspices of the mayor of Križevci, Mr. Mario Rajn and Microsoft Community Croatia, and is open to all Microsoft and non-Microsoft technologies, whether they are commercial or open source.
About my session
I’ll present a 90-minute session on:
Windows Servers Hardening – Top 10 things to do
Saturday March 25th, 2023, Level 200
During my last session in Križevci, I scratched the topic of hardening Active Directory. This time I'll try to scratch the topic of Windows Servers Hardening.
Most of you are aware of the fact that this topic is very extensive and it cannot be handled thoroughly even if we'd had a full-day workshop. Considering this, I'll show you my top 10 things and try to demonstrate as much hardening quick wins as time will allow us.
Join us to learn what important things you should change and implement on Windows Servers before you start using them in production, as well some other important caveats.
As always, I'll have an "ask anything" section in the Q&A part of the session.
Benefits of Attending this Session:
Learn how to harden Windows Server OSes
Find out what are the most important things regarding Windows Server hardening
Watch live demo on how to implement hardening quick wins
Ask anything in the Q&A part of the session
Join us!
Join us at the IT Community User Group Križevci. Learn, connect and be inspired at one of the best IT Pro Community groups on Microsoft Technologies in Croatia.
Last month I presented at the IT Community User Group in Križevci, Croatia.
About Križevci and its IT Community User Group
Križevci is a small city located Northeast of Zagreb. If you're going by car, you need less than an hour to get there (of course, if your start your ride in Zagreb 😁).
My host was Goran Žarinac. He is responsible for the organization of this event and everything in regards to IT Community User Group Križevci. We're friends now, but only a few years ago I did not know him. The first time we met was in Zagreb while we attended another conference. We quickly realized we had a lot in common, so there was bound to be some collaboration in the future. Well, COVID happened and our collaboration was delayed.
How it came to be…
Last year we met again while we both attended Kulendayz (yep, with "z" 😁) conference where we finally agreed about the content I would present. It had to be identity/security related, because those two topics are of most interest to me. At the end of our conversation, we settled for Implementing AD Tiering Model in 60 minutes as the title.
Pictures
The pictures from the session are bellow. Unfortunately, this time I don't have any pre/post session pictures to share, but I promise I'll take some next time.
Thank you!
I'd like to thank Goran Žarinac for inviting me and of course, to all the people that came to this session. I hope I'll present there soon with another interesting topic.
P.S. The chocolate I got as the speaker present was great! 😉 Once again, thank you!
I'm happy to invite you to the last IT Community User Group Meetup this year in the City of Križevci, Croatia, on the 14th of January, 2023.
IT Community User Group Križevci
IT Community User Group Križevci brings together IT professionals and enthusiasts for computers, servers and IT in general with the goal of exchanging knowledge and socializing among colleagues.
The group operates under the auspices of the mayor of Križevci, Mr. Mario Rajn and Microsoft Community Croatia, and is open to all Microsoft and non-Microsoft technologies, whether they are commercial or open source.
About my session
I’ll present a 90-minute session on:
Implementing AD Tiering Model in 60 minutes
Saturday, January 14th, 2023, Level 300
You've probably heard about Microsoft AD Tiering model, because it's not something new, but did you implement it in your organization? If not, do you know how to do it and why it's so important to do it?
Join us to learn how to implement basic Microsoft AD Tiering model in 60 minutes and hear about the important things that need to be done in order to implement it properly.
Benefits of Attending this Session:
Learn how to implement Microsoft AD Tiering Model
Watch live demo on how to do basic implementation of Microsoft AD Tiering Model
Ask anything in the Q&A part of the session
Join us!
Join us at the IT Community User Group Križevci. Learn, connect and be inspired at one of the best IT Pro Community groups on Microsoft Technologies in Croatia.
Hello World! This is my first blog post. Ever! You have to start somewhere so I decided to, or better said – had a chance to, start with one of the most useful Microsoft Identity blogs – DirTeam.com.
About a month ago I attended the NTK (NT Konferenca) conference in Portorož, Slovenia. This was my first time at that conference and the main reason I wanted to attend is because I saw that one of my favorite MVPs presented three different sessions during that conference.
This guy
The first time I met him was few years ago at the WinDays conference. I did not know who he was before that conference. I walked into the room where he was about to present, with no expectations at all. The name of the session sounded interesting and since I'm always eager to learn something new about identity (as well as security), I sat down in the middle of that conference room (I don't want to be too close; you never know what type of speaker you run into :D) and waited for the session to begin. His presentation and especially the way he presented caught my attention immediately. I was locked. I was thinking "Man… this guy is something else. The way he presents and the level of knowledge he has… It's like I'm listening to Sami Laiho." By the way, if you don't know who Sami is, google him. He is also one of my favorite speakers, although I haven't had a chance to meet him… yet.
