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February 04, 2004
My First TechEd Session Proposal
Well, I made a big jump about a week ago – I submitted a proposal to present a session at TechEd. I think I’ve found an interesting subject – the proposed title of the session is “Exchange Scripting for Mere Mortals” – and I’m fairly certain that I can get some interesting, useful content together to present. But wow, speaking in front of a bunch of my peers certainly is an intimidating prospect. I don’t know how one prepares for such a thing – my guess is that you do everything you can to make sure you understand your material, then you take a couple deep breaths and just do it.
Despite my initial fear, I’ve had some fun jotting down ideas for the presentation – an introduction (duh), a section on the resources available to help get moving with scripting for Exchange, an explanation of the different tools available (CDO, CDOEXM, Perl, VBScript, WMI, etc.) – and which tools are most appropriate for which jobs. I also want to include several sample scripts that folks can use immediately and then modify as they get more comfortable.
The funniest thing (well, I think it’s funny, but I have a strange sense of humor) is that I don’t have a scripting background. I can usually make other people’s scripts do what I want them to do, and I generally can read scripts (heck, I can even decipher several lines of C++ if I have to…), but I haven’t taken any classes or read any books (although I’m working on that one – thank you Alain Lissoir) on the subject. But writing this book with Paul and Devin will surely give me the tools to succeed (or fail miserably, if I don’t pay attention!) (let’s hope for success, eh?).
Of course, now that I’ve spent a ton of time in OneNote outlining my session, MS will decide they aren’t interested, and I’ll be off the hook. Not sure what I think about that.
Posted by Missy at February 4, 2004 01:38 PM