Allen Hancock, The Orchard Solutions

Allen Hancock received his Bachelor's degree in Early Childhood Education, and relishes the teaching aspect of being an Apple Consultant. In 2000, he started the Mac Consulting Group, Inc: now a full service Apple Specialist and Authorized Training Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Allen finds his thrill in helping his clients make the most of their computing experiences. In an attempt to help streamline checking on the mundane aspects of owning a computer, Allen founded Watchman Monitoring, Inc, a tool for service providers to keep tabs on their clients' computers without the heavy hand of "owning" their computers.

Rob Holz, Call Andy!

Rob Holz began using Apple products at the age of two with an Apple IIc. In 2004 Rob was hired by Apple Inc. as a Mac Genius. “It changed my life. It allowed me to build a career that I am passionate about.” While working for Apple, Rob received numerous performance awards and was selected to attend weekly conference calls with the iPod development team to help improve Apple’s #1 selling music player. Rob has been with Call Andy! Macintosh Consulting in Boston, MA since 2010.

Adam Schechter, Precision Consulting

As the President and CEO of Precision Consulting, Adam Schechter has established a reputation as one of the leading Macintosh solution providers in the country. After his introduction to Mac use in1985, Adam spent four years at the New York Times, rising to manage all Macintosh operations for the company’s magazine division. In 1997, he left the Times to start Precision Consulting, and since then has worked with numerous educational institutions, Fortune 50, Fortune 100, and Fortune 500 companies, including Playtex, Pepperidge Farms, Travelers Insurance, Aetna. Through his company, Adam has assisted firms with outsourcing IT responsibilities to streamline processes, implementing statewide 1 to 1 wireless initiatives, addressing design concerns (placement, radiation emissions, etc.), and integrating Macintosh and Windows services into existing networks. Precision has served its educational client base diligently - Yale, Quinnipiac, and Fairfield Universities have taken advantage of their expertise in addition to the hundreds of schools in Maine and New Hampshire that were part of massive 1 to 1 deployments and other smaller schools. Adam is a member of the Apple Consultants Network, a former Apple Advisory Council member for ACN; is an Apple Premier Developer and holder of many Apple certifications; and has been a frequent speaker at both MacWorld and Seybold. In addition, he has taught a number of courses at the Apple Market Center in Manhattan, including Network Design, Introduction to OS X, and Successful Support Technologies.

Brian Govatos, Microsoft Senior Trainer

Brian Govatos is a Senior Trainer for Microsoft who has also been heavily involved in the Apple community since 2006. From 2006 to 2009, he was a Mac consultant for several small business clients in Las Vegas. With a passion for communicating ideas, Brian loves to discuss technology and to inspire users to make the most out of it.

Cheryl Schneider, The Mac Works

Cheryl Schneider is the Owner of Mac Works. With substantial industry expertise in providing dozens of organizations with needs analysis and project design; management and implementation of hardware, software, server and operating system deployments, and life-cycle management; systems and network security, Mac Works has over 25 years of IT experience integrating multi-vendor and cross-platform solutions, and enriching the knowledge and skills of other IT professionals in the administration, maintenance, monitoring and troubleshooting of networked systems, servers and network infrastructure.

Max Buxton, Call Andy!

Max Buxton has been a full time Macintosh consultant for over fifteen years. Before working as a consultant, Max honed his troubleshooting skills working as a software tester and application engineer for computer software development companies. Upon realizing he enjoyed working with end users as much as the technology, he transitioned to system administration, supporting groups of users and refining his “consulting” chops. In the late 1990′s, Max decided to become an independent consultant and concentrate on what he enjoys most: helping Macintosh users get the most out of their systems. He’s been a certified member of the Apple Consultants Network since 2003.

Leon Lincoln III, Broad Institute

Currently a System Administrator for the Broad Institute or MIT and Harvard where he designs and implements the Mac computer deployment images, manages the Mac Server environment and assists with supporting both Unix/Linux and Windows systems. With over thirty years experience in doing some form of IT work from his early beginnings in the printing industry where he worked when the Apple Macintosh was first introduced, to working with Publishing companies supporting weekly production of Journals like the New England Journal of Medicine to straight IT work for the past 12 years, Leon has worked with every Mac OS from Apple since 1984 to Present.

