 So welcome to vlog Thursday, and I am here at the Microsoft Ignite Conference here in Florida. I've been out of the office all week. Some of you may follow my YouTube or my Twitter. I've been posting some of the stuff here, and I'm going to talk real quick about what brought me here and which is the SMLR podcast, and I'm wearing a shirt because I was just up in the podcast studio and doing some filming there for, not for my YouTube channel, but for our SMLR channel, and doing an interview about some Linux stuff. Yes, lots of Linux stuff here at Microsoft, and so that's been really an interesting thing because being a big Linux guy means what are you doing at a Microsoft conference? I mean obviously we deal with Microsoft day-to-day with our support company and things like that, but this has really been a deep dive into some of the product offerings that they're doing. The meeting we just had was with the Microsoft SQL launch, which is Monday, which what that is is the Microsoft database server is being brought over to Linux. Pretty amazing and really neat. The other thing we did was some really cool deep dive story with the guys who brought Git development into Microsoft and some of the other open stores, and so it's been fascinating. And this all started because Tony had started a podcast, but hey I want a podcast to talk about Linux, and through that podcast he was at PenguinCon and I met Tony and asked him to join and well I got on the podcast and we started doing things and then comes in the connections that came from that. Someone liked our podcast, someone listened to it, said hey you should hear this podcast and it landed to a guy over at Microsoft, and he says all right, they brought us over to the Build, which was earlier this year, and we went to the Microsoft Build conference and did some interviews with some really neat people doing some of the Linux and Azure and cloud data center stuff, and they liked the interview work we did, so that brought us all the way around to doing this one here Ignite down in Florida, and then that leads to the not completely announced yet, but I'll throw it in a vlog here. We're going to be doing the Microsoft Connect conference in New York that's going to be in November, so it's really interesting, and that's why the topic in here is Connections and Bernie Madoff, and I'll tell you how those go. So on the flight here Delta's got the planes in the back of the TV, in the back seats so you can watch TV while it keeps me distracted because I hate logistically flying and things that got annoys me and it being cramped up for so long. Movies help with that, glad things Delta for having it on there, and I watched the new Madoff movie, Wizard of Lies, and De Niro plays Madoff, which sounds weird, but it worked, it's he looks like, they put it together, and that detail is, yeah, it's kind of strange to think that De Niro would play Bernie Madoff, but he did. Anyways, what made it very interesting was is the Connections Madoff had, and that just really got me thinking about business and the connections and the importance of those connections. The connections that brought me here, the Connections Madoff had, and it's not just about, you know, something people think you have to be more enriched to start a business or you have to do that, but you have to be connected. It is like a big factor in there. It's a very helpful factor because you can take someone if you took their money away and you see those people who lose all their money one reason or another, but through their connections they get back on their feet very fast. And I think that's an aspect of business that maybe is not as often talked about, or maybe it is, I didn't look in the right places. You know, there's a lot of business theory on this and that, but the connections you have are so important. And the way it relates to Madoff is the connections he had allowed people just to keep investing with him, and he could keep the little game he had going, and it was terrible wrong, everything he did. But it was really interesting because when he was discovered a fraud, admitted to being a fraud, and the whole downfall of Madoff, and how it affected his son and who ultimately, I didn't know until watching a movie and verified it later that his son committed suicide over this, but it devastated him not just in a financial way, but because it ostracized him because of what his father did. Now, it remains questionable. I didn't read, based on the way the movie portrayed it, the sons had no connection to what was going on, and they were kept in the dark with it. I don't know enough facts about the case that I've been able to find in that research deeply of whether or not they knew anything. But tragic if they did, if they were at all part of it, but the part that I liked in the movie, because they really put it that the sons didn't know, was when they was being drilled by the government and saying, how did you not know your dad was doing this, and drilling it, and they flipped the table on them and go, how did you not know? Bernie Madoff was on all these different government boards and regulation committees, and he wrote the laws for these things, which is kind of ideal with the think that a guy got that, and Bernie was so trusted individual that he was writing the laws while also breaking them simultaneously was just an incredible disaster. But one that all fell apart for him, and that was part of what led the son couldn't take that. They were no longer welcome. They were no longer part of any type of community anymore. That's an important part of business is making sure your name never gets to be made off. We're doing anything to make that. So keeping your reputation is just so huge. I was just thinking a lot about that. I work very hard at that, and it means a lot to me to make sure that I do things in a very reputable and honest way. So that the connections are probably more important that you want to think about it. And that's part of what I'm doing here at the conference is not just podcasting, but