Mark Minasi's Short (75-90 Minute) Talks(Suitable only for conference/meeting organizers who want their attendees to learn, enjoy themselves, and demand to return for the next conference!) |
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Mark Minasi has entertained and informed tens of thousands over the years, which is one reason why he's so much in demand as a conference speaker. Following are the talks that he does most often. These talks generally run best as 75 minute - 90 minute presentations, but can be lengthened or shortened. If you'd like to see a brief demo of Mark in action, take a look at the promo tape for his The Software Conspiracy talk here. Over the years, Mark has developed and given many different talks, so many in fact that the list of topics was getting a bit out of hand. As a result, we've rebuilt this page as an extremely shortened list of his talks, including only the Windows 2000/XP/.NET Server talks and the Software Conspiracy talk. In case you're looking for the older page, it's here. These short sessions, many of which are taken from Mark's seminars "Running A 2003/2000-Based Active Directory" and "Mastering Windows 2000: A guide to planning, installing, and running Windows 2000 Server in your network," cover aspects of Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003, and Windows XP in short chunks. And, of course, they're delivered in Mark's trademark brand of humor and insight. Contact our assistant to schedule a talk for your meeting or conference at that e-mail link or call (757) 426-1431 between 12 Noon - 5 PM Eastern time, Monday-Friday. |
Mark's "Content-Free, Entertainment-Rich Keynote" — "How To Succeed In The Computer Business" |
The rest of Mark's talks focus on technical topics and intend to educate and inform their audience; if they happen to be entertaining as well, then that's of course important — it keeps the audience awake — but getting laughs isn't normally the main focus of Mark's talks. But in the past few years, clients have sometimes approached us about doing a short 45-70 minute keynote that contained no content at all, just a bit of "Minasi unplugged:" jokes, stories, and offbeat observations from someone with nearly 30 years in the business but who's managed to avoid becoming "assimilated." Mark agreed to try, and the results have been ... well ... really happy audiences, including one recent attendee who complained that he laughed so hard his face hurt. So if you need a way to get your conference moving with a laugh, then call us about "How To Succeed In The Computer Business." Learn the secrets of choosing the right "beta" names, how to create demand for your product even if your company doesn't make any products, as well as the secret of the Next Big Thing in networking. |
Windows 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista and Longhorn Talks |
| But to return to serious work... following are Marks' talks that range from the general-interest, keynote-ish talks to some very drill-down sessions. |
Living the Longhorn Life: What's Up With Server 2007 (or Maybe, 2008) |
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Microsoft released the new desktop, Windows Vista, in November 2006...
but that's just the start. A new version of Server's right on its
heels -- formerly code-named "Longhorn Server," it'll either be named
Windows Server 2007 or 2008, depending on when it ships. But no
matter what its name, Server 2007/8 will pack a ton of new stuff, from
some really good news in Active Directory to some nifty new deployment
tools, a quarantine system that'll help you keep the worm-ridden systems
off of your network, a revamped Web server, and a few truly long-awaited
changes in group policy. How to find out about all of this? Well, you could download a few terabytes' worth of white papers and start sifting through them to separate the wheat from the chaff, or you could attend this short talk by Mark Minasi, the guy who's been explaining new operating systems since Windows 1.0. Come to this talk and find out why Server Core may be your favorite new piece of software! |
XP To Vista in 75 Minutes:
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Windows Vista's finally here ... but what's that you say, you haven't
had the time to get the skinny on what's better and what's worse about
XP's little brother? Sure, you've heard of the new In just over an hour, master Windows Explicator Mark Minasi hands you your binoculars and highlights the high (and low) points of the vista before us. Find out what matters and what doesn't, and get a look at what'll make your life as a support person, manager or planner easier... or harder. Sure, you can read Microsoft's Web pages on Vista. But will they tell you both the good news and the bad news and, more importantly, make you laugh in the process? Nah. So join us for "The Quick Tour" and find out what Vista will do for (and to) you! |
Name Resolution 2008 Style: DNS, WINS, and NetBIOS in Longhorn |
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Soon we'll have "NT Server 6.1" -- Vista's big brother, also known as
Server 2007, 2008, or Longhorn. And with that comes improvements in,
well, just about everything, including one of Windows' most important
pieces of plumbing -- name resolution. Yes, you've heard it before, but
with Longhorn, it looks as though WINS may really, finally, actually...
