Technology Wizards and Friends,
Our October Technology Wizards meeting will be Wednesday, December 10th, 12:00pm – 3:00pm at the Microsoft PacWest office located at 1414 Northrup (in the Pearl district).
Board Elections, Technical Best Practices for Technology Wizards
We will begin our monthly Technology Wizards meeting on Wednesday with our annual Board Elections. We will be electing the 5 members who will serve on the Board beginning in January 2015. Only current members present in the room will be allowed to participate in the elections.
According to our Bylaws, annually the membership selects the 5 people who will serve on the Board from Jan – Dec. At the January Board Meeting, the 5 people elected then hold an election to determine what positions within the Board they will each fill for the year. Our Bylaws further stipulate that the President must have served on the Board the previous year.
After we have concluded our Board Elections, we’ll pick up our Technical Best Practices discussion where we last left off.
Throughout our years, we have had some great (and sometimes very lively) discussions at our meetings and via our email list about the best way to implement or do something, all in an effort to raise the knowledge and quality of how we as Technology Wizards care for our clients and their networks.
At this month’s meeting, we are going to continue the process of developing a series of Technical Best Practices (eventually we’ll also develop some Business Best Practices).
One of the goals is to get us talking about some of these things without “critiquing”, “judging” or “putting on the spot” fellow members for whatever policies we/they are currently using, in an effort to increase awareness, while sharpening each other. I’m sure that there are many things some of us have thought about and considered (or experienced) that others have not.
Once developed, we could distribute the list internally (a benefit of membership), and/or possible post a version of it on our website.
At these meetings, members would throw out a specific topic (i.e. Password Policies) and entertain a discussion on suggested/preferred Password Policies, then write them down and finally vote on a specifically worded Password Policy that we could turn into a “Technology Wizards recommends the following Password Policy….”.
We will do this for a number of Technical topics (i.e. Password Policies, Backup, Number of Domain Admin Accounts, Number of Local Admin Accounts, SSL Certificates (this one sounds familiar), Server Configurations, Antivirus on the Server, eMail Filtering/Scanning offsite/onsite or both, Firewall and UTM Configurations, and many others. This will NOT be a discussion on brands or specific products, just policies.
I know that many of you have already developed some excellent policies, and perhaps there have been a few that you have not considered yet. Please come and contribute your ideas, suggestions, experiences, etc., in an effort to improve our community and the services we all provide to all of our clients.
Lunch will be provided for the first few minutes of the meeting, so get there early!
PARKING: Please park in the lot between NW 15th & NW 16th, NW Kearney and NW Lovejoy with the entrance on Kearney Street. There is a fee to park. Also, if there is an attendant there, tell him/her you are a Microsoft meeting attendee. The lot is located underneath I-405. Plan to arrive early to find parking.
I’m really looking forward to seeing you all and to your active participation in these discussions!
Ken Shafer
Technology Wizards
Reminder: Technology Wizards meetings are intended for current Technology Wizards members or potential members. Potential members must be owners or employees of a an IT services business whose main purpose is to support small business using Microsoft products and services in some capacity.
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