MacAdmins Conference

Speakers: Karl Gibson

Level: Fundamental, Lecture

Excerpt: Aha! moments are rare these days. What’s more is that societal pressure has resulted in fewer people openly acknowledging that they have just experienced an Aha! moment when in the company of others. That’s the beauty of a certain voice assistant, she doesn’t judge me. Of course, considering she is always listening for the wake command and sending data back for “improvements” I don’t have that much confidence that somebody somewhere is not judging me but that was happening even before my best friend, i mean voice assistant came in to my life.

In this session let’s all have the Aha! moment together, don’t be afraid by it, embrace it.

See you there
Adobe employee

Description: Aha! moments are rare these days. What’s more is that societal pressure has resulted in fewer people openly acknowledging that they have just experienced an Aha! moment when in the company of others. That’s the beauty of a certain voice assistant, she doesn’t judge me. Of course, considering she is always listening for the wake command and sending data back for “improvements” I don’t have that much confidence that somebody somewhere is not judging me but that was happening even before my best friend, i mean voice assistant came in to my life.

In this session let’s all have the Aha! moment together, don’t be afraid by it, embrace it.

See you there
Adobe employee

(This session will not be recorded.)

About the speaker

Karl Gibson (Twitter: @Adobe_ITToolkit) – Senior Product Manager, Creative Cloud for Business – Adobe Systems

Senior Product Manager on the Creative Cloud Business team with specific responsibilities for the IT Packaging and deployment tools which include Creative Cloud Packager & AAMEE. Karl represents the voice of the IT admin inside Adobe. He is always honest and upfront about the current state of play and where things are going. Karl has presented at many conferences including JNUC, MacTech and MacIT. Karl is a former IT admin and one of the first Apple Certified Trainers in Ireland.

Speakers: Jack-Daniyel Strong & Allen Hancock

Level: Advanced, Lecture

Excerpt: From support for the latest Mac, Windows, and Ubuntu/CentOS, to Beacon offline reporting, to a new pricing plan for in-house IT, see what’s new with Watchman Monitoring.

We will go over new features which help save you time and effort as you take even better care of your users.

Certified Proactive Support Professional is an initiative Watchman Monitoring started with a goal of making this abstract concept a bit more real. We’ll review the certification and its benefits.

Description: Watchman Monitoring founder Allen Hancock and long time subscriber turned employee JD Strong will share what’s new with Watchman Monitoring. From Beacon offline reporting, to a new pricing plan for in-house IT, see what’s new with Watchman Monitoring.

Newly expanded API support allows for deeper integration with ticketing and data management systems. JSS users can take a look at our updated Extension Attributes, and Munki users can leverage our download and processor recipes (we’ve got an override file ready just for you!).

We’ll dive in Beacon Reporting, which adds an extra proof of life component to traditional uptime reporting tools.

We’ll also review the Proactive Support Professional certification, designed to help you cover your bases with proactive support, and reviewing its role in conveying the value in the work you do to prevent data loss and downtime.

About the speakers

Allen Hancock (Twitter: @watchmanmonitor) – Founder – Watchman Monitoring

I started using the Mac platform in high school, then got my first paid Mac Admin job at the University of Missouri’s Biology Department, where Alan Marshall got me off on the right foot. Since then, I took my one-person consultancy up through the ranks of Apple Specialist & Training Center, and sold it in 2012.

Now, I build Watchman Monitoring, a tool that enables fellow IT Professionals to provide Proactive Support to their end users, and unify their support offering.

Jack-Daniyel Strong (Twitter: @SpokaneMac) – Documentation & Support – Watchman Monitoring

Former reseller and service provider, JD maintains a small consultancy and joined the team of Watchman Monitoring to help with documentation and support.

Speakers: Greg Keller

Level: Intermediate, Lecture

Excerpt: The modern office looks decidedly different than it did a decade ago. Since 2000, Microsoft has been synonymous with managing the enterprise – from the workstation an employee used, access to applications and networks, to the central identity their Active Directory manages. But today’s office structure has evolved past workstations under desks, large monitors and ethernet. Mobility, a wide range of cloud-based apps and services and new, non-Microsoft, operating systems like Mac OS, are changing the way employees are working, and evolving the way IT professionals need to think about managing.

Description: JumpCloud’s Directory-as-a-Service solution solves the growing problems presented by the evolution of the modern, cloud-forward,office.

With Directory-as-a-Service, IT admins can tackle the complete range of employee resource access needs regardless of the platform, or location. JumpCloud’s cloud-based directory provides centralized identity management providing access to an employee’s systems, networks and applications. Delivered from the cloud, with no on-premise resources needed, JumpCloud focuses on connectivity to resources through deep and wide protocol support including LDAP-as-a-Service, RADIUS-as-a-Service, SAML 2.0 and a progressive RESTful API. IT admins have complete control over their macOS, Windows and Linux systems with the ability to remotely provision, deprovision, and modify user access, enable MFA and execute policy through the product’s command execution facilities.

What you will learn –

JumpCloud’s Chief Product Officer, Greg Keller, will walk you through the art of mastering Mac management, from apps to events, MFA and more. In addition, you will see how integrating with other solutions, such as Jamf, will allow you to swiftly accomplish enterprise deployment and avoid major security pitfalls.

About the speaker

Greg Keller (Twitter: @jumpcloud) – Chief Product Officer – JumpCloud

Greg is JumpCloud’s Chief Product Officer, overseeing the product management team, product vision and go-to-market execution for the company’s Directory-as-a-Service offering. The SaaS-based platform re-imagines Active Directory and LDAP for the cloud era, securely connecting and managing employees, their devices and IT applications.

Speakers: William Smith

Level: Fundamental, Lecture

Excerpt: Learn about security changes and supporting new features in Outlook 2016 as well as management controls introduced in Microsoft AutoUpdate 4.0.

Description: Let’s discuss improvements made this past year to Microsoft AutoUpdate (MAU) that allow administrators the flexibility to manage and silently update Office 2016 applications. Then let’s talk about what’s coming in MAU 4.0 and how administrators can integrate these new features with management systems like Jamf Pro and munki.

We’ll address questions like:

Speakers: Jeremy Reichman

Level: Fundamental, Hands-on (BYOD for attendees)

Excerpt: Whether you are already comfortable with Bash or AppleScript or Automator or just want to learn more about scripting in general there are practical reasons to use Python. Python is both approachable and different than some other languages available on macOS. You can write scripts just as quickly and end up with code that is easily reused and maintained over time. Python is a well-rounded language that is accessible to beginners, yet powerful enough for experts to use in large applications such as Munki and AutoPkg.

We will start small with some introductory Python concepts outlining some key language features that help explain why you would want to use Python and work our way up to more complicated real-world examples.

Description: Whether you are already comfortable with Bash or AppleScript or Automator or just want to learn more about scripting in general there are practical reasons to use Python. Python is both approachable and different than some other languages available on macOS. You can write scripts just as quickly and end up with code that is easily reused and maintained over time. Python is a well-rounded language that is accessible to beginners, yet powerful enough for experts to use in large applications such as Munki and AutoPkg.

We will start small with some introductory Python concepts outlining some key language features that help explain why you would want to use Python and work our way up to more complicated real-world examples. You can follow along to see results on your computer.

Examples of covered concepts: