MacDMV

MacDMV meets up with MacTech on June 24th

Mark your calendars for Tuesday June 24th and Wednesday June 25th. MacTech’s regional event in Washington, D.C. is at the Sheraton Four Points on K Street downtown, and we’ll be sandwiching our June meeting right between their Office Certification on Thursday afternoon and the main event on Wednesday.

Tuesday night, June 24th will be the next MacDMV Event. We’re still sorting out the location, but we’ll be near to the Metro in the District to take advantage of the large gathering of Mac and iOS Sysadmins in the DC area.

This year’s event has sessions on PKI and certificates, the expanding world of AppleID, Profiles and how to use them, WiFi: Best Practices & Deployment, and two sessions on security. There’s also a free Office Certification on Tuesday afternoon, as well. You won’t find a better event without having to drive, and, especially ahead of PSU Mac Admins in July, this is a great way to get some advanced knowledge to understand more sessions at PSUMA.

We’ll have an announcement early this week with locations and signups!

Join our mailing list, or email tom at macdmv dot com, for a massive discount code for the MacTech Bootcamp!

Join us for Happy Hour May 28th!

Join us at Overwood in Alexandria for Happy Hour on Wednesday May 28th from 6:30pm to 8:30pm! We’ll be socializing and talking casually about OS X and iOS management, as well as making predictions for WWDC in the first week of June!

We’d love to see everyone down at Overwood, and we hope you’ll tell your friends!

Event registration for MacDMV Late May Happy Hour powered by Eventbrite

May 1st Meet-up Recap

Thanks to everyone that was able to join our 2nd “technical” MacDMV session. We had a couple of great presenters, and the best thing was the crowd was VERY interactive asking great questions, bringing in their own experience, and providing suggestions throughout the night.

First up was Scott Secrest from JAMF Software discussing Apple’s new Device Enrollment Program (DEP) and how the Casper Suite utilizes these new available features. Check out Justin’s website on lessons learned with AppleIDs and DEP/VPP, along with notes from the MacDMV session.

Second was Tom Bridge discussing his newly created script called “Munki in a Box“. Tom outlined his logic for quickly getting Munki installed and running in a consistent manner for either first time users and/or consultants who need to deploy Munki in a consistent way on a regular bases. Checkout his repo on GitHub!

Lastly, we want to send a special thank you to Greenfield/Belser for providing us with an amazing location.

May 1st: DEP with JAMF, Munki in a Box

We’re set for this Thursday at Greenfield Belser, and here’s the schedule:

6:30 – Arrivals, Socializing, Catch-up and Introductions
6:45 – JAMF Software on DEP and the Mac Ecosystem, with demonstrations
7:15(ish) – Munki In a Box
7:45 – Open Floor
8:00 – Adjourn to a nearby place to eat/drink/be merry.

How to get to Greenfield Belser:

(Click for larger version)

GB is located at 1818 N St NW in DC. This is just a block and a half from the South Entrance of Dupont Circle Metro (Red Line). Metro will be your easiest bet. However, there is also metered street parking on N St NW, Sunderland Pl, and 19th Street (starting at 6:30), and there are two garages within two blocks that will have cheaper evening rates for parking: One next to Levante’s on 19th just south of the Circle, and one next to Rumors, just south of M Street NW. There are others, definitely, but those are the two I know have evening rates

Please RSVP so that we know you’re coming and can plan for your arrival.

Afterwards, we’ll adjourn to Big Hunt for those interested in a beer or some dinner, or there’s also Luna Grill and Diner, Buffalo Billiards, The Front Page, and numerous other spots within a block or two.

We’re excited to see everyone on Thursday!

Next Meeting: May 1st 2014! DEP, Munki in a Box and More!

Hello everyone!

After our low-key social meetup at Right Proper Brewing Company, we’re back to a more technical run-of-show for our next meeting! May 1st will be our next meeting, and we’ve got two great tech talks for everyone!

Talk 1: DEP and Casper

Apple’s new DEP program is a fascinating new take on how to pre-enroll your Apple devices (iOS and Mac OS X) with MDM solutions, and we’ll have on-hand Scott Secrest, a Senior Systems Engineer from JAMF Software to talk about how DEP is integrating with Casper environments and how that will work. Much of this knowledge will apply to other MDM systems as well, but we’ll be talking specifically about Casper.

Talk 2: Munki in a Box

While the open source Munki management system is a powerhouse, getting it into your environment may not be the easiest thing. Enter Munki in a Box, a new open source deployment script that leverages AutoPKG and MunkIReport-PHP to go from no management system to a functional Munki installation with AutoPKG integration, installed and imported packages, and a default manifest and catalog. This is useful for setting up Munki in a programmatic and common fashion using an easy-to-modify script that is reusable.