die. Or not; we'll see. Besides the changes to WINS, the big name resolution story is, of course, DNS. What's new in 2007/8 DNS? And, better, what small features of 2003's DNS might you be missing out on? Come to this session with The Master of Name Resolution, popular speaker and writer Mark Minasi, to find out! |
DCs Get Better: Longhorn's New DCPROMO, Read-Only DCs and More |
| 2003's Active Directory is pretty good, but, honestly, it could be better. Branch office DCs are a real pain both from a security and a bandwidth point of view. But Longhorn Server/Server 2007 offers some relief with the concept of a "read-only domain controller" that flexes Kerberos' muscles in a way that Windows hasn't really before. You'll get the ability to dial in exactly which user accounts are stored on a branch office DC, as well as new encryption options to make it theft-proof. But that's not all -- DCPROMO gets a facelift and, well, it needed it. Find out about this and other upcoming Longhorn domain controller and AD improvements with bestselling author Mark Minasi! |
Cracking the DaVista Code: the Best Things You're Not Using in Vista |
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So you got yourself some powerful PCs and you put Vista on your desktop.
Pretty neat, eh? But it might be neater, you know. After all, Vista's basically a complete re-write of Windows. So while everyone's focused on Aero Glass or Previous Versions, it's easy to miss some of the not-so-obvious but useful things in the latest version of Windows -- things like takeown, icacls, or Vista's ability to resize already-formatted partitions without having to reformat them, to name just a few. Join Mark Minasi, author of Administering Vista Administration: the Big Surprises and Mastering Vista Business, in his quest to squeeze the last bit of neat new functionality out of Vista, while perhaps getting a few laughs in the process! |
Windows Power Tools: Administration at “C:\>” Level |
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Still doing administration from the GUI? Well, that works, of course –
but while GUIs are nice for now-and-then tasks, you can get a lot more
done from the command line and, even better, you can stuff your favorite
command lines into Notepad to create the world’s simplest administration
tool. The hard part, of course, is getting started – and who better to help you than Mark Minasi, whose “This Old Resource Kit” and “Windows Power Tools” columns have discovered and explained the best Microsoft command-line administrations tools for the past eight years. While the “altitude” – that is, high-level nature – of GUIs are nice, really getting the job in the least amount of time needs a more down-to-earth, “C:\>-level” approach. Join Mark and see how to run "command" Windows to do your bidding! |
Uncovering Service Pack Gold: The Best Stuff You're Still Not Using in XP SP2, 2003 SP1, and R2 |
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(The talk that scored in the top ten of TechEd 2006's 450 sessions!) The SP Twins -- XP's Service Pack 2 and 2003 Server's Service Pack 1, as well as that giant service pack called "R2" -- have been out for quite a while, and most of us have deployed them for their fixes and greater security. But are you using EVERYTHING that SP1/SP2 offer? Well, unless "access-based enumeration," "IPsec bypass,""auditusr.exe,""binary behaviors" and "mime sniffing" have a place in your security vocabulary, then perhaps you're not getting the most out of your service packs! This session provides the step-by-step ways to squeeze all of the security juice out of the SPs, including clear and complete explanations of how to hide folders from unauthorized users, per-user auditing via AUDITUSR, how to create an ActiveX whitelist or blacklist for Internet Explorer, how to use Windows Firewall in combination with IPsec bypass to fine-tune access to a set of servers... and a lot more. Attend this session and you will immediately learn how to secure your systems better... for free. |
The Accidental DBA's Guide: Mastering MSDE and SQL Server 2005 Express, Microsoft's "Mandatory" Databases |
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Microsoft has released tons of free network management utilities over the years.
But recently they've all had one thing in common: they need a real-live SQL Server to run.
And unless you want to shell out a few kilobucks for SQL Server 2000 or 2005, then
you're going to be
using the Microsoft SQL Server Desktop Engine (MSDE) or its successor SQL Server
2005 Express Edition (SSX). They're just like SQL
Server... except that
they don't have any GUI administration tools. In this comprehensive talk, Mark
solves the plight of
the "accidental DBA" with a top-to-bottom look at what MSDE/SSX are, how to install
then, how to secure
them and run them, including 25 "cookbooks" to solve common problems
and perform basic maintenance. SQL administration's not just for
DBAs any more, so who better to make it easy than master elucidator
Mark Minasi?
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Cracking Open The Post Office: SMTP Server A to Z |
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The Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is the engine that makes
Internet e-mail run -- send mail to anybody@anywhere.com and it's
SMTP that does most of the heavy lifting. That's why NT 4, Windows
2000, XP and 2003 have all included a fairly powerful IIS SMTP
service. As a matter of fact, it's the tool that Exchange uses to
handle your Internet e-mail.
