Steve on Security

Yet another presentation on the docket!  I submitted an abstract to SharePoint Summit 2011 and they accepted!  I will be presenting on SharePoint and how it manages Identity.  More specifically, how SharePoint 2010 uses WIF to handle Claims based authentication and Federation.

Here are the details

Event: SharePoint Summit 2011, January 31st 2011 – February 2nd, 2011

When: 11:30 a.m. - 12:45 p.m. February 1st, 2011

Where: Four Seasons Hotel, Toronto

Abstract: Managing identities within an organization is relatively easy. However, as business changes, we need to be able to adapt quickly. Identity is something that often gets overlooked in adaptation. In this session we will discuss the Windows Identity Foundation and how SharePoint uses it to adapt easily to change.

Link: http://www.sharepointsummit2011.com/Toronto/conference_day2.htm#session_7_3

Similar to the TVBUG presentation, I will be presenting on the Windows Identity Foundation to the Metro Toronto .NET User Group.

Here are the details:

When: November 10th, 2010

Where: KPMG, 333 Bay Street, 10th Floor, Toronto

Abstract: Identity is a tricky thing to manage. These days every application requires some knowledge of the user, which inevitably requires users to log in and out of the applications to prove they are who they are as well as requiring the application to keep record of the accounts. With the Windows Identity Foundation, built on top of a Claims-based architecture, there is a fundamental shift in the way we manage these users and their accounts. In this presentation we will take a look at the why's and dig into the how's of the Windows Identity Foundation by building an Identity aware application from scratch.

Rob Windsor and TVBUG are letting me present on November 8th on Claims-Based Authentication and Identification.  Here are the details:

Location: Room 1, Library, 2nd floor, North York Public Library

Date: Monday, November 8, 2010

Time:
6:30 to 6:50 (Pizza - Meet and Greet)
6:50 to 7:00 (Group Business)
7:00 to 9:00 (Presentation)

Topic: Changing the Identity Game with the Windows Identity Foundation

Abstract: Identity is a tricky thing to manage. These days every application requires some knowledge of the user, which inevitably requires users to log in and out of the applications to prove they are who they are as well as keep a record of their accounts. With the Windows Identity Foundation, there is a fundamental shift in the way we manage these users and their accounts. In this presentation we will take a look at the why's and dig into the how's of the Windows Identity Foundation by building an Identity aware application from scratch.

Directions

All TVBUG meetings are held at the North York Public Library or North York Memorial Hall. Both are located in the same building at Yonge Street and Park Home Avenue (North of the 401 between Sheppard and Finch across from Empress Walk). If you are taking the Subway get off at the North York Centre Station. The library meeting rooms are on the 2nd Floor. Memorial Hall meeting rooms are on the Concourse Level near the food court.

Due to the fact that the hosting provider I was using for Syfuhs.net was less than stellar, (names withheld to protect the innocent) I’ve decided to move the blog portion of this site to blogs.objectsharp.com.

With any luck the people subscribing to this site won’t see any changes, and any links directly to www.syfuhs.net should 301 redirect to blogs.objectsharp.com/cs/blogs/steve/.

As I learned painfully of the problems with the last migration to DasBlog, permalinks break easily when switching platforms.  With any luck, I will have that resolved shortly.

Please let me know as soon as possible if you start seeing issues.

Cheers!

Sometime last week I sent out an email to quite a few people:

As is the way of things in the tech industry, jobs change.  More specifically, mine.

Sometime around October 1^st this email will be turned off as I am starting a new position with ObjectSharp working with some of the brightest minds in Toronto.  If you need to get in touch with me after that date you can do it through a few channels.  My personal email is steve@syfuhs.net, which gets checked more often than it should, and my O# email will be ssyfuhs@objectsharp.com.

Cheers

Steve Syfuhs, MCP
Soon to be ex-Software Developer / Database Analyst
Woodbine Entertainment Group
416.675.3993 Ext 2592

While I really enjoyed my job here at Woodbine (even though I complained about it from time to time), it’s time for change and to move on to new opportunities. 

Barry Gervin offered me such an opportunity and I start with ObjectSharp on October 1st.  Bonus for starting on a Friday.

My role has many functions.  Some internal; some external.  Some loud; some…notsomuch.  Some cryptic.   It sounds like it will be an amazing experience!

So… I leave you with this:

While I am definitely not looking for a new job, I was bored and thought I would take a stab at a stylized resume to see if I could hone some of my (lack of) graphics skills.  It didn’t turn out too badly, but I am certainly no graphics designer.

What do you think?

Tonight at the IT Pro Toronto we did a pre-launch of the Infrastructure 2010 project.  Have you ever been in a position where you just don’t have a clear grasp of a concept or design?  It’s not fun.  As a result, CIPS Toronto, IT Pro Toronto, and TorontoSQL banded together to create a massive event to help make things a little more clear.  To give you a clearer understanding of how corporate networks work.  Perhaps to explain why some decisions are made, and why in retrospect, some are bad decisions.

Infrastructure 2010 is about teaching you everything there is to know about a state-of-the-art, best practices compliant, corporate intranet.  We will build, from the ground up, an entire infrastructure.  We will teach you how to build, from the ground up, an entire infrastructure.

Sessions are minimum 300 level, and content-rich.  Therefore:

Well, maybe.  (P.S. if you work for Microsoft, pretend you didn’t see that picture)

A few minutes ago I just finalized my first CodePlex project.  While working on the ever-mysterious Infrastructure 2010 project, I needed to integrate the Live Meeting API into an application we are using.  So I decided to stick it into it’s own assembly for reuse.

I also figured that since it’s a relatively simple project, and because for the life of me I couldn’t find a similar wrapper, I would open source it.  Maybe there is someone out there who can benefit from it.

The code is ugly, but it works.  I suspect I will continue development, and clean it up a little.  With that being said:

• It needs documentation (obviously).
• All the StringBuilder stuff should really be converted to XML objects
• It need's cleaner exception handling
• It needs API versioning support
• It needs to implement more API functions

Otherwise it works like a charm.  Check it out!