Clay Morris, Broad Institute

Clay Morris is currently a Linux Systems Administrator at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, MA. He has 15+ years supporting Macs as well as opening three Apple stores. He started out supporting Macs after being elected the default geek to support the back of house ordering systems which quickly branched out to supporting the design team during menu time. His IT journey has taken him to places such as New Balance, where he designed and implemented the Mac infrastructure, to consulting where he has supported several businesses along the way. His path to Linux started when Apple shifted to OS X.

Sessions

Sessions are 30-50 minutes long, with most sessions are about 40 minutes. There are nine sessions in the 2013 curriculum.

Keynote:
How Do the Key Building Blocks for Today's Consultant Fit Together

What does today's Apple consultant need to know to be effective in serving everyone from small business to Enterprise, support personnel, or even home users and networks.

Mobility and Profiles

Who owns the data on your mobile device? How do you keep sensitive data from getting into the wrong hands? What do you do when you blur the lines between personal and business needs for a phone? At an increasing rate, clients and staff need help managing mobile devices. They need to keep their data secure, and give users the features and access they want, and they want to do so without compromising. There are a variety of ways to accomplish these goals. Learn about mobility, profiles, and the steps you can take to find the right solution for their needs.

Local Storage, Network Storage, Backups

Data is growing faster and larger than ever before. SSDs, Fusion drives, cloud, and network are just a few buzz words of the day. Do you know the proper use for each? Do you know your options for connecting storage? Do you know how to serve your backup needs properly? Learn about storage area networks vs. network attached storage, backup options and critical knowledge for keeping data safe.

Networks and Routing

Networks: Can't live with them, can't live without them -- they often are plagued with invisible, black box problems, yet need to be working 24/7. Are you trying to design a network that should not be seen nor heard about? Do you have the knowledge to eliminate or identify network issues in tackling a problem? Are you ready for what IPv6 is going to do to every network, everywhere? Learn about network design and troubleshooting from the ground up, and see a great example of what a common small business network should look like.

The World of Apple IDs

Apple is continually changing the rules for Apple IDs, iTunes accounts, and more. Learn the latest rules, how devices are treated, migrating to new hardware, dealing with multiple IDs, and iCloud. Find out how iTunes Match works, how Mac App Store differs from iTunes, and the right way for working with deployment and imaging. Learn the restrictions for merging Apple IDs and how to combine them.

DNS

There is one technology that is core to how all other technologies today work. It affects email, web, file servers, databases and in short, just about everything. As a core technology, it's often the cause of so many problems -- or as one of our sessions chairs says "It's Always DNS®". In this session, you'll learn not only about the most important parts of today's DNS, but also some of the best examples of how you can use DNS as a tool, debug, and finally, find additional resources and information about domain name services.

Microsoft Office: Feature and Deployment Options

Microsoft Office is at the core of how people work, yet many people don't know what Office for Mac can do, let alone take advantage of it. Did you know that Office includes collaborative editing features both through the web and the cloud? Or that Office can be deployed in a variety of ways, and licenses used on more than one computer? Do you know which Office features that help people work the most efficiently? Learn from Microsoft experts how you can not only make the most of Office for yourself, but those that you support.

Command Line

Because the Mac has such an intuitive user interface, many consultants forget about the power of the command line -- which can often accomplish something faster, or more easily. Sometimes, it's the only way to accomplish certain things. Learn about how the command line works, the best way to use man pages, and scripts. Walk away with real examples and useful tips.

Deployment

How do you stop doing the same thing over and over again? How do you help someone get a number of computers ready for use very quickly? Deployment and management of devices, disk images, and packages are often the critical solution. And, yesterday's best practices are quickly being replaced by new methodologies. Learn about deployment options, imaging, packages and the tools you need to be productive and efficient.