As with any powerful tool, IIS's SMTP service isn't always simple to configure. In this session, NT veteran and champion explainer-of-the-obscure Mark Minasi uncovers the SMTP service. Attend this entertaining, fast-paced talk and you'll learn how to put SMTP Server to work as a "smart host" protecting your Exchange server from the hostile Internet. Or just use it as a free-of-charge backup Internet e-mail server for those times when your main e-mail server is offline or unavailable. You'll see how to diagnose and troubleshoot undelivered Internet e-mail. You'll know how to secure your SMTP server against spammers, denial of service attacks and other threats while at the same time ensuring availability to your internal and traveling users. (Do you know how EXACTLY which services you can turn off and still have SP1's IIS 6.0 SMTP Server work? This session will show you.) You'll find out how to use SMTP Server to host multiple e-mail domains and of course you'll learn everything you could ever need to know about relaying -- that there's "good relaying" and "bad relaying," what it really means, what problems it presents and how to solve them. You'll uncover how the Pickup, Drop, Queue and BadMail folders, the event logs and SMTP logs interact to help you diagnose undelivered messages. Finally, you'll get a look at the extensive event scripting capabilities of SMTP Server. |
Windows Logons Revealed |
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Every day we log into our Windows systems. But what really happens when we do?
How DO our workstations and our domain controllers exchange logon information
without
revealing our passwords? For that matter, how are our workstations able to find
DCs even on days when the local DC's sick? Let veteran Windows explicator Mark
Minasi
show you how logins work, how they can not work (and how you can fix them) as
well
as how to better secure them -- as well as giving you the tools to understand
where
Microsoft's login protocols are and aren't so secure. Once you're done,
terms like "ticket-granting service" and "service principal name"
will be clear as a bell!
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The Art Of Network Troubleshooting: How To Fix Any Network Problem |
Network software and hardware comes and goes, protocols grow and change, and what we do with networks expands all of the time, but one thing doesn't change: how often we use the words "network" and "not work" in the same sentence. One day we'll just plug it all in and it'll just work, but for now, "to network is to troubleshoot." In this talk, veteran networking consultant, teacher and writer Mark Minasi shares the twelve immutable laws of troubleshooting any network problem. Zen archers are reputed to be able to hit a target blindfolded; with this talk, you can become a Zen network troubleshooter and fix network problems with both hands tied behind your back! |
Securing Your Microsoft Network: A Dozen Tips |
| Let's be clear: designing and implementing a good security takes time and money, and it's a pretty good idea to invest that time and money. But if you've short on time then this session is the next best thing. In just a few minutes, you'll learn a bunch of short tips which don't take much time to implement and that can shore up your system's security. Windows 2000 and 2003 (and even NT 4) include a ton of security features — but unfortunately they don't enable them by default. Join network geek and writer Mark Minasi in a series of quick and dirty suggestions that'll help you caulk over some of those security holes! |
Practical Active Directory Troubleshooting: Causes and Solutions |
| AD's pretty reliable -- quite reliable, in fact -- sometimes things go wrong anyway. Domain controllers can get disconnected from other DCs, leading to replication problems and group policy failures. DNS can get stupid, leading to... well, leading to a wide variety of troubles. Administrators can be distracted while changing something in AD, laying waste to entire sections of AD -- and creating a need for fast repair. And even IF none of those things happen, Active Directory is just a database, and even the best database needs a bit of database administration. Join battle-scarred AD veteran Mark Minasi in an examination of what can go wrong with AD, what to do about it, and maybe even have a few laughs in the process. |
Tuning and Monitoring XP, 2000, and Server 2003 |
| Microsoft says that 2000, XP and .NET are "self-tuning" and in fact it's true that they require less tweaking than some of the competition. But there are some very important things to watch in order to keep your servers and workstations in peak condition and to squeeze the most power out of your OS. In this session, Windows techie Mark Minasi shows you which Performance Monitor counters to watch and what to do to maximize your PC's performance, whether the PC's on your desk on in a rack. |
Troubleshooting DNS In an Active Directory World |
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Your Active Directory's acting up, but where to look to find the trouble
-- Active Directory Users And Computers? Sites and Services? Domains and
Trusts? Nope, in most cases the problem lies in DNS. DNS failures can
lead to logon problems, group policy mysteries, and more -- as you'll
learn in this nuts-and-bolts session. You can't be a black belt AD troubleshooter (or even a green belt AD troubleshooter) without an in-depth knowledge of how to make DNS work FOR AD, not AGAINST it. In this session, Windows networking techie Mark Minasi and author of the million-selling Mastering Windows Server series reveals the most common DNS problems and puzzles -- "who IS that prisoner.iana.org guy in my event log, anyway?" -- and how to solve them. |
Understanding DNS — the Foundation of Active Directory |
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Over the years, NT administrators have learned how to work with three
basic "infrastructure" tools — WINS, DNS and DHCP. But how
well have we really learned about DNS? The truth is that NT 4.0 really
didn't need DNS all that much, and most NT admins never had to do
anything more challenging than set up a basic "domain" for DNS
and pop a couple of records into that domain.
