Note: This page is historical.
It contains information from MacTech Conference 2018

See MacTech Conference 2018 Videos

Pre-Conference Workshops

All new for 2018 will be several optional, certifications and several full-day pre-conference workshops.

All pre-conference workshops take place on Tuesday, November 6, 2018 at the same hotel as MacTech Conference, and should be reserved in advance. The workshops are small group, interactive and hands-on. Student to teacher ratios are typically 15:1 or better.

Where appropriate, instructors may require you to bring a computer with specific, and freely available tools or software installed. See each workshop description for details.

Listed below in order of start times.

Full-Day Workshops
All take place on Tue Nov 6, from approximately 9am-5:30pm.
Lunch included.

• Making Your xxM Strategy Effective and Profitable
  MDM, EMM, RMM, MAM and More: Using management tools to increase profitability.
  Workshop taught by Avery Chipka, Circle Tech Collective
   
• Setting Up a Support Desk System Properly
  How to avoid common pitfalls, and problems when setting up a help desk system
  Workshop taught by JD Strong, Strong Solutions
   
• Securing Your Organization
  How to avoid common pitfalls, misconceptions, security holes and fads.
  Workshop taught by Sean Colins, CoreQuick
   
• Command Line: Unleashing the Power
  Learn how to unlock the power of the ultimate macOS tool and enabler.
  Workshop taught by Scott M. Neal, Mindset Garden/AcmeFoo
   
• Wi-Fi
  Design & Troubleshooting
  Workshop taught by Jeanette Lee, Ruckus Wireless
  

Half-Day (afternoon):
Tue Nov 6, 1:30pm-5:30pm

• Apple Certification Exam and Study Session
   

You can register for the pre-conference workshops when you register for MacTech Conference (it’s an option on the conference registration form). Or, if you are already registered for MacTech Conference, simply contact MacTech customer service to assist you.

Note: Workshops may require minimum participation levels.
All times are approximate. All sessions, speakers and descriptions are subject to change at any time without notice.

Full-Day Workshops

All take place on Tue Nov 6, from approximately 9am-5:30pm.
Lunch included.

Making Your xxM Strategy Effective and Profitable

MDM, EMM, RMM, MAM and More: If you aren’t using the right strategy, you’re missing out from profiting from your solution
Workshop taught by Avery Chipka, Circle Tech Collective

We’ll call them xxM … those magical device, enterprise, remote and application management tools to help IT and consultants serve and protect those that they are supporting.

With so many devices, from so many sources, brought into your purview in so many different ways, a management strategy is not only necessary, it can be the make or break to your organization’s productivity and profitability.

Whether you are already using some type of management tool or service, or you are looking to, it’s important to figure out what you can do with it and taylor your organization to maximize the benefit, or choose the xxM that best fits your needs to make your setup more productive.  That productivity helps you get more done, and helps your organization be more efficient, profitable, and effective.

Who should attend? Anyone who is using, or considering using a MDM, EMM, RMM, MAM or other type of management tool.

What attendees need to bring: A laptop with macOS installed (Sierra or later)

Setting Up a Support Desk System Properly

How to avoid common pitfalls, and problems when setting up a help desk system.
Workshop taught by JD Strong, Strong Solutions

Managing communication with your users and your team becomes exponentially more difficult as communication methods increase. Email, phone calls, voicemail, text messages, Facebook messenger, Twitter, Slack and more continue to vie for your attention. How best to share that direct message with your team? How do you stay on message, but let everyone feel heard and in the loop? Support Desk systems with some work can become your communication hub, helping your team be more efficient, stay on message, and be in the loop.

Have you already implemented, or are thinking about implementing, a support desk system?  Zendesk, Jira, Web Help Desk, Desk.com or one of the many other solutions are often so flexible that if you don’t think it through, and avoid common pitfalls, they will become more of a headache than a help.

In this workshop, you will learn not just what support desk systems can do for you, but how to use them strategically, integrate with other systems, and actually use them to increase your productivity.  That productivity helps you get more done, and helps your organization be more efficient, profitable, and effective while at the same time serving those that you support even better.

Topics covered will include:

• Structuring your Support Desk
• Narrow the focus with Views
• Creating Service Levels
• Squelching and focusing notifications so they don’t consume you
• Automate your Support Desk
• Automated Messages
• Following up
• Your Support Desk as your messaging hub
• Integrating with other tools
• Web-based forms for useful support requests
• Dealing with Text Messages & Phone Calls
• Social Media as a support platform.
• Building your Support Center
• Organizing a FAQ
• Reducing requests with support documentation.

