Lessons from MacSysAdmin: a stolen MacBook and the art of keeping faith

Hashtags, twitter handles, high fives, and hugs were in high supply at last month’s MacSysAdmin conference, held each year in Göteborg, Sweden. One of the few global Mac IT user conferences with a systems administrator focus, this intimate setting brings together a group of devout Apple users who very much look forward to their time together. Of those attending this year, roughly 75% have been playing in the Mac systems admin sandbox for over 10 years - which translates to a whole heck of a-lotta IT know-how spanning across education, commercial, and government verticals. But for as much experience as these folks already possess, many make the annual trek hoping to extract and absorb every last drop of expertise their fellow enterprise admins are willing to share. And share they do.

Tycho Sjögren, head chief at the MacSysAdmin conference