Location: Greenfield Belser, 1818 N St NW, Suite 110, Washington DC 20036

Special thanks to member Nanther Thangarajah for volunteering the space! GB is located just one block from Dupont Circle Metro on the Red Line. There is cheap evening parking in nearby garages available for the after hours fees, we’ll have details on this in our follow-up on Monday.

p>Please RSVP By Email! Let us know that you’re coming, please! There’s no cost to attend, but it’s incredibly helpful to know who’s coming so we can prepare.

MacDMV meetup recap

MacDMV had its first Tech Meetup on Wednesday February 19th, 2014. Both Justin Rummel and Gareth Digby presented on VPP and Virtualizing for Forensics (respectively).

You can find Justin’s presentation at http://github.com/justinrummel/MacDMV/.

Justin Rummel; http://justinrummel.com; @justinrummel
Gareth Digby; http://systeminterrupt.me; @Arkhitekton

Our next event will be social… stay tuned for location announcements.

MacDMV February 2014 Meetup

I hope you’re all prepped and ready for Wednesday night’s snow event! The more I see from the weather forecast models, the less I understand, but I hear it could be a doozy! But, there will be plenty of time to dig out before the next MacDMV meeting which is slated for Wednesday February 19th at 6:30pm at the 14th Street location of Cove DC. Our friends at Cove are going to have sodas out, and we’ll bring some light munchies, but we’ve got two really great presentations on deck for you!

First up is MacDMV co-founder Justin Rummel, who will be presenting on the new Volume Purchase Program that Apple has been rolling out for iOS environments. If you haven’t seen the new updates to the program, this will be a great way to learn about the new assignable applications, managing many Apple IDs and other good stuff!

Second up is MacDMV member Gareth Digby, who will be talking about using virtualization to teach computer forensics in a Mac classroom environment, including a lively discussion of the various toolsets that he uses in this Mac-hosted environment. Gareth will give the reasoning behind the approach that he has taken and some of the reasons things are the way they are in order to explain the computer system architectural context to the students. The presentation will draw out the educational and pedagogical aspects of the decisions that have been made so that others setting up a teaching environment are able to understand some of the trades that have made between technology and education.

We’ll also have a good discussion forum for folks to share some of what they’re working on, as well as ask questions and socialize. Then, for those wanting to head out for dinner, there’s Matchbox Pizza across the street and up a couple blocks!

Please email / tweet with an RSVP, if you’d be so kind. Also, if you need to be added to our email distro, let us know!

Cove DC is located at:

1624 14th St NW
2nd Floor
Washington DC 20005

vcf: http://cl.rummel.co/1w1R021P2v0f
apple maps: http://cl.rummel.co/2e0E3p0T1K30

MacDMV First Social: Boulevard Woodgrill’s Fillmore Room

Hi Everyone, Happy New Year!

Back in December when we put up the MacDMV.com signup form, we weren’t sure what we’d find, but over 50 people replied to the initial contact request, which is nothing short of phenomenal. We wanted to get things off to a social start, so we’re going to be hosting our first event as a mixer and social-style event to get everyone on the same page, and begin to plan out more technical events in the near future. We’re hoping to alternate more technical and more social events as we work our way through 2014.

We had a lot of interest from a broad range of folks in the greater DC area – stretching from as far north as PA to as far south as the Richmond, VA area. Our first event will be in Arlington, VA at the Boulevard Woodgrill’s Fillmore Room. They’re located at 2901 Wilson Blvd in Arlington, and we’ll be in the Fillmore Room from 3pm to 5pm on Monday, January 20th, which is the Martin Luther King Jr. Federal Holiday. Thanks to our friends at the Boulevard, we’ll have some appetizers on the house, and there will be a full-service cash bar just for us.

If you plan on joining us, please send us an email to let us know you’re coming.

In addition, if you spoke up about having venue ideas for future meetings, we’ll be in touch in the coming weeks as we work to line up our meeting in February, tentatively scheduled for the Presidents’ Day weekend.

We know that this date may not work for everyone, but we wanted to get this off the ground so that we could get this rolling soonest.

Feel free to forward this email far and wide, and we’ll be hard at work making MacDMV.com into a more usable hub for the Mac Community in the DC area. Thanks everyone, and see you at Boulevard Woodgrill on Monday January 20th at 3pm.

Best,

Tom Bridge, co-chair
Justin Rummel, co-chair
MacDMV