The story of the Microsoft Technology User Group in Norway

The Microsoft Technology User Group (MTUG) in Norway was started in March 2010 where we had Bruce Payette speaking at the first user group event at the Microsoft office in Oslo.

The overall goal for the user group is to share knowledge and build connections between IT Professionals in Norway. MTUG, registered as a non-profit organization, serves as an umbrella organization for sub divisions. A sub division might be a local user group based on geographical area or virtual user groups based on a topic.

Today there are three groups based on topics:

System Center Group

Organized by Eirik Hamer , Fredrik Kristian Knalstad and Marius Sandbu , this group focus on Microsoft System Center technology and all other integrations to System Center. The goal for the group is to be a meeting point for all members that will share their interests in Microsoft System Center. The meetings includes speaker sessions, hands on labs and workshops.

Microsoft UC User Group Norway

Organized by Ståle Hansen, Lasse Nordvik Wedø, Maxim Zinchenko and Rune Dyrhaug Stoknes the UC User Group focuses on Microsoft Exchange and Lync. They have virtual meetings hosted on Lync every 1,5 month.

MTUG Script Club

Organized by Jan Egil Ring and Rune Normann Hamre the Script Club is a place where IT Professionals can meet to discuss and assist each other with scripting challenges. The group`s main focus is Windows PowerShell, but the group is also open to discuss other scripting languages. Meetings typically starts with a short introduction to a given topic before the attendants start working on their own laptops. Until now, the meetings have taken place in Oslo, but we are also considering hosting the meetings on Lync.

There are also several groups based on location, where Agder and Oslo has been the most active.

Many great speakers from the PowerShell Community have spoken at our user group in the recent years:

• Aleksandar Nikolic (Server Manager Administration with Windows PowerShell)
• Don Jones (Introduction to PowerShell Workflow)
• Ed Wilson (Using PowerShell 3.0 to manage the remote Windows 8 workstation)
• Thomas Lee (Formatting with PowerShell)

I have also contributed with several workshops and sessions myself, such as “Introduction to PowerShell 3.0”, “Administering Active Directory using PowerShell” and “Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V”.

Scripting Guy Ed Wilson and Jan Egil Ring at a user group meeting in November 2012.

Windows PowerShell MVP Aleksandar Nikolic speaking at a user group meeting in January 2014.

The Script Club will host a workshop May 28th in Oslo where the topic is Windows PowerShell Desired State Configuration . More information and registration is available here.

You can find more information about the user group as well as information about upcoming events at www.mtug.no (Norwegian).