Last Day for $400 discount on BrainShare

The big discount ends today!  Early Bird discounts will continue though until September 1st, it's just that the amount drops a little bit each time.

BrainShare will cover all of the Novell, NetIQ, and SUSE product lines, so basically it's still the BrainShare we know and love, with just a few new names added.

Also, I'm working with Novell to get a special code for folks to use - no discount or anything - and I'll be doing some drawings for "vintage" Novell spiffs from my personal stash.  Part of my normal BrainShare Buddies stuff that I do.  Nope, Novell doesn't pay me to do this, it's just something I've found useful for others over the year.

Anyone wishing to volunteer to help, drop me a note/comment/holler/whatever and I'll get you details as I work them out.

Novell announces new Exec team - and I'm kind of happy about it

Today, Attachmate announced the new Executive line up for the Novell Business Unit.  The good news is I know a large number of those folks and one that I know doesn't run from me - John Delks.  At least I hope he won't run from me, but there's the chance that either Ron Hovsepian or John Dragoon, or both forewarned him about me.  Guess I'll have to wear my running shoes at BrainShare this year.

I am liking what I'm hearing out of Novell though.  The re-commitment to giving the products the attention they deserve, the continued support of NetWare for loyal customers who've been unable to move to Linux, and the comments from friends still working there who were guarded but are more excited than they've been in years about working there.  Dean Lythgoe and Alex Evans are still on board and leading the GroupWise charge, which is great news as I still can pester them.

Top that with relocation of the headquarters back to Provo and there's only two things that still make me sigh with frustration: support being in India instead of returning to regional centers, and development not returning to the US/UK/EU for the non-SUSE products.  At least that's how it stands for now.

Novell's New/Old Headquarters

Now, don't get your panties in a wad, I'm not exactly slamming India's talent base.  It's just that there are cultural barriers causing issues with quality coding and an understanding of how business is done in these regions.  If Novell were "my" company, I'd keep commodity programming in India (primarily bug fixes and management tool development like iManager) and move the new development (new features/enhancements/product lines) to US/UK/EU.  We might see more stable code then and hopefully bug fixes would happen faster if customers could work with support staff in their own time zones and regions.

I will repeat what I've said to Colleen O'Keefe on multiple occasions - "it's not the accents or any language barriers that I have trouble with, it's the cultural differences".  Main issues being that India still has issues with treating women with respect and being equals, they do not have the freedom to, and often are discouraged from, think outside of "the box", and business processes/operations are different than what is "normal" for US/UK customers.

Still, all-in-all I'm getting more comfortable with the acquisition and the loss of jobs for many, many friends, Ron and John included.

There's still room! This Friday - Lunch-n-Learn

I'm working on some last minute addition of useful TIDs and latest information on the Attachmate buyout.  We still have room for Friday's Lunch-n-Learn at Optimal Solution's offices (my current employer) if you'd like to join us. We'll feed you at a minimum, and you might just win a fun prize to boot.

Here's the key topics in case you're interested:

• Best Practices for scheduled events
• Basics of GroupWise Health Checks
• GWCheck Switches you may have forgotten about
• Why Top-down Domain rebuilds are needed
• Recovering from a server hardware failure
• Future of GroupWise and latest on the Novell Acquisition by Attachmate

 
Optimal's offices are located in Wyoming, MI off the 131 and 54th Street. 

Brainshare 2011 Call for Papers

Novell is calling for submissions for Brainshare 2011 - deadline is May 31, 2011.

Get the details at
www.novell.com/brainshare

Novell Re-org continues

We all heard that the executives - including Ron and John - were all gone last week.  Then Ken Muir was gone.  And the "pruning" continues...I just heard one of my favorite Novell Trainers is gone as well.  I'm beginning to think we'll be at a skeleton crew of people I know and I have to wonder if I have the energy to re-train an entire new set of exec's, PMs and engineering staff to understand the needs of my customers.

I feel a change in the force...the "dark side" is pulling harder.  Maybe I should reconsider my Linux cert paths and go after Red Hat after all...