by Nicolas Ignoto, CTP, NY Metro CUGC Leader

Recap of the first Citrix User Group Community (CUGC) XL event in New York City. Hosted at the Microsoft Technology Center on June 14, 2018.

First Ever Northeast CUGC XL

The first-ever Northeast CUGC XL in New York City was held last week. This all-day, FREE event was the first of its kind in the Northeast and was co-organized by the New York Metro, New Jersey and Connecticut/RI CUGC local groups. We were excited to once again bring together IT professionals—and, for the first time, from many different locations. The event garnered a lot of interest, as we hit a record-high number of registrants (more than 300)!

Featured Speakers

We put together an all-star lineup for this event with many experienced speakers including:

• Paul Stansel (@pstansel), Conn/RI CUGC Leader, Managing Consultant and Citrix Technology Professional
• Martin Zugec (@MartinZugec), Security Architect at Citrix and Citrix Technology Advocate
• Dan Feller (@djfeller), Lead Architect at Citrix and Citrix Technology Advocate
• Jason Samuel (@_JasonSamuel), Houston CUGC Leader, IT Architect and Citrix Technology Professional
• Sam Jacobs (@wiguru), IT Director and Citrix Technology Professional
• Ron Oglesby (@ronoglesby), Director of Advanced Technology at Citrix

Great Location

We were fortunate to be hosted by Microsoft at the Microsoft Technology Center (MTC) in the heart of Midtown. New Yorkers know the challenge of finding a location capable of hosting a large group of people in the city. The MTC is a top-notch location, and we were both grateful and fortunate to use it as our event hub.  

Northeast XL – Inside Out 

The day started with a great breakfast to fuel up our attendees for a day of learning. Attendees were invited to check out the vendors’ booths before the start of the first session with Martin Zugec. To be able to join our raffle, attendees were asked to complete our CUGC passport card and get stamped by each of our vendors.

Paul Stansel kicked off the day by announcing the schedule and by providing the latest updates from CUGC.

Then it was Martin Zugec’s session, discussing security and effective ways to protect against ransomware. You can find his Citrix Synergy session on YouTube (or watch his CUGC webinar from 6/21). You can also download Martin’s famous Citrix Optimizer tool here: https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX224676. 

Next followed Jeremy Moskowitz from PolicyPak, who discussed how his company resolves the complexity of managing large group policies environments.

Dan Feller was next with his popular Tech Update–Volume 20, where he talked about all the new features available in the latest release of Citrix Virtual Apps and Citrix Virtual Desktops. As always with Dan, his session was full of memes and references to Chuck Norris. Most notably, he provided insights and graphs for his comparison between Windows Server 2016 and Windows 10.

Then, Robert Capalbo from Dell EMC presented his new hardware, including the newly-released (June 5) Wyse 5070 thin client. Dell is facing tough competition (including from IGEL) on thin clients but they still believe in Wyse to offer a solution for companies that want to move forward with Windows 10 migration and VDI. The Wyse 5070 has a generous configuration, can support two or three displays via DisplayPort, while the 5070 Extended model supports up to six displays. Both support 4K/UHD.

After a small break, Paul Stansel had the opportunity to show some of his CTP skills during his session about real world experiences with cloud-hosted Citrix environments. Paul delivered this session at Synergy 2018 with Shane O’Neill and the session is available on Youtube here. In this presentation, there is a great slide about Pros and Cons of Citrix Cloud based on Paul’s experience. Paul also demo’d his tools that assist with migrating from on-premises to Citrix Cloud.

Just before the lunch break, Matt Boyajian from Liquidware showed all the improvements from his company this year. 

An awesome morning so far at #myCUGC #NorthEastXL! Great stuff from @MartinZugec & @djfeller! pic.twitter.com/c6AhP0wEjn — Citrix User Group Community (CUGC) (@myCUGC) June 14, 2018

Matt Boyajian, Liquidware via Twitter

After the network/food break, it was time for Jason Samuel, also a CTP from Houston, TX to be in the light with a session about Citrix NetScaler rewrite and responders policies. 

Following Jason, Jed Ayres, President and CEO of IGEL North America, presented how his company is disrupting the EUC industry. Jed also discussed the complexity of deploying Windows 10 with the many builds that are in the wild.

Sam Jacobs, Citrix CTP, then took over to discuss Citrix and PowerShell. Sam released version 3 of his StoreFront documentation script, that you can download here: https://carlwebster.com/downloads/download-info/storefront/. This is the fastest way to document your StoreFront deployments including items that are not visible in the GUI (Ex: GSLB url).

Next was our last vendor session with eG Innovations. 

The last breakout session of the day was on Citrix App layering with our final speaker, Ron Oglesby. Ron, Director of Advanced Technology at Citrix, was back in the Big Apple after his session in March 2016.

Following up an awesome day of speakers at #myCUGC #NorthEastXL @RonOglesby talks #Citrix App Layering best practices! pic.twitter.com/0Kbrc8kAa9 — Citrix User Group Community (CUGC) (@myCUGC) June 14, 2018

He was recently appointed Community Lead for both Citrix Technology Professional and Citrix Technology Advocate programs. He was as entertaining as ever, discussed best practices and how to troubleshoot App Layering. Ron delivered this session at Citrix Synergy this year, and you can check out the recording here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpS51Pgn05o.

Then it was the time to open the bar—and our speaker panel! All our speakers sat down and we opened the mic to our attendees for 30 minutes of unfiltered talks. No topic was left unturned. There were a lot of really smart people here sharing their knowledge and experiences during this Q&A.

The last part of the day was dedicated to raffle prizes, where I was fortunate to give away many great prizes including an Amazon Echo, Google Nest devices, and Amazon gift cards.

Below are the people who worked hard to make this event a success. All of these people are truly passionate and we are fortunate to have them involved in our Citrix User Group Community!

What’s Next?

Below is a snapshot of future events in the area:

CUGC User Share XL: Cloud: scheduled on June 27. 

NYC: Next New York CUGC meeting is scheduled for July 26 at 5:30PM, and includes an early showing of Mission Impossible: Fallout. 

Connecticut: Next meeting is being planned for September 20.

It Takes a Village

The very first Citrix User Group Community XL event in the New York City area was a great success with an active and enthusiastic crowd. Presentations from all of our speakers were both enlightening and informative.

I’d like to thank all the people involved in organizing this event including CUGC HQ, George Abar, Katie Heidkamp, Stephanie Boozer, Kimberly Ruggero, Jennifer Gibbons, our speakers, all local group leaders and Citrix employees. Your hard work made this event both possible and a tremendous success.

Also, big thumbs up to all our sponsors: Dell, eG Innovations, IGEL, Liquidware, PolicyPak, ControlUp, FSLogix, Nutanix, Tricerat, and Veridium. I also would like to thank Citrix and Microsoft for their support. 

And last but not least, a big thanks to our members who participated in this event. A lot of new faces showed up for this meeting, which shows that the community is active and growing. Citrix User Group Communities are made by the users for the users and we hope you enjoyed this event as much as we did.