All new content for 2014!

Whether you’ve been to any MacTech event prior, or are new to MacTech events, MacTech BootCamp III will benefit you. All new content. All new curriculum. All new line up. All designed specifically for the Apple tech.

MacTech BootCamp III: Chicago, IL 2014

MacTech BootCamp III is a one day event targeted at the issues facing techs supporting small-to-medium sized businesses, small office, and home office (often referred to as SMB or SOHO markets), as well as consumers. Specifically, it is for anyone providing support services as a consultant or part of an organization. MacTech BootCamp’s sessions cover a variety of topics from those in the know about the topics below, all of which are designed to make BootCamp attendees more successful in supporting these markets.

Who Should Attend?

MacTech BootCamp is a one day event for those that support the small business market, small office/workgroup clients, or those supporting others in larger organizations.

MacTech BootCamp is a single-track, hotel based seminar that is specifically geared to serve the needs of consultants and techs wanting to better serve their base. MacTech BootCamp is perfect for those that already support small-to-medium sized businesses, communities, organizations, provide services to systems integrators or government clients, consumers, or that want to become a consultant supporting these areas.

Packed Schedule.

Using MacTech’s proven “running order” approach, we pack in the maximum number of sessions into the time available. Session titles below. At MacTech BootCamp, you learn from the experts and get to ask questions of those “in the know.”

See more details below.

July 23, 2014
Location
Westin Chicago River North

320 North Dearborn Street

Chicago, Illinois 60654

Discount rooms at $249/night
Call 312-744-1900, and ask for “BootCamp” discount
Only available for reservations made before July 1

Registration at 8:15am (no earlier please).

Sessions begin at 9am.

Day ends by 6pm.

Microsoft Office Accreditation. If you register for this event, you can attend the Microsoft Office accreditation event from 2pm-6pm the day prior at no additional charge. Space is limited.

Don’t wait. Space is limited. Register today.

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Sessions Chairs



Pam Lefkowitz, Core Computing

Pam possesses an enviable list of qualifications and certifications that attest to a lengthy and successful career as an IT professional and highly sought-after consultant. She may be best known for coining (and trademarking) the phrase It’s Always DNS®. Originally an inside joke, the phrase now serves as a calling card for the insightful work of a consultant comfortable working at all levels of networking, applications and operating systems to produce exceptional results for a client list that ranges from Enterprise level to Medium and Small Businesses. It may not always be DNS, but Pam will always dig to find out what it is!


Ben Greiner, Forget Computers

Founder and President of Forget Computers (creators of RobotCloud.net) Leveraging his extreme attention to detail, logic fueled rationale, and practices like change management and proactive support, Ben leads Forget Computers as an innovator in the Managed Service Provider market, and hosted tools for Apple device management. The Forget Computers team are highly knowledgable Apple support specialists, focusing exclusively on the Mac and iOS market.


Neil Ticktin, MacTech Magazine

Neil not only emcees the event, but oversees the session chairs and content for each MacTech event. Neil has been the Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of MacTech Magazine since 1992. With both a technical and business background, Neil has authored hundreds of articles including most of MacTech’s well known benchmarking articles on productivity applications, virtualization, and performance products.



Speakers



Paul Suh, ps Enable, Inc.

Paul Suh has been a Macintosh developer, systems administrator, and trainer since 1985, specializing in Mac OS X security and development of complex, dynamic web sites using WebObjects. He started ps Enable, Inc. in 2006, after working for seven years at Apple Computer in various positions. Prior to that, he worked as an economist at LECG and at Deloitte & Touche, analyzing markets and businesses.


Ben Greiner, Forget Computers

Founder and President of Forget Computers (creators of RobotCloud.net) Leveraging his extreme attention to detail, logic fueled rationale, and practices like change management and proactive support, Ben leads Forget Computers as an innovator in the Managed Service Provider market, and hosted tools for Apple device management. The Forget Computers team are highly knowledgable Apple support specialists, focusing exclusively on the Mac and iOS market.


