I’ve been super lax about posting here. I wrote something last week about Mr. McCormick’s retirement from the Historical Society of Riverton. Please take a look:
Category: Meta
It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything non-technical here, but I have some news! I’m excited to announce that next week, I’ll be joining DoorDash’s IT team! I’ll be working as a Client Platform Engineer, helping to manage all of the devices. I seriously can’t wait!
I was at Saint Joseph’s University for almost nine years, and I couldn’t be more proud of the work I’ve done there. My CIO, Fran DiSanti, sent this to everyone in the Office of Information Technology (and gave permission for me to repost it publicly):
Hello Colleagues,
Many of you may already know that Mike Solin will be leaving SJU this Friday, October 21 to pursue a new job opportunity as a Client Platform Engineer with DoorDash. Mike is very excited to be joining a new team of client engineers which has been taking shape at DoorDash for the past year. Iām confident that Mike will do great things for DoorDash just as he has for SJU over the past 9 years.
Mike started as Technology Support Specialist in OIT and over time was promoted to his current role as Senior Client Platform Engineer. Throughout his tenure in OIT, Mike has contributed much to our organization and to the University community. He completely reimagined and reengineered the way that we manage our macOS and iOS environments. When he started at SJU, Mike envisioned a zero-touch, modern approach to device management and he successfully realized this vision by delivering an out-of-the-box deployment experience for Mac users. His approach was secure, highly automated and allowed users to select and install pre-packaged apps from a software catalog. In addition to his Mac expertise, Mike became very proficient with our Windows environments and Active Directory.
Mike has been instrumental in the design, development and deployment of a number of strategic technologies which have had a significant impact on the way in which we manage our endpoint devices, including:
- An automated data-backup solution (Code42)
- Endpoint detection and response software (Malwarebytes)
- Adobe Creative Cloud implementations
- Mobile Device Management software (Workspace One)
- Computer encryption
- Microsoft Azure environment
- Automated delivery of iPads to users
Clearly, Mike has made many important contributions through the years and along the way, he has continually developed his knowledge and skills. I am truly grateful for all that Mike has done for our division and the community. Please join me in thanking Mike and wishing him well in the next chapter of his chapter.
Fran
Prior to joining SJU, I had moved from Philadelphia to State College, PA, then Richmond, VA. Being a Mac admin is very specialized, and at the time, remote work wasn’t as common as it is now. I missed my family terribly, and regularly used all of my vacation time to drive back for visits. I was incredibly lucky that the opportunity at Saint Joe’s opened up – it brought me home.
Moreover, it gave me the chance to work with a great team. One of the best things about working at SJU was that nothing was off-limits – I was encouraged to learn anything that interested me, and to use those skills to make things better for the university. When the position is posted, I absolutely recommend applying.
Going forward, I’ll still be local to the Philly area! I’m still involved with Greater Philadelphia Mac Admins, and plan on continuing to post to this blog, present at conferences, and participate in the MacAdmins Slack. š
It’s been really quiet here, but that’s because I’ve been busy!
For starters, I participated in a workshop in June for the consistently excellent MacDevOpsYVR conference. We discussed various ways of deploying MunkiReport. I strongly encouraged everyone to take a look at Docker!
Many, many thanks to Mat X for inviting me to share my experiences, and for his skillful editing of the video recording.
My diagrams are included in the video, but I’m posting them here for posterity. 😎
More to come on this topic!
I had the honor of presenting at the University of Utah’s May 2021 MacAdmins Meeting this week.
The slides and video are already up – check them out here!
For our April 2017 Greater Philadelphia Mac Admins meeting, I presented on Munki 101. Here’s the summary (along with the slides), and here is the video:
I’m not sure how I hadn’t posted about this yet, but I help organize a local meetup group for Mac / iOS admins, called Greater Philadelphia Mac Admins. We meet monthly – if you’re in the area, you should consider attending! The meetings are free, and dinner is provided.
For more information, please see our website.
Also, I presented on Munki a few months ago, at the October 2015 meeting. Check it out!
This year, I gave my first presentation at the Penn State MacAdmins Conference: Introduction to Mac Triage and Troubleshooting. Here’s the description:
In this session, we’ll go over the basics of component isolation and hardware/software troubleshooting. We’ll cover common fixes and methods for diagnosing a problem quickly and accurately.
My slides are available here, and the video is below. Enjoy!