Which Support Desk System? There are a number of systems out there, and while we may use one or two as an example, the strategies, tactics and terms you will learn in this session are applicable to any specific solution.

What attendees need to bring: A laptop with macOS installed and several gigabytes of free space, or a virtual machine running OS X with several gigabytes of free space.

Securing Your Organization

How to avoid common pitfalls, misconceptions, security holes and fads.
Workshop taught by Sean Colins, CoreQuick

As an IT Professional, you’ve been charged with not only supporting your organization or clients with technologies that help them get things done, but also making sure that they are doing so in a safe and secure way.  Worse yet, with security being a hot topic, it’s easy for an organization to fall prey to common pitfalls, misconceptions and even security fads.

Whether you’ve already been thinking about security or not, this hands-on workshop will take you through the thought processes to setup the right type of security for your organization or clients.

In this hands-on workshop, you will learn about gaining the right mentality to your security design, about authentication, firewalls, and secure methods of communication.

What attendees need to bring: A laptop with macOS Sierra or higher installed.

Command Line: Unleashing the Power

Learn how to unlock the power of the ultimate macOS tool and enabler.
Workshop taught by Scott M. Neal, Mindset Garden/AcmeFoo

The command line is the ultimate seat of power for macOS. While it often feels like wizardry, it’s really about taming the performance and capabilities at the heart of the machine.  The price of this capability is complexity … but it’s complexity that can be overcome with the right understanding and mindset.

You don’t need to be a programmer to be effective at the command line. It’s all about the right approach, the right tools, and knowing where to go when you hit a roadblock.

In this one-day compressed course, learn not only the basics of command line, but also how to tackle scripts for automation. It won’t make you a full-blown command line guru, or scripter, but you’ll have the toolset you need to not only work with the command line or write your own scripts from scratch, but look at other solutions and modify them in useful ways.

What attendees need to bring: Laptop with macOS Sierra, High Sierra or Mojave installed.

What attendees are encouraged to bring: Command line questions, scripts or scripting ideas that you’d like to tackle.

Wi-Fi

Wi-Fi Design & Troubleshooting
Workshop taught by Jeanette Lee, Ruckus Wireless

WiFi is everywhere, and yet you obviously don’t see it. You assume it will be wherever you go, and will work, but does it? Learn about what it takes to make WiFi work well, and understand what you need to do to “do it right.”

Why does one Wi-Fi network succeed and another fail? All Wi-Fi is not created equal, but we all equally want good wireless!

The goal is to make a Wi-Fi System Engineer or network manager as ‘smart as possible’ regarding Wi-Fi and user-authentication in a day. We presume the attendee understands the basics of Wi-Fi and the ‘basics’ regarding networking terms.

Who should attend? Network integrators, network consultants, school districts, higher education organizations, enterprises looking at deploying or upgrading their Wi-Fi infrastructure.

Topics covered include:

• Everything you wanted to know about Wi-Fi, but were afraid to ask
• 2.4 GHz vs. 5 GHz
• 802.11n, 802.11ac
• interference
• channel-planning options
• strategies for airtime fairness, band-steering, beamforming, client load balancing, etc.
• Engineering Wi-Fi networks to meet coverage and capacity needs.
• A Wi-Fi site survey
• Best practices for deploying and validating a Wi-Fi installation.
• Wi-Fi user authentication. Authenticating enterprise users, BYOD devices and guests (WPA2, DPSK, Captive Portal, 802.1x Radius, Google Apps, FaceBook, subscriber gateways, WISPr)
• Wi-Fi security, a look at known Wi-Fi vulnerabilities and how to engineer a 100% secure Wi-Fi network
• Location based services: Using your WiFi network to locate WiFi clients.
• Troubleshooting Wi-Fi networks and some of our favorite third-party Wi-Fi management and troubleshooting tools

What attendees need to bring: A laptop with macOS installed (Sierra or later)

Half-Day (afternoon):
Tue Nov 6, 1:30pm-5:30pm

Accreditations/Certifications

Apple Certification Exams and Study Group
Study Group and Exams by MacTech Conference Testing Partner

Prior to MacTech Conference but at the same venue, Apple Certification Exams will be available during the “Pre-Conference” activities on Tuesday afternoon. Prior to the exam, our testing partner and local Apple Authorized Training Center will offer a study hour and exam session on-site. The study session begins at 2pm on Tue, November 6th.

All registered attendees to MacTech’s 2018 Events are welcome to register for the study group and an exam. The price is normally $349, but you can register early at $249. Space is limited.

What attendees need to bring: A laptop (not an iPad) with a web browser.

See additional information on the Apple Certification Exams page.