Allen Hancock, Watchman Monitoring

Allen Hancock received his Bachelor’s in Early Childhood Education at the University of Missouri – Columbia. This background in education keeps him coming back to MacTech. In 2000, Allen started the Mac Consulting Group, Inc: an Apple Specialist and Authorized Training Center based in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. There, he found his thrill in helping clients make the most of their computing experiences. In 2012, Allen sold the Mac Consulting Group to The Orchard, where he continues to do what he loves most: help make happy customers. Over the course of his career, he met too many people as they suffered a failing hard drive without a current backup. As a means of preventing such loss, Allen founded Watchman Monitoring, Inc. Its namesake product is a Software as a Service tool which allows service providers to address such problems before it’s too late.


Jason Borchardt, State Farm

Jason Borchardt was originally hired at State Farm to work on loading Apple workstations, however his talent for integrating Apple workstations into an enterprise environment was quickly recognized and he now owns all technical processes and implementations for the Apple platform at State Farm. After going through many challenges during implementations, it has always been a goal of his to make sure that other systems administrators do not need to go through the same frustrations twice and is always happy to share past experiences and introduce new ideas with others. He has an expert knowledge of many topics including the management of iOS and OS X devices, integration into an enterprise environment, scripting, software deployment, secure networking, and more.


Brian J Best, BestMacs/Mac-MSP

Brian Best is the founder and CEO of both BestMacs Inc and Mac-MSP LLC. For 15 years, BestMacs has been providing service to Apple-powered businesses in Kansas City and surrounding regions. We are Kansas City’s only 100% Mac-based Managed Services Provider. Mac-MSP builds managed services tools for Mac-powered MSPs, with our inaugural tool for automated maintenance, Gruntwork now available. Brian is an ACTC and a long-time Apple Consultants Network member, and ACN Advisory Council emeritus. When not working his day job, he enjoys time with his wife and sons, judging BBQ, and watching Chiefs football.


Ryan Grimes, HoosierMac Consulting

Ryan Grimes started HoosierMac Consulting 10 years ago this June. Two years ago he transformed HoosierMac from a “Break Fix” company to a Managed Services provider on the Apple platform and hasn’t looked back. HoosierMac has been able to better serve business/education customers by shifting focus and now tells customer when they’ve having problems instead of the other way around. When Ryan isn’t working with his amazing staff at HoosierMac, he’s probably watching his kids play a sport somewhere.


Jack-Daniyel Strong, Strong Solutions

Jack-Daniyel Strong is the President of J-D Strong Consulting, Inc. and Strong Solutions. As a member of the Apple Consultants Network, J-D Strong Consulting grew from a one-man consultancy to Strong Solutions, an Apple Authorized Reseller and Service Provider for the Eastern Washington and Northern Idaho area. Strong Solutions’ sole focus is on MacOS and iOS solutions for Small and Medium Business. When Jack isn’t coming up with Apple related solutions, he is heavily involved in helping to revitalize the surrounding community, serving as President of the Spokane Neighborhood Business Centers, Past-President of the East Spokane Business Associations, and as a member of the Greater Spokane Small Business Council. And, in his free time he sneaks in some golf and whitewater rafting.


Arek Sokol, Code42

Arek Sokol is an Enterprise Systems Engineer at Code42 the makers of CrashPlan and SharePlan. With an “Anything Mac” mantra, Arek has designed and implemented many Mac infrastructure solutions as a Senior Client Engineer employed at Genentech and Salesforce. Today outside of engineering and architecting Enterprise backup infrastructures he stay connected with 150+ other Mac administrators and engineers across the San Francisco Bay Area through his macbrained.org community which he co-founded in 2013.


Bobby Toledo, Microsoft

Bobby Toledo was first introduced to Apple in 2007 where he worked in Apple retail for 6.5 years. While at the Apple Store, Bobby facilitated market-wide core trainings and led his store in development. During the last two years at Apple, Bobby helped manage the Genius team as a Genius Administrator where he furthered his technical knowledge. In 2013, Bobby transitioned to a Danish wireless speaker company as the North American Western Regional Sales Manager where he refined his sales and business acumen skills. With his passion for training and technology, Bobby Toledo is now a Microsoft trainer who loves to motivate others.