Now, with Active Directory, everything's changed. DNS stands at center stage and in fact you'd be crazy to even start implementing Active Directory before you had your DNS infrastructure nailed down. If you're not exactly sure what a "DNS forwarder" or "DNS slave" is, if you're fuzzy about the difference between domains and zones, if you were thinking that you'd expose the same set of DNS domains to the outside world as you do to your corporate network, then attend this entertaining, amusing — and informative tutorial. DNS can be dull — unless Mark's explaining it! |
Active Directory Planning, Concepts and Migration |
| Just getting started designing your Active Directory structure? Or did you just get "dropped" into an existing AD shop? You've probably heard that there's something called an organizational unit, something called a domain — which is somehow different than an "ancient" old NT 4 domain — as well as forests and trees. And DNS fits in here somewhere; will you have to replace all of those DNS servers? In fact, the major message that most people seem to get about AD is the "Everything That You Know Is Wrong." Fear not, for two reasons: first, in many ways AD isn't that different from what's come before and, second, you can come to this talk and have it all explained in just over one hour! You'll learn when to use domains versus when to use organizational units (as well as what they are!), how to design your new name space, why having four types of groups is simpler than having two types of groups, how to lay out your sites and, of course, what a site is in the first place. Then you'll find out about the two migration approaches, "in place" versus "clean and pristine," and which is right for you. When offered in the past, this talk fills rooms up quickly — so get there early to see the AD introduction that got Mark banned from presenting at Microsoft events! |
Understanding Active Directory Replication |
| Walk through the processes involved with Active Directory Replication step-by-step. Discover exactly how to configure your Windows 2000 Domain Controllers to take maximum advantage of the replication process. You will also learn the potential problems you may encounter and how to plan for and avoid many common errors. But most important, you'll learn how to use command-line and GUI-based tools to track — and sometimes prod — replication to make it do your bidding! |
Group Policy Troubleshooting |
| Group policies are a great tool but a potential nightmare. On the one hand, they let you do more support and administration while sitting at your desk than while wearing out your shoe leather; but on the other hand, when they go wrong, they provide the opportunity with just one click to bring an entire enterprise to its e-knees. In this session, best-selling Windows 2000 author Mark Minasi looks at how they work and what do when they seem not to work. |
Hardening Windows 2000 and 2003 Systems |
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Once upon a time, all you had to do to
make a server or workstation useful was to just install it and
configure it to the client's needs. Unfortunately that's now
only part of the job. Nowadays we've also got to tailor it
AGAINST the needs of the other clients on your systems -- the bad
guys. Configuring a system to be harder to attack isn't hard; it
just requires understanding and implementing an array of settings.
In this informative and enjoyable talk, explains how you can make your
system as dirtbag-proof as possible, and as simply as possible.
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Writing Emails and Documents That Sound As Smart As You Are:
Avoiding the Small -- but
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Whether it's fair or not, the truth is that people don't always judge
us by the things that we write; sometimes, they focus more on how we
write it. Far too many PowerPoints, e-mails, and in-house technical
documents include nonstandard grammar, spelling and abbreviations that
cause their readers to ignore those text's value and instead draw
unflattering conclusions about the texts' authors. |
Software Quality — Why the Software We Use Is So Bad and What We Can Do To Fix It |
| Software has defects. (The programmers have taught us to call them
"bugs," but they're defects nonetheless.) That, in and of
itself, is not terrible: virtually every product has defects. What's
amazing about shrink-wrap software, however, is the sheer number of
defects. Popular operating systems, word processors, Internet browsers
and e-mail packages have literally hundreds or thousands of defects —
can you imagine buying a microwave oven, a hamburger, a house or a car
with thousands of defects? Of course you can't. In our society, we normally put purveyors of low-quality products out of business. So why is software different? Simple: because we allow it to be different. In this provocative talk based on his hard-hitting book The Software Conspiracy: Why Software Vendors Create Faulty Products, How They Can Harm You, and What You Can Do About It, software industry veteran journalist Mark Minasi discusses why we accept low-quality software in the first place, why it doesn't seem to get much better, and presents a concrete multi-point plan that YOU, the software consumer, can follow to fix the software industry. Using startling examples (did you know about the bug in a pickup truck's computer that killed a child?) and wry wit to make his points, Mark will keep your attendees on the edge of their seats as he first describes the problem, then offers solutions that we should adopt — and soon. Some of the largest IT conferences in the country have featured this popular talk; call now to add it to your next meeting! |