I like going on a floor, I go to some of the sessions and do a lot of learning. But then it's the after sessions. It's the after hours and really getting in deep with some of the people building those relationships, making connections and hearing their stories of how things and products came about. And it's just really been a fascinating journey and learning from all that. It's almost like the real business deals happen after the official meetings. You know, the meetings are just to polish off the details. The real stuff happened, you know, later over a conversation or a drink or something like that. And we've been seeing that here. The after parties have been great. I mean, the customer interactions, when people can go, okay, there's no lawyers or PR people that says I can't talk about this. So I get some really deep understanding of how things work at Microsoft, how things work at some of these companies, challenges they face when they can talk about scenarios in a very open thing. Because if they officially titled, you know, how this thing went wrong with this customer, that's really hard for them presentation. But it's really easy for them. It's like, oh, yeah, this is what the challenge we're really facing and a problem we're trying to solve. And by going over those problems together, talk about how they overcame them, becomes this really interesting story. And I hung out with some of these people to like midnight, just going back and forth, you know, of how things came to be. And it was really cool because a few people also knew me from YouTube. And anyone who said hi, thank you very much. I do appreciate it. Feel free if you see me to say hi. I'm not bothered by that at all. And I thought it was funny, too, because we got to meet from Windows Weekly, that podcast, Mary Jo Foley and Paul Therat, which they were really graceful, really cool, great stories from them. And it was fun because Mary Jo was so humbled. She's like, maybe if you're watching this, you've heard of them because you're into tech like I am, or you've never heard of them. But she thinks it's so absurd that she's like an unknown, so to speak, in a celebrity class world. But she was mobbed. Like we had a meet up and everyone shows up. There's so many people. And she's like, I'm a celebrity, but it's weird. And I'm like, yeah, I guess, you know, she's because I'm a tech journalist. I do a podcast. I'm like, but you do a great podcast on tech journalism. And it is that weird feeling that, you know, there's like this weird niche celebrity. And I think that's, we will segue into that. That turned into a discussion, kind of a roundtable we had of being Crosby. And we'll go back that far. And there was a time when a percentage of America watched one thing. So you as a, as a country, there was a common ground with people funding. So many people, if you were watching it, watched a being Crosby special, Christmas special or whatever. And now America has become, and in general the world as we've expanded, we've now subdivided. So no one was ever as singularly popular as being Crosby. And now that doesn't matter as much because there's not anyone singularly popular anymore. We have now subdivided out into all these different categories. It's just really a fascinating, psychological think about that. And I'm seeing that here at the conference because, you know, we all flock together for the pieces of interest here. And by the way, to give you some scope and scale of this conference, there's 30,000 people here at the Orlando Convention. 30,000. And it's been really cool. I talked to one of the event directors while I was walking over here. And I said, well, you know, thank you. You guys have pulled this off really well. And they have. This event to coordinate that many people is a challenge to organize 30,000 people across several campuses. And then I know some of the people, the guy who brought us in for the podcast brought, he is coordinating lots of the dev talks that are going on. So he had to put together all the speakers, the agendas and things like that. So there's so many levels of planning here and it's been amazing. It's all well documented. It's easy to find. They have an app. They're Microsoft's. They got an app for that. And so they allow us to go to all the different conferences and then have these discussions and focus groups. And it's just been really cool. And then I did the bunny thing. If you see my previous video with the guy with the bunny, that was really cool. The Bill Bunny. And so these people, that's what makes it really fun. I mean, he works and develops the structured system that Microsoft uses to manage how they're deploying the program stuff, which he showed us in depth. And then, you know, I had looked him up on Twitter, so I seen that. I'm like, oh, look, there's this thing he's doing. So I got to ask him about that. So you have that fun, personal interaction. And it's great because techie people are very much like that. They're almost evangelical about the products they like or the tools they use. And it's really interesting here because you can find these little pockets of people doing things like that. So that's part of the purpose of me here. It's also a good refresher to step away from the business for a minute to think about it. All my guys have been following the Slack channel, you know, usual customer issues and things like that I see going on. I've taken a few phone calls and things like that. They haven't really needed my help. My team's been great. So that's what made me really happy. I got a message from Steve last night. He's like, hey, do you just want to stay there? I'm like, kind of. But Florida sucks. I'm gonna say that outright. I don't like this heat that much. This is just way too hot here in Florida. So it's a bit much for me. I love the air conditioning. And it started me thinking, you know, like this place has its own atmosphere to air condition a place of this size is a amazing feat of engineering to make all that happen. And it's been the climate inside has