This year at MMS 2009 we will again be hosting Birds-of-a-Feather (BOF) sessions on Tuesday and Wednesday evening after breakout sessions are finished for the day. BOF sessions are informal community topics where attendees have the opportunity to meet and discuss a topic of common interest peer-to-peer or for an Industry expert to answer questions on their area of expertise.

To ensure that the topics hosted at BOF sessions reflect the needs of all MMS 2009 attendees, the BOF Survey gathered votes for a variety of topics. The most requested topics have now been selected, session moderators identified, and topics published to the session catalog.

The BOF topics being offered are listed below:

Code	Topic	Time	Room	Moderator
BY02	Troubleshooting Configuration Manager 2007 Server & Client Issues	5:30 pm	Casanova 603	Wally Mead
Bring your questions about troubleshooting ConfigMgr server and client issues to this Birds-of-a-feather format session, where Wally Mead will provide all the answers! This interactive Q&A session will cover tools and techniques for diagnosing client and site system health, interpreting log files and quickly resolving common issues.
BC02	Windows XP-to-Windows 7: Planning and Tooling for Successful Migrations	5:30 pm	Casanova 604	Rhonda Layfield, Jeremy Chapman, Michael Niehaus
With many organizations opting to go straight from Windows XP to Windows 7, application and hardware readiness, imaging and deployment tools introduced with Windows Vista may still be new to many. Likewise, net new technologies introduced for Windows 7 can help inventory and prepare applications, quickly migrate user state and deliver system images, and automate installation tasks. These tools and processes are especially valuable for organizations currently downgrading to Windows XP on new hardware purchases and looking to retain the same hardware for users when moving to Windows 7. In this interactive session, we will focus on key themes for organizations moving from Windows XP to Windows 7, tools available to support all major deployment tasks and criteria for selecting the right options and processes for your organization.
BC01	Group Policy Preferences	5:30 pm	Casanova 605	Lilia Gutnik
The primary uses of Group Policy are for security and Internet Explorer management, but there is so much more that can be done with Group Policy- a lot of which is currently done in logon scripts, which are hard to manage and even harder to report on. Group Policy Preferences is a cool new addition to Group Policy introduced in Windows Server 2003 that includes the ability to deploy shortcuts, map drives, configure printers, and much more. During this session our conversation will include: Overview: What is GP Preferences? Differences between Policy and Preference Targeting Examples Q & A
BS01	Windows PowerShell: Come Ask about Windows PowerShell Basics	5:30 pm	Casanova 606	Erin Chapple
Windows PowerShell is a revolutionary interactive shell and scripting language that brings the power of the .NET Framework to command-line users and script writers. It exposes a consistent, extensible interface that provides a wide range of capabilities from executing simple interactive commands to scripting sophisticated automation solutions. During this birds-of-a-feather session, we'll take questions from IT pros and programmers who are just starting out with PowerShell on whatever topics the audience finds most interesting and relevant.
BY01	Best Practices for Managing Software Updates in Configuration Manager 2007	6:45 pm	Casanova 603	Rick Duong
This session will discuss how companies are managing Software Updates using Configuration Manager in this Birds-ofoa-feather topic. Are customers creating one large patch package to deploy patches or do they create a new update package every month? Bring your questions for the experts and your peers, and learn tricks and tips including the best reports to use and how to create and deploy Custom Patches.
BO02	How Microsoft IT deployed Data Protection Manager 2007 and Other Lessons Learned From the Field	6:45 pm	Casanova 605	Ray Maker
One of the original design goals of Data Protection Manager (DPM) 2007 was to provide the backup/recovery solution for Microsft's internal IT team (MSIT). Come to this Birds-of-a-feather session to learn how we did it -- and also to hear about other lessons we've learned from large field deployments.
BY05	Configuration Manager SuperFlow Showcase	6:45 pm	Casanova 606	Steve Kaczmarek
At this Birds-of-a-feather session we will showcase 6-8 of the newest Configuration Manager SuperFlows currently in development or available for publishing. A SuperFlow is a downloadable interactive content model that provides troubleshooting, process flow and other data flow information in an interactive format. We will also demonstrate an authoring template that can be used to create SuperFlows.
BN02	Roadmap Discussion and Sharing: Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit v.Next for virtualization and OS migration	6:45 pm	Casanova 604	Jay Sauls
Virtualization is becoming ubiquitous in datacenters. But do you know which of your existing servers are good candidates for server consolidation and virtualization using Hyper-V? Attend this interactive birds-of-a-feather session and learn how to quickly assess servers for a Hyper-V server consolidation project with Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit. We will also discuss potential features of the next releases of the MAP Toolkit that will cover next-generation OS migration and virtualization features. Existing and interested users of the MAP Toolkit are especially welcome.

