EduTech Posted February 25, 2011 Posted February 25, 2011 Ohh - not fair - I would have loved to have been there but I would never have managed the drive home later - had to stop for a nap as it was.... I'm not sure i was alcohol free this morning.. kinda worried me a bit.. but i was alright journey was fine just took it nice and easy had to be in work this afternoon that was the worst part!
TheScarfedOne Posted February 25, 2011 Posted February 25, 2011 you are not sure if you were alcohol free.... hmmmm, it was a crazy night!! @witch - good to see you again, even though brief. yes - it is still me, just a new identity. everyone knows me for the scarf - so it made sense. Thanks again DB, Ric, Russ (as your last admin event), Ellie at MSFT for a great day - and the mods for the hospitality.
witch Posted February 25, 2011 Posted February 25, 2011 @witch - good to see you again, even though brief. yes - it is still me, just a new identity. everyone knows me for the scarf - so it made sense. . Well, most people know that I think that forum names should be interesting and NOT your own name - so I LOVE your new identity!
TheScarfedOne Posted February 25, 2011 Posted February 25, 2011 ok, someone explain the smoothie?! lol check twitter :-p EduTech topped up his coffee with smoothie rather than milk this morn! Epic fail :-p
TheScarfedOne Posted February 25, 2011 Posted February 25, 2011 Well, most people know that I think that forum names should be interesting and NOT your own name - so I LOVE your new identity! Well thank you very much :-p hehehe. Posted on the SW Conf Thread
john Posted February 25, 2011 Posted February 25, 2011 Finally got home after all the train delays (suicide jumper and an accident involving some graffiti artist idiots). Thanks for a great time all of you, special thanks to Dos_Box for the generous hospitality:D Now, can someone remind me who it was you were googling in the pub Which night? The first night ?
john Posted February 25, 2011 Posted February 25, 2011 Second night. oooh those things! no idea I felt the need to burn my retinas after that lot! I found the first nights more comedy those were just eeer.... yeh not good!
EduTech Posted February 25, 2011 Posted February 25, 2011 Second night. I still have it in my history! ;-)
elsiegee40 Posted February 26, 2011 Posted February 26, 2011 Having got home from Reading in exactly the time stated on my satnav... much to my amazement... I did start a 'thanks' thread, but that seems to have vapourised, so I'll say thank you again to Dos_Box, Microsoft and my fellow edugeeks for a thoroughly enjoyable time in Reading. It's not often we get the opportunity to bend an international corporation's ear about how they target their products. I think they realised they'd said the wrong thing when they said "pay somebody else" and all of us pointed out that money was so short that paying somebody else to sort out an expensive product wasn't an option. These things just wouldn't happen! Thanks also to James for the eduCake... it was very good
russdev Posted February 26, 2011 Posted February 26, 2011 It would be nice please if someone in the Primary break out session could give us some detail on what was discussed for those of us who where in the secondary session. Russ
witch Posted February 26, 2011 Posted February 26, 2011 It would be nice please if someone in the Primary break out session could give us some detail on what was discussed for those of us who where in the secondary session. Russ And Vice Versa as the odd one of us (and yes, I am very odd) actually cover both Primary and Secondary. What did we discuss - We made it clear that Primary and Independent do not have any spare money and often not the expertise or time (part-time techs) to administer some of the stuff we would like. His answer was to pay someone but we referred him to the lack of money. We made the point that some of the models used for charging, eg the licensing, does not suit smaller schools with few computers but many staff. We discussed the fact that we do not get to hear about the innovations and products Microsoft are bringing out - he was disappointed as he works with such people as SWGfL and Microsoft Partners but they dont pass on the info. (SWGfL have now taken on live@edu but those of us dealing with them didn't know that) Some of us don't buy anthing from offictial Microsoft Partners other than licensing, and that's just a question of asking Capita or whoever for the number we need - we don't get a discussion about whether that is the best method for us. He referred us the the Schools Blog and did say that he would feed back the information we provided to try to get a better model for helping the smaller schools. What else? Elsiegee, TheAngryTechnician, Superfletch, um um who else was there?? can tell you more
superfletch Posted February 26, 2011 Posted February 26, 2011 (edited) Yeah the Primary Breakout was quite good. Although there were some differences in opinion about whther the EES will be good or not for smaller schools, I guess the honest answer will depend on the school. Someone made an excellent point about loads of the products on offer (not just MS ones) addressing issues at the wrong ends of the education market. The point made was that why does a secondary, HE or FE student need an ID service to seamlessly move and authenticate them from one web application or domain to another when those kids can actually remember their passwords. It's the children at the younger end and in the special schools who genuinely need this sort of product yet the schools catering for these kids are prioced out of those markets. We talked about MultiPoint Server and it's various different applications in different scenarios. There were also some really cool tools demonstrated that I hadn't seen before one was Auto Collage, which as the name suggests creates nice looking collages, automatically. As Witch says we discussed how MS gets info out to schools and tried to offer some idea of how communication can be improved as things don't seem to be working with the current aggregated model in use (LA's and RBC's). It would have been even better if some snot nosed looking lad hadn't referred to it as being "Brownies" on the way out. It's all right though, I think I saw his mum telling him off when she picked him up. Edited February 26, 2011 by superfletch
AngryTechnician Posted February 26, 2011 Posted February 26, 2011 It would have been even better if some snot nosed looking lad hadn't referred to it as being "Brownies" on the way out. It's all right though, I think I saw his mum telling him off when she picked him up. That was actually a friend of mine and he'll be well chuffed to be referred to as 'lad' as he's in his mid-30s! He was only taking the mick out of me, not anyone else, as we used to work together at my last school (a secondary). I asked them to pass on a request for more step-by-step noddy instructions like the App-V Trial Guide that gives you the bog-standard install of a product that you can then play with, without having to wade through 3 chapters of deployment planning like most MS documentation. Also mentioned that the only case studies we ever see are full the all-singing all-dancing implementation of something when there's value in showing off the basics to schools with limited resources (i.e. we hear all about managed, clustered, automatic failover Hyper-V when just having the servers virtualised onto one box is worth it on its own).