been just amazing and real happy with it. So it's nice and cool on the inside and it's really rough out there walking between places. But we have the usual projects still going on. You know, Cory's got some cabling wiring. We're going to do some more videos. I've been really thinking about how to do it. And I got another camera that's going to be more on-site. So when Cory does some of these building wiring jobs, we can go out there and follow through that. Dealing with, you know, the one thing that I did get at least took a look at and got a call and discuss today. You know, another vendor. All the planning committee went one way. The pre-plan for a job. And at the last minute, when we're just supposed to launch the job, the client is changing all the parameters. So now that's, you know, the fun of having business and things that you're like, why we have a planning and now you guys are changing even the location of where they want all the wires ran to, where they're all going to land, essentially their server room. Don't understand that. I'm also going to comment. I don't understand people who call repetitively and hang up. That is, it probably shouldn't bother me, but it kind of does because I keep leaving one second voicemails. I'm like, well, if you never tell me what you want, how am I supposed to solve the problem? And we had a client that I think they called nine times. I looked at the log and there's just a bunch of hangups. I'm like, why do they keep calling and hanging up? Like, I can't return their call, even though I think I know who, which client it is, because it just goes to their main number and we're not sure who's having the problem inside the company. But why did they just keep calling all morning and hanging up and never leaving a message or never sending us an email as to what they need? So we call back immediately. I'm checking all the voicemails because it alerts me a voicemail but the voicemail is only one second or two seconds long, which is just them hanging up the phone. I'm just always puzzled when people just keep, oh, I'll just keep calling, keep calling, keep calling. Our phone system is digital. It doesn't answer in the office until 10. It does not turn on till 10. So it just lets you leave voicemails. We have an after hours button you can press and it will ring our cell phones. They didn't choose to do that and they also didn't choose to leave a message so we don't know to call them back. And yeah, that's always a puzzle when people do that. I never, you know, I always leave messages. So we check the messages. Maybe some companies don't. Maybe that's why people do that and are used to people who don't check the messages. We check the messages. We're just throwing it out there. They come to my phone, they come to our group email. We get the message attached to the email. We can play it right from our phone so we don't even have to log in to do this. So if you call us, leave a message as to what you want so we can get right on it and help you. We're more than willing to help. We helped one of our clients had an emergency late at night and, you know, we take care of those issues. That's the some of the transportation companies work more hours than we're open. But we that's why we have an after-hours button so you can get a hold of us and do that. So if you do call us, just leave a voicemail. You know, don't just keep dialing and hanging up, dialing and hanging up. I don't know. Maybe you're watching this, maybe you're not, but I don't know if there's some reason you do that. Let me know because I'm curious or you're just used to companies that that's how you get a hold of them. That's where we try to be very, very responsive. I'll speak of it. I've been trying to reply all the YouTube comments and I was showing the one of the Microsoft guys because he thought it was funny. He's shown me from, he's met me from YouTube and I showed him how the YouTube comment system doesn't work right on the phone in the case he just doesn't work right. I showed him exactly the problem and if someone from YouTube is watching this, I don't know how to do it as a bug report or maybe I should fill one out. I get a notification I can slide down for my phone that says I got a message but then when I go to touch the message and check it, it doesn't exist and I can't find the message. Sometimes it shows up like two or three hours later but it's really weird that the app notifies me of a comment. I go to look for the comment. I can't find the comment. So that's kind of a strange issue I've seen with the YouTube app. So I do try to reply to everyone and same with the emails. I try to reply to all the emails but occasionally I'm confused when someone sends me an email because there's not an ask. I don't know if you want me to reply thank you or you know exactly what you're looking for. I try to understand some of the things on there. I've gotten a couple yeah I don't mind keep sending me messages but make sure if you are asking me something try to understand what you're asking. I'm not going to call anyone out but some of the emails I got I don't know what I don't understand it maybe and I just want to let you know but I don't mind the feedback I don't mind you know so I put my contact you can tweet at me you can email me um Facebook Messenger is a little bit tricky because of the privacy thing where it won't let me automatically reply to your message unless I go through an acceptance. So I don't always see those until I go through them but it seems like I got my Twitter opened up so if you want to DM me on Twitter or messaging on YouTube is bad I know they're trying to work on that but there's the community part you can leave comments on there if you've seen that I've thought about using it more but it's pretty yeah I'm not real clear on all that but anyways thanks for watching Plunk Thursday we'll have more next week I'll be back in the office back hanging out with Marvin and Em and we'll continue on from there all right thanks for watching like the content here like subscribe