After two years of blogging, hiding behind my MacBook :) and virtually on Twitter, Linked-In etc… the time has finally come to take the next step. On March 6th I will be presenting at the next DuCUG event, or Dutch Citrix User Group in full, taking place at Dell in Amsterdam. In fact if you are reading this, chances are that I’m on stage at this very moment. For me it is an absolute first, not just at DuCUG but also with regards to presenting, or public speaking, in general. I have had multiple opportunities in the past but I just kept making up excuses so I wouldn’t have to go up on stage. Because to be honest, the thought of standing in front of a big crowd and doing ‘my thing’ kind of scares me. And DuCUG can be considered a big crowd, at least in my book. It has been sold out for weeks, as it always is, meaning that no less than 150 IT professionals will be there to hear what I, and others, have to say. It’s an honour to be part of their line-up, check their agenda (screenshot below), there are some ‘big’ names on there.
Surprising facts
Hence the scared part :) But hey, I know I’m not the only one who has this ‘fear’, over 75% of all people interviewed (tens of thousands) are scared shitless when it comes to public speaking! I’ve done some research and as it turns out this fear of public speaking, on average, is scarier then dying to most people. I know, that’s hard to belief right?! While I’m not fearless, as mentioned, I’ll still pick public speaking over dying any day, and knowing my audience, probably so will you. So what made me sign up to speak at DuCUG you ask? Besides multiple invitations and encouragements (thanks for those by the way) in the past, this is primarily an great opportunity to finally get over myself and take that ‘next’ step, at least that’s the way I see it.
My first at the DuCUG, my first ever!
When I say it’s my first time public speaking I’m not lying, although I have done some smaller presentations at various customer sites and internally for some of my co-workers at Detron and Qwise, it’s not the same thing. I started out with these smaller presentations about two years ago and have done somewhere around 10 to 12 up till now, again, this was a big step for me personally! And now that I feel kind of comfortable speaking to co-workers and smaller groups, a logical next step would be to take on a somewhat larger event like the DuCUG. Although there are probably one or two steps in between size wise :) Anyway, I’m just hoping I won’t regret it.
E2EVC 2015 the Berlin edition
Alex Juschin has also asked me to speak on E2EVC in Berlin (he’s the organizer and mastermind behind it all), so I’m now officially on the agenda there as well. But I won’t be doing it alone, no, Mr. Mick Glover a.k.a. @XDTipster on Twitter will be joining me on stage, or perhaps better said, I’ll be joining him! We spoke about this a few weeks ago and we both though it would be a great idea and good fun to make it a joined effort. It will be on one of the lesser known XD / FMA features: XenDesktop Power Management. We also have some other community announcements to share with you as well, nothing huge but potentially interesting none the less, so stay tuned :) If you are at E2E Berlin make sure to stop by and give us a visit, you’ll find the complete agenda on www.e2evc.com And if you want to know more about the E2EVC conference in general, I suggest you check out one of my earlier blogs that I wrote on the E2EVC event held in Barcelona October 2014. But back to DuCUG for now.
I named my presentation:
Why we don’t need Citrix Support
(all the time)
Troubleshooting the FMA
A breakdown
To be clear, it has nothing to do with Citrix Support being rubbish or anything, they have their good and bad days just like anyone of us, including all other major vendors out there. It’s more about the general approach when it comes to troubleshooting bigger issues combined with some of the tools available out there today. I have a short section on the Citrix troubleshoot methodology, some (non technical) lessons learned from the field and I’ve put together my top 5 Citrix troubleshooting tools. I’ll explain why I choose these tools before zooming in on Citrix Scout (CDF traces, trace messages, modules, the Collect and Upload functionality, Insight Services or TaaS, Clear text or Verbose logging, including some of the configuration steps needed to get things going) during the mid and tail section of the presentation in which CDF Control is also mentioned. After this (hopefully) you’ll also have a better understanding on what Citrix support does and uses behind the scenes when it come to troubleshooting your FMA. And besides all that, it’s just good fun.
CTX Support continued…
Some of the above is especially important when we are dealing with issues taking us more than a week, or multiple even, to resolve. And even when CTX Support is involved, in some cases we might be able to troubleshoot parallel to what they are doing. I say ‘in some cases’ since my experience is that CTX support needs your full attention and they don’t want you to go changing and testing things while they are going through your logs and are trying to come up with a potential fix. Which is completely understandable of course. It’s also good to know how you can assist CTX Support by not only answering some of their general questions, but also by providing them with some more specific and detailed information which they are known to ask for. This way making the whole process way more efficient and effective at the same time! I’ll also provide you with some insights on how CDF traces combined with modules and trace messages actually work, interesting right? :)
All in 45 minutes
That’s basically what the presentation is about all together, hopefully I will be able to cram it all into 45 minutes of presentation time minus potential questions and introducing myself, something for which I’ve found a very quick and effective method by the way :) At DuCUG I’ll present alone and in Dutch, which I guess, makes it a bit more relaxed, the Dutch part I mean. I’ve tried to translate my presentation in English and together with the above you should have a good idea on what it is about, you’ll find it below. If you have any questions I’d be happy to answer them! In a later Blog I’ll try and demystify Citrix Scout as I have done during this presentation, but for now this will have to do!
My slide-deck
I tried using Slideshare but that didn’t work out well. I used PowerPoint for Mac so unfortunately not all graphics were displayed correctly and some words and sentences didn’t fit as well. That’s why I choose this route. Keep in mind that some of the slides might still lose some of their effects, during the presentation not all images and texts appeared instantly for example, I used some intervals here and there, but I think you’ll get the message :)
Well that’s it, that’s my first presentation done, hope you liked it. And again, If you have any questions I’d be happy to answer them, just let me know.
