MMSMOA 2025 Recap

Another edition of MMS (MOA 2025) is now in the books, and by the time this post publishes it'll have been the better part of a month since it ended! How time flies! It was, as always, an outstanding event bringing the community together for the better part of a week, and I really thank those folks behind the scenes who pull it all together so swimmingly. That is no small feat, but as an attendee and a speaker, I really appreciate these often thankless efforts.

As usual, I took hardly any photos during the event (other than what I posted to the socials featuring other speakers and friends), so I'm relying on the goodness of the photos of others, because the community is awesome like that.

The Systems Management

Everyone comes to MMS for all things systems management. Back in the day it was heavily Configuration Manager-based, down to hackathons and some lucky person pushing the deployment button in front of 700 friends. There's still a strong ConfigMan presence at MMS, which is good since many orgs are still heavily vested there, but things have also shifted toward Entra, Intune, and Azure as folks continue their cloud-first or cloud-native journeys, which is neat to see and discuss as organizations shift.

One of my favorite takeaways this MMS is the long-term use of co-managed environments. Broadly speaking, for orgs that aren't able to easily pivot to cloud-native in their fleet, there's no reason co-managment can't work for the foreseeable future, blending the bits of "legacy" ConfigMan with "modern" Intune. In a sense, providing the best of both worlds. At this point, there's not a timer on co-management, so if co-management is working and while blockers still exist for full cloud-first management...roll with that. But don't ignore cloud-first management. That's where folks will get into trouble. Serious trouble, long term.

The Community

I said it in the first recap video (below), and in other statements I've made, but MMS is all about community, community, community! This was my ~10th(?) MMS event, 4th as a speaker, and I really love the people...both folks new to the event (always wonderful to meet new friends) and those I've seen five-ever. It's like a reunion of the best sort! The connections I've made over the years have often turned into great friendships. And we all have similar struggles, so being able to reach out to trusted folks for guidance/advice/complaint hour is solid gold. Including the other events such as the "pre-conference" brewery tour sponsored by the 2Pint Software folks!

I am honored to be part of this greater community where we do cool things, talk about our successes and failures, and support each other. Words cannot really explain how much this means to me professionally and personally.

My Sessions

I was selected to be part of five sessions at this MOA edition of MMS: One on the challenges and opportunities in migrating Group Policies to Intune with James Robinson, another on Task Sequences with Gary Blok, and a third on Git and DevOps principles with Hailey Phillips. These were all wonderfully attended (two of them had standing room only) and the feedback has been supportive and good.

I also had the pleasure of hosting two "Happy Hour" (Beer) sessions on things related to Home Assistant over two evenings with Tom Degreef, where we were able to demystify home automation, show off some fun things...including the use of voice...and give away a bunch of stuff to attendees. Some donated by myself and the community, but more impactful yet was the hardware we had donated by the Nabu Casa/Open Home Foundation folks (the Home Assistant people).

The Recaps

MMS hires a professional videographer to capture the magic and curate these wonderful daily recap videos during the event. Sam (the video guy) is simply amazing and does such an outstanding job pulling it all together on such a short timeframe. He's one of the kindest people and does a great job making folks comfortable as they stand in front of his camera talking about their experiences and answering his short questions.

This edition I actually managed to answer all of the daily questions, which meant I was also featured in each of the recap videos in some way (some more flattering—day 4—than others—day 2). If you've never been to MMS or are on the fence, give the videos a watch!

The Lederhosen...

While packing for MMS, I decided to bring along my lederhosen ... just in case I decided to commit to wearing them while hosting the two happy hour sessions. I mean, it seems fitting: beer & lederhosen. And about two hours before the first happy hour session of mine I decided to commit. And it was absolutely worth it. Sure it's a little ridiculous, but I might as well take the opportunity to wear my most expensive pair of pants once in a while, right?

Sam and I also took a few seconds to grab some "B roll" footage because why not?

Next Edition: MMS Music City Edition (Nashville)

The next edition of MMS is in October, in the Music City! I'm certain that edition (which is smaller than the MOA edition) will sell out in advance of the event, so pick up your ticket this summer! It's certain to be a grand time.

I've pitched session ideas and been in collaboration talks with others, so if any of them are selected perhaps I'll see you there!