Houston 2019 Event Schedule

Welcome.
Sessions overview, event details and more.

Managing communication with your users and your team becomes exponentially more difficult as communication methods increase. Email, phone calls, voicemail, text messages, Facebook messenger, Twitter, Slack and more continue to vie for your attention. How best to share that direct message with your team? How do you stay on message, but let everyone feel heard and in the loop? Support Desk systems with some work can become your communication hub, helping your team be more efficient, stay on message, and be in the loop. Learn how to build your process to increase your productivity, get more done, and helps your organization be more efficient, profitable, and effective while at the same time providing better serving to those that you support.

Wi-Fi has been known by 802.11g/n/ac, now the Wi-Fi Alliance has introduced Wi-Fi 6. We’ve had Wi-Fi around for quite some time, but we’re heading into a new era for Wi-Fi. We are rewriting the book on how to have reliable and performant Wi-Fi. In addition, Wi-Fi networks are playing more and more of a role in mobile services with that important growing as 5G, IoT and more become more prevalent. The days Wi-Fi being relatively simple are gone, and it’s the responsibility of both consultants and IT to be ready. This session will help you answer the call for “good Wi-Fi” in 2019.

Cloud, cloud, cloud. The image is meant to convey advanced, cushy, flexible and extensible solutions. But, with all the benefits, there are some real dangers that many have just ignored. Forefront of the list is how do you create a backup strategy when everything is in the cloud? Are you currently relying on that single source provider providing cloud services to also backup your data — mission critical or otherwise? The tools have been limited to date, but we’re finally seeing some good methodologies to backup the cloud. Come hear about the ingredients you need to know to create the right recipe for those you support.

With all that we’ve seen in recent years with disasters: fires, hurricanes, storms and more — continuity planning is no longer a nicety, it’s a very real need. Planning for continuity also can also play into how you can be “Cyber Resilient” as part of a security plan. Continuity Planning can be daunting because there are so many ways things can go wrong, but with today’s technologies, it’s actually easier than ever. Even better, there’s daily benefits that have nothing to do with continuity or disaster. In this session, we’ll talk about how you can ensure that things can keep running when disaster strikes, and their everyday benefits.

Buffet Lunch, Onsite
Sponsor Tables, Lunch Room

The command line is one of the most useful tools for techs, but it can be daunting for some. And, even those that have mastered it have been looking for a way for users to benefit from their magic. Finally, we have a real solution. Apple’s Swift programming language is most widely used for iOS and macOS development in Xcode. Swift can also be used like a traditional Unix shell script. This session will cover the basics of getting started with Swift at the command line. It’s easier in a lot of ways than bash scripts, and you can now create a double clickable application for use by those you support.

Security concerns are everywhere — and the regular stream of news about breaches validates the concern. Yet despite that, 90% of small business don’t use any data protection, and when they are attacked, 60% go out of business within six months of the breach. Enterprises get this too — but also aren’t as thorough. We understand the problem, but what’s the solution? Security needs to be simple, usable, and without getting in our way. The old mantra of “inside = trusted” is an antiquated concept as network breaches continue to soar. Zero Trust Networking (ZTN) is a more Mac like way of thinking about security — helping to integrate security from the ground up, not bolted on after the fact. This session will lay the foundation for ZTN, and help you to understand the successful ways to protect those that rely on you.

With Apple’s latest introduction of the iPad Pro, what does this mean going forward for mobile users? In this session we will explore how this platform can integrate into your daily workflow and see how working with this new platform brings new concepts on storage along with opportunities to integrate parts of your business you may not be aware you can do from this new mobile computer.

With each recent version of macOS, Apple has moved more and more of the services in OS X Server to the base macOS. Often, the technology is the same, but the user interface for these services is different and geared more towards a general use case, than what you’d like as a server. Time Machine, File Server, and even security features have all been removed from the Server App interface — and it’s likely time for people to consider replacements. As Apple signals the sunset of OS X Server, we will cover potential replacements including open source alternatives, cloud-based services, network attached storage, Security as a Service, and/or other solutions.