Sessions and Topics



Sessions are 30-50 minutes long, with most sessions at about 40 minutes. There are nine sessions in the 2014 curriculum.

Topics Covered

The topics covered will include:

  • PKI, encryption, certificates and you.

  • The World of Apple IDs.

  • Profiles.

  • WiFi: Best Practices.

  • Deployment.

  • Backups and Storage.

  • Office for Mac: Collaboration Tools.

  • Security: Keeping Them Out.

  • Security: Letting Them In.

  • and more…

Read on for more details.

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.

PKI, encryption, certificates and you.


Secure encryption of data influences how we all use technology, and the assumptions we make about the privacy of our data both on our devices and when our data leaves our devices in email, in the cloud, when we shop, and in countless other ways that extend further into our private lives with every new technology we adopt. Learn about the technology that underlies our false sense of security, how it works and what you can do as a consultant to manage that security for your clients.

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.

Profiles


We work on Apple technology in a privileged time. We have the ability to enroll our Macs and our iOS devices into device management. We have the ability to nearly magically send instructions over the air almost instantly to enrolled devices from a server. We can send special profiles that users cannot remove from applications like Apple Configurator to devices connected over a USB connection. So many management opportunities exist today, one can hardly fit all of the options into a single 40 minute talk, but in this Profiles session, we will do our very best.

WiFi. Best practices.


Wi-Fi has rapidly become the network connection of choice. This choice means the Wi-Fi network must be reliable at all times. Wi-Fi is no longer a “nice to have” – downtime or poor performance is not an option. This session presents factors that affect Wi-Fi performance and how to use them as part of your Wi-Fi design, deployment and troubleshooting.

Deployment


Deployment was once a question of how to get the same software and configuration on a bunch of computers. Today it can mean so much more to you and your customers. Does it mean handing out iPads that are already configured and ready to go? Does it mean building a “perfect” computer and replicating it to dozens, hundreds or thousands of others? Does it mean building a clever array of installers, scripts and preference files to install in sequence to create a lightweight and flexible computer customization system? Today deployment means all of the above, and the well prepared consultant needs to understand them all.

Backups and Storage


Let’s face it people don’t back up their stuff. The fact is that is probably not your fault. The problem is if you don’t find a way to make it your problem eventually someone is going to blame you when they lose their stuff. This session is all about you saving the day. You will learn the tools, the techniques, and the tricks to make sure your customers are backing up their data, and that you can get their data back when disaster strikes.

Office for Mac: Collaboration Tools


You have options for collaboration productivity tools. What are the pros and cons of each? Do you know how to use web apps vs. applications effectively? 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? Learn from Microsoft experts how you can not only make the most of Office for yourself, but those that you support.

Security. Keeping them out.


With the significant increase in cyber threats – particularly in the SMB and mid-market size companies, an understanding of systems security as well as the relevant threat is becoming increasingly essential in the marketplace. With the belief that “OS X is inherently secure,” it is our responsibility to ensure that our network and operations are as secure as anticipated. With a selection of core technologies, we can radically decrease the asymmetric threat.

Security. Letting them in.


So you’ve locked down your business – secured your data and network to eliminate any possible threat. Now the hard part – how do we let in specific users on specific devices to access our data. We must differentiate authorization and authentication to ensure access to specific resources and maintain our data integrity. By identifying the gap between user’s needs and our security requirements, we can ensure the data security while allowing real work to get done.


Sponsors



MacTech selects key vendors to be a part of the event. Sponsors will be speaking and attending the event, and can talk to you about the solutions they offer. It’s a unique opportunity to make contacts within these companies and get your questions answered. Interested in sponsoring a MacTech event? See our sponsorship page.


 

Media Support

These great publications support MacTech Events in a variety of different ways.



Don’t wait. Register today by clicking here.




Note: All information is approximate and projected, but it does evolve. All sessions, speakers and descriptions are subject to change at any time without notice.