My PowerShell Summit Experience – Part 4: Lee Holmes, Plaster and Chocolatey

Day 3 of Summit for me was largely more great breakout sessions, hosted by some brilliant presenters. First off was Lee Holmes who discussed “Defending against PowerShell attacks”. I think Lee is probably one of the few people who can retain my attention for an hour and 45 minutes straight. His talk started with how PowerShell attacks initially happen (Word you miserable bastard) and ended with ways to mitigate attacks (Logging, removing PS 2.0, Invoke-Obfuscation etc.). This was one of the most informative talks I have seen in quite a while.

The other talks I attended were on DSC and Kubernetes by Gael Colas and Gabriel Rojas respectively. Both were really awesome talks.

Unfortunately, I had to leave to do some work stuff and came back in time to see a talk on Plaster by Rob Pleau. Plaster is something pretty much everyone should be using to create modules (I am not but I will). It helps automate the setup.

The final presentation was a side session on Chocolatey and their new central management GUI. Although still in the beginning stages, central management will allow admins to better wrap their arms around their Chocolatey clients. Seems pretty awesome!

At night, more networking as the Summit folks rented out Tavern Hall, which is an awesome bar/restaurant within walking distance. There, I was able to talk to a lot of great people like the Puppet folks (Ethan Brown and Michael Lombardi), Kevin Marquette, Josh Duffney, Adam Bertram, Gary Ewan Park among many others. It was a blast. I did however realize that I am 36 years old and three drinks is enough for me to feel, uhh, not exactly great the morning after.