Asterisk PBX Flavor - PIAF

Here is a very good Asterisk flavor called "PBX in a Flash" or Piaf. It takes a bit of mystery out of setting up a Asterisk server.

Piaf is a turn key ISO install based on CentOS 5. So if you have hardware that can run CentOS 5, then you can have a PBX.

See http://pbxinaflash.net

Also Check out http://nerdvittles.com/ for a technobabblelog of everything PIAF.

Nothing But "Net"

ok. So the folks helping plan, organize, and deliver the meeting are awesome. If the product is no good, and the technical support is bad, then it is all a moot point. With SmartCity, that is not an issue. The SmartCity operations team is very good and top notch. Lead by Mohamed, Brandon, and Danny, SmartCity provided the College a well designed and supported solution and that enabled us to deliver a great educational experience to our attendees.

ACC09 was a terrific experience for the ACC NOC team. With 8 networks, 92 locations, and hundreds of computers delivered, setup, and installed within 5 days, SmartCity had their hands full. But they have a terrific process. More than 90% of the network drops were already installed and operational when we arrived. This is very good and I wish more convention and conference centers did it this way. What about the last 10%, where there are changes that occur with a meeting of this size, and there are also simple mistakes made by ACC or SmartCity. However we had great teamwork and when an issue came up, no one argued over it, we just worked on getting what needed to be done - done! It was great.

Below find Mohamed and Danny. Both great guys and we had a good time working with them and their entire team.


Mohamed Rashad


Danny Thomson

Its all about customer support @ OCCC

Word on the street is that ACC09 was very successful. Everything I saw confirms this. I heard attendees, faculty, and leadership were pleased with the meeting and our conference was well covered by the media. I read several news articles, viewed TV stories, and saw numerous web articles.

This is great for the ACC. We are here to provide education and everyone did a terrific job down in Orlando. A key reason we did so well is we had great support from the Orange County Convention Center (OCCC) and two people in perticular - Frank Loyke and Sarah Merrill.

Frank is our main POC for SmartCity Networks (SCN) and SCN provides network, internet access, and telephones for the OCCC. We started working with Frank back in 2008 and worked out a comprehensive network design that would support our activities during the meeting. That ended up being 8 networks in 92 locations. Frank was terrific and instrumental for our success in the planning and implementation of everything. Frank is a great event coordinator for SCN and a terrific advocate for the center. We really enjoyed working with Frank.

Our meeting planners work many years in advance and have many of the relationships in place and know everyone. The NOC team rolls in about one year before the event and starts to figure things out and who does what at the center. These usually are at large meetings with 20-30 people present and we figure out who does what. At our last site visit before the meeting, we met Sarah.

Sarah is our main POC for the OCCC and is our hidden hero. Sarah knows everyone at the center. Not only does she know who to call, she called them and followed up to ensure that everything we needed was taken care of. And I mean everything, but particular the power team. We use alot of power all over the center and it needs to be well coordinated with the Internet guys @ SCN. Sarah was all over the place running around on her stand up scooter. All the while zooming around talking on a cell phone or radio. And smiling at the same time. Sarah did a terrific job, is an excellent advocate for the center, and we enjoyed working with her.

Both Frank and Sarah are fine examples of great customer service and finding out ways to get it all done and make the customer extreamly happy. We are very happy!

Conficker Worm - It's not just for Breakfast!

There is a bit of press about a virus-worm called "Conficker". This is actually an old worm that started infecting systems late last year by exploiting a vulnerability in Microsoft Windows. Since then there have been variants of this worm and lots of programs carry this malicious payload. Conficker.C is the latest variant; it will change the behavior of its “call-home protocol” tomorrow Wednesday, April 1st. Conficker may use this protocol to update itself to include some as-yet unknown functionality. Microsoft has also issued a security update to patch the vulnerability that the Conficker family has used to propagate.

You may want to check that your PC has the latest Microsoft security updates installed. You can do this by running Windows Update on your computer. This is a worm and it does not need you to open email or attachments or anything, and it can hit your computer if it is vulnerable. So it is very important that you have this patch.

The following information will give you an overview of the worm, the steps one can take to clean an infected system, and measures to prevent reinfection.

http://www.mcafee.com/us/threat_center/conficker.html
http://www.symantec.com/norton/theme.jsp?themeid=conficker_worm&inid=us_ghp_link_conficker_worm

A quick way to see if you have the worm. Try and go to http://www.mcafee.com. If you cannot access Mcafee, you may have the worm, as it blocks access to security vendors.

Orange County Convention Center

Orange County Convention Center

The Orange County Convention Center (OCCC) is one of the nicest conference facilities in the US. The center is well kept and the staff and their partners are the best. We have enjoyed our visit and can not wait to come back.