AngryTechnician Posted February 26, 2011 Posted February 26, 2011 Oh, and while we're at it, here's the MST I mentioned that I use to ensure that the AutoCollage MSI doesn't hang when deployed through GPO Software Installation (on XP it tries to do a WGA check that requires the user to click next on a dialog that doesn't exist during GPO installation). As usual, test before deploying! You never know, they may have fixed the installer so it doesn't do it any more.AutoCollage Suppress WGA.mst
superfletch Posted February 26, 2011 Posted February 26, 2011 (edited) Fair enough - I didn't realise it was a friendly comment in quite that way - sincerest apologies. It did feel like more of a p155 take since it came just as we were leaving the room! As regard the age thing maybe I got the faces mixed up of who said it (or maybe not if it keeps your mate happy). I just clocked a very young looking lad as I heard the comment and maybe that is why I felt so annoyed by it. On the aggregation thing and getting messages across, I reckon MS could release an education podcast every so often with the latest info in it. Perhaps get a couple of edugeekers on board? Once again as others have said, thanks so much to everyone involved in organising this event. Edited February 26, 2011 by superfletch
Dos_Box Posted February 27, 2011 Author Posted February 27, 2011 Fair enough - I didn't realise it was a friendly comment in quite that way - sincerest apologies. It did feel like more of a p155 take since it came just as we were leaving the room! As regard the age thing maybe I got the faces mixed up of who said it (or maybe not if it keeps your mate happy). I just clocked a very young looking lad as I heard the comment and maybe that is why I felt so annoyed by it. On the aggregation thing and getting messages across, I reckon MS could release an education podcast every so often with the latest info in it. Perhaps get a couple of edugeekers on board? Once again as others have said, thanks so much to everyone involved in organising this event. This is being worked on as we speak
john Posted February 27, 2011 Posted February 27, 2011 As regard the age thing maybe I got the faces mixed up of who said it (or maybe not if it keeps your mate happy). I just clocked a very young looking lad as I heard the comment and maybe that is why I felt so annoyed by it. Can't visualise "the lad" but The AT looks only about 21! Scary how well some of our members are wearing sompared to others! As we found out on the Wednesday night in the bar when one member revealed his age that was scary how well some of you are wearing!
elsiegee40 Posted February 27, 2011 Posted February 27, 2011 I can't really add much to what was said by the others. I hope we managed to point out that, by pricing primaries and small independents out of the market, they were losing business from a considerable number of schools - there are are five times the number of primary schools to secondary schools. Hopefully the thought of losing such a huge amount of business will focus M$s attention a bit better. Assumptions were being made by M$ about pyramids and clusters that don't actually happen and with more and more academies on the scene, fewer schools will be under LA control. The 'independent' half of the room was also able to explain that nothing happens in our schools without the goodwill of the Bursar, so the ISBA might be a good starting point for getting to us.
GrumbleDook Posted February 27, 2011 Posted February 27, 2011 The pyramids and clusters are meant to happen even more under the academy / free school agenda, as individual schools are able to decide who to work with rather than only able to do it with those schools the LA tell them to. I know MS are having some discussions about this already (as many LAs hold select agreements on behalf of schools) so I should be able to shed some light about how it will affect Northants at least ... though other LAs might try to take a 'more controlling' approach. If people are finding that the move to academies is not stopping people working in groups for aggregated purchase then it should be raised with OGC ... and Bursars / Business Managers associations will indeed be the key
AngryTechnician Posted February 27, 2011 Posted February 27, 2011 Can't visualise "the lad" but The AT looks only about 21! And they say 'Just for Men' doesn't work.
elsiegee40 Posted February 27, 2011 Posted February 27, 2011 Actually, I think M$ were pretty brave... would you want to be shut in a small room with me, witch, angrytechnician, etc explaining our points of view...? They did come out alive!
jamesmay Posted February 27, 2011 Posted February 27, 2011 I sat in the Primary breakout and mainly just listened to what the rest of you had to say, it was interesting to hear what others thought of EES. When it was first announced, and figures were being floated around in terms of savings etc, I thought great and went and spoke to the school bursar about it. We are very lucky to be in the position to be on the schools agreement presently (trying to remove the capital expense and ensure we are keeping our pupils up to date) and pretty happy with it, but in the cost savings culture we are in, I saw it as a bit of a lifeline to be able to able to afford to do some blue sky advancement. My fear now is that Schools agreement will disappear and will between EES and select. Hopefully Microsoft will have a heads together and realise they are giving us a rough deal. Microsoft education comms would be fantastic. Its by chance I've clicked on the sidebar on the edugeek and got the front page of their schools blog. Being a bit of an apple freak, I frequently go to their website and go to the education section in that where it has more realistic case studies, but also tailors the site to different audiences, breaking it into school admins, teachers, IT pros with the information section it provides. Microsoft need to realise how aweful some LAs are and take matters into their own hands in terms of talking to schools.
Ric_ Posted February 27, 2011 Posted February 27, 2011 The pyramids and clusters are meant to happen even more under the academy / free school agenda, as individual schools are able to decide who to work with rather than only able to do it with those schools the LA tell them to. One of the problems that was mentioned was that there are strict rules concerning affiliation. For instance there is no 'affiliation' between an academy and its primary feeder schools as the feeder schools are LA controlled and the academy is a third-party trust.
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