After the session ended I approached him and asked a few questions which he happily answered. After that conference I wanted to know more about who that guy was and only then I realized I listened and talked to a guy who was a Microsoft MVP, VMware vExpert and a Veeam Vanguard. I thought to myself "Wow! This guy really is something else!"
NTK
Let’s forward two years. COVID came and there were no conferences. A lot of things stopped or ended, like WinDays conference (and at the moment of writing this, there is still no info if WinDays conference will reappear next year), so I started to look at alternative conferences in the vicinity. This is when I spotted NTK. At first, I was not sure if I wanted to attend, because there were a lot of speakers and topics that I heard before at local conferences (and even presented by the same speakers), but when I realized this guy (Microsoft MVP) was to present several sessions there, I immediately knew I was going to be at that conference!
And so I went…
His first session was just before lunch. I arrived early (I was the first person in the room) and sat down in the first row (don't want to miss anything :D). When he walked on stage, I wasn't expecting him to recognize me. Surely, I was just one of the many people that he talked to for a few minutes during that conference a few years ago and after that exchanged a message or two via LinkedIn… but to my very surprise he did!
Although the session was about to start in only 5 minutes, he immediately got off stage, walked straight to me and we started talking, like we were old buddies who haven’t seen each other for a few years. It felt so good… I felt so good.
After the session, I went to lunch and came back for his next session. The conference room was even bigger (a few hundred people were there) but there were empty chairs in the first row, so I also decided to sit in front. Well, as you can now expect; Again, he went straight to me and (again) we talked for a few minutes before the session started. This time, during the session, he even made some remarks using my name as an example. I felt like a teenager at a rock concert, where the lead vocal says your name in front of the crowd. I couldn’t believe it.
The next day was his last session. After the session, I offered to buy him a coffee and to my very surprise, he agreed.
And now the real story starts…
The coffee
I expected a coffee to last for 5-15 minutes, but it turned into a two-hour conversation! I was shocked and was thinking: “This guy, who knows all the MVPs at this conference and can talk to any of them, or any other person that attends this conference, decided to took this much time to talk to a guy (me) who he knows almost nothing about and meets for the second time in his life. Why?!”
That was the first lesson I learned from him: be down to Earth, normal, no matter how much you achieve in life. That will make you a bigger and better person and people will like you and respect you even more.
We started talking. After I told him a bit about myself, the conversation very quickly became deep (I’m not capable of small talk, at least not for long :D) and then he started to impress me even more. After I asked him if it’s realistic for me to set the goal to become Microsoft MVP, considering my age and all the things I do in life, straight away he responded “Yes, of course!” and then continued: “In fact, the steps are very simple, but not easy. If you are willing to invest about 20 hours per week on top of everything you're doing right now, you can do it.".
That was lesson No. 2: You can do anything in life if you set your mind to it, have strong desire and are willing to work for it!
Of course, I had (and still have my doubts), so I started pouring on him. He carefully listened to every doubt I shared and after I finished, he told me stories from his life (or life of his friends or acquaintances) that not only negated my doubt, but also gave me the faith that I can do it despite all my doubts.
Lesson No. 3: Help people overcome their fears and give them the faith they need to achieve their goals and dreams!
OK, at that moment I slowly started to believe that maybe, just maybe, I can become MVP. Just maybe. And so, we continued talking. He told me what I could do. In short: blog and present. I told him that I'm not a writer (never was), but I can try. He offered help. Not only with empty words. One of the things he did was he took out his laptop (then and there) and immediately opened an account for me at DirTeam.com (the one I used to post this blog post). I couldn't believe it!
Lesson No. 4: Don't just offer empty words. Act!
The conversation continued. I poured on him more doubts. He offered to help me with blog topics, reviews, mentorship(!) and… you have to sit down before you read this… are you ready? He even offered me to speak with him on some of the conferences that are local to me, where he'll be a guest speaker! I almost fell off my chair!
Lesson No. 5: Give more than expected! It will return to you in more ways that you could ever expect!
We continued talking for at least an hour where he gave me a lot of helpful things that stuck in my head. I'll leave those for some other blog post.
To conclude… that coffee was one of the best coffees I had and I'm not talking about the drink itself (although the coffee was also great!). I'm not sure what kind of people other MVPs are, but this guy helped me a lot and I thank him for that! I hope some of the things I shared help you as well.
Until next time…
By the way… NTK is a great conference. You should check it out!
Coffee Cup, by Doug8888 (licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
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