Code	Topic	Time	Room	Moderator
BY04	Deploying System Center Configuration Manager 2007	5:30 pm	Casanova 603	Wally Mead
This supporting Birds-of-a-Feather session follows on from the Deploying System Center Configuration Manager breakout session series. Join us at this session to ask questions and drill deeper into the deployment and configuration of Configuration Manager 2007 with Wally Mead.
BN01	Ask the Experts: Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) 2010	5:30 pm	Casanova 604	Michael Niehaus, Tim Mintner
Now's your chance to sit with the team that's building the MDT technology, troubleshooting customer scenarios, blogging about the latest and greatest solutions and planning the next generation of deployment tools. Bring your questions about MDT 2010 to this Birds-of-a-feather session and find out how to apply the latest solutions to your specific scenarios.
BS02	WSUS best practices	5:30 pm	Casanova 605	Marc Shepard
In this birds-of-a-feather session any questions you have about WSUS servers will be answered by the product team, including: best practices for deploying and managing the server, creating customer reports, managing web farms, and much more. This session covers using WSUS as a standalone product (not from within ConfigMgr) as the techniques for deploying and managing WSUS within SCCM are quite different.
BY06	Hey! You! Get onto my Cloud!	5:30 pm	Casanova 606	David Mills
Come find out more about what Microsoft and the System Center team is doing in the “cloud”.
BY03	Best Practices for Managing Application Virtualization Deployments	6:45 pm	Casanova 603	Daniel Emerson
Join us for a discussion of Application-Virtualization (App-V) management options, including the use of ConfigMgr, to help identify what works best in various different deployment environments. We’ll cover the benefits of App-V streaming options including what you need to know when sequencing and deploying. The discussion will also examine challenges in deploying and managing App-V and how it can be optimized for: Server apps Client apps Client runtime deployment and management Sequencing for broad deployments
BM01	Thin, Thick, Fat, Optimized Desktop... What do you use... What is Microsoft's Vision?	6:45 pm	Casanova 604	Eduardo Kassner Shvadsky
The client market has gone from Thin to Thick, to Fat, to Slim... and now to Optimized...What have analysts said over time? How has this market grown? What is Microsoft's vision? What are our current investments? We will have a candid talk with lots of interaction from the audience on what is going on and how we see this progressing into the near future.
BS03	Windows PowerShell: Come Ask about Windows PowerShell Advanced Techniques	6:45 pm	Casanova 605	Erin Chapple
Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 bring datacenter automation to new levels through a set of production-oriented features included with Windows PowerShell 2.0, such as transactions, jobs, remoting, custom sessions, advanced functions, and modules. During this Birds-of-a-feather session, we'll take questions from IT pros and programmers who are working with PowerShell to accomplish more advanced scenarios on whatever topics the audience finds most interesting and relevant.
BO01	Learn about the Cross Platform Extensions in System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2	6:45 pm	Casanova 606	Barry Shilmover
The Operations Manager 2007 R2 release includes Platform Extensions which open up the doors for improved monitoring of your heterogeneous IT environment using System Center. Join us at this interactive Birds-of-a-feather session to find out how Microsoft has created an easily extensible architecture using open standards for monitoring non-Microsoft environments, how the release provides monitoring of non-Microsoft operating systems and how Microsoft Partners are extending the cross platform extensions framework to monitor non-Microsoft applications.