View pictures of the OCCC @ Flickr

ACC09 Expo Opens

ACC Central @ ACC09

Entering Maytag Mode

Saturday is here and we enter "Maytag Mode". We say that because we have been here for 8 days and setup 8 networks in 92 locations. Everything is working and now we start a new phase of monitoring the various networks and providing technical support. Luckily the NOC team has been doing this for a number of years and we have great partners.

If everything goes well, we will have little to do the next few days. Hence the moniker "Maytag Mode". Just like the TV commercials for Maytag appliances. It is not boring, but the days are long. In at 6:45AM and out after 6PM. That is if there is nothing major going on. If something comes up, we stay until its working and working right.

We occupying most of our time rotating staff through all the locations throughout the network and checking on our customers and projects. When your show is only 3.5 days long, you can not wait for the call. So we hit the beat and walk a lot. It is also good for our customers as they are out of their normal element and appreciate it when we check on them throughout the day.

Digital Signs

New this year is the use of digital signs @ ACC09.

Replacing paper signs, digital signs provide information on each individual education room and allows us to stream live video for just in time situations.

Check out this sample in front of our ACC09 and i2 Faculty Lounge. It displays information on the room and it is real time. As the meeting goes on, it is automatically updated and the education team can tweak on the fly.

Room overflow information can be displayed. When a room is overloaded or sold out, attendees can be directed to another location where they can view the meeting.

View pictures of Digital Signs @ Flickr

Meet the NOC Staff

Time to meet the NOC Staff. These are the folks who get stuff done.







ACC Staff. Left to right is Dan Musolino, Larry Chiarizia, Dave Denbow, Tom Walker








Rentsys Staff. Left to right is Miguel Checo, Chad Adelman, and Mark Buesnel.

View pictures of the NOC Team @ Flickr

Hey - Finally - People are showing up

Folks are rolling in

It is cool to see folks showing up. Various ACC staff, vendors, and contractors are here to do their thing. We have been busy getting a number of temporary offices setup with computer and Internet access.

Our meeting planner office is setup. That is an office for 20 folks with Internet access, 10 desktops, and 10 laptops.

The next big thing is the "InfoStations". These are the Internet surf stations for attendees and there are three of them. Each one has 15 computers + 4 printers. They will be packed during the week as folks keep their life going.

The Exposition Hall is mostly done. The ACC booth is roughed in and ready for computers in a few days. Other locations such as the Expo management office, laptop lounge, etc are done.

Home for a week or more

We are staying at the Swan and Dolphin hotel and resort. I would say its the corporate hotel for Disney. It's a very large resort and very nice. Still has lots of kids. The only problem is kids are loud in the AM sometimes. Not a problem.

View pictures of the Swan and Dolphin Hotel @ Flickr

What is a NOC?

A NOC is old school for Network Operations Center. Typically an operations center to manage a computer network. In our case, this goes back to the mid 90's when we rolled in and ran tons of cable and brought in our own network. This included bringing in our own Internet connection. Back in early 90's this was not normal. We were pioneers here and were among the first in our industry to provide Internet access at a major conference center

One year we brought in a ATM622 network. Ran lots of video that year. Pretty fast too!

Now a days, convention and conference centers have a nice network installed and they create multiple networks for us. they are called VLAN's or "Virtual LAN". In our case, we worked with SmartCity Networks at OCCC and designed the following networks.

• Presentation Management Network. Content Delivery for Education Rooms.
  
• Internet VLAN-Pool. Internet for ACC Projects
  
• Internet VLAN-Pool-IT. Special Internet for IT/VPN.
  
• Internet VLAN-*DHCP*. Internet Guests
  
• Staff-Network. NEtwork for Staff Offices
  
• Registration Network - Network for Registration Partner
  
• Booth VLAN - Booth and various location in Hall
  

We bring a pair of Cisco firewalls and numerous switches in order to create an on-site network that allows our staff to easily get back to our HQ. We create a backend VPN and ready it so we can roll out services to individual offices in the center as our staff roll in. This way they are ready to roll and do not have to worry about anything IT.

ACC09 is here

View Orange County Convention Center Slideshow at Flickr

ACC09 is Here. The premiere cardiology event and it is setup time. My IT team handles technology projects @ ACC's annual meeting and conference. We today we arrived on-site and took posession of our office and now we begin the build of 8 networks and 93 locations.

This is how we did it.

Taking a trip - use tripit.com

Found www.tripit.com via linkedin and its a cool useful site. It helps you plan your itinerary and organize it so you can pull it into Outlook very easy and also send friends and family your info. The cool thing is you forward your confirmations to an email address and bamo, it gets sucked into the system. In 5 minutes I had my airline info, hotel, and car rental. then 1 minute it was in Outlook and another minute I had emailed and printed for family.

Way better than using the lame site provided by the airline. Give it a try.