Day 0/1 - 2
After a very short flight I arrived yesterday with Maarten in Berlin around 10PM. We grabbed a taxi to our hotel and there we had some drinks with guys of Microsoft and other attendees. In the hotel I also met Samuel Erskine who recognized me from TechEd 2008, was nice to meet him again as well. I was pretty tired and got to bed around 2AM.

Next morning we had a great breakfast and at 9AM the Service Manager (SvcMgr) event started. Nigel Cain and Travis Wright of Microsoft were presenting and gave some cool demonstrations as well. The first day of this event was focusing on how to extend Service Manager.

SvcMgr works with Management Packs, pretty much similar as the packs we know of Operations Manager. This gives you the flexibility of modifying about everything in SvcMgr. An example is that you can create your own forms and templates as well. Unfortunately I can’t go in any detail because of the NDA.

We had a great lunch in the hotel and had some more sessions later that day. I also met Panu Saukko (other ConfigMgr MVP). With him and Travis I worked closer on the ConfigMgr integration.

We planned a dinner that night with another colleague. It was Saturday night, first time in Berlin and a pretty busy schedule coming up so this was the time to have some fun as well! With Maarten and four other attendees we went to club Felix. Very nice club, with good music so great fun.

Day 2
After only a couple of hours of sleep the second day of the SvcMgr event started. This day we discuss some more features of SvcMgr, like the integration with ConfigMgr. As of today most is still NDA so no blogging for now unfortunately, but I promise you that as soon as I’m allowed to, I will write some posts about this integration.

Rest of the day we will dive deeper in SvcMgr and tonight we have a dinner with the SvcMgr product team and the TAP members.

I’ll keep you posted…have fun!

I just finished packing my bag for my flight to Berlin (Germany). Upcoming week TechEd will be kept there this year.

Before TechEd, so this weekend there is also a Service Manager TAP event which I will attend with Maarten Goet. For our TAP I tested the integration with ConfigMgr which is pretty cool I must say.

My guess is that TechEd will be great this year. But it will be a lot colder than Barcelona, 17 degrees right now and in Berlin only 6. Altough we face an economic crisis, TechEd is completely sold out which I think says a lot about the popularity of this Microsoft event.

Besides the event there are also country and community parties and I have some dinners with partners and Microsoft.
So pretty busy schedule and I hope to find some time to post here about what is going on in Berlin.

I will attend as Ask the Expert for ConfigMgr this year. So I hope to see you all at the ConfigMgr booth and I'll keep you posted!

Microsoft is bringing you a new webcast. This time regarding the earlier released Service Pack 2 and the announced R3.

For the ConfigMgr fans you cannot skip this one, a must see! You can register here.

Have fun!

Today I received the confirmation that I will attend Microsoft TechEd EMEA 2009 in Berlin as Ask the Expert.

Microsoft TechEd is the congres for everyone working in IT. This year the main focus will be on Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows 7, Exchange 2010.

At the event there are several stands for different products where experts are happy to answer all your questions. During the event I will be at the ConfigMgr stand. So save all your questions, and I'm looking forward to meet you all!

I'm very, very proud to announce that Service Pack 2 is now available. You can download the full pack here!

The evaluation pack is available here!

I blogged more about ConfigMgr SP2 here!

On site servers that run the 64-Bit version of Windows Server 2003 or the 64-bit edition of Windows Server 2008 you need to apply patch: KB960037

Have fun, specially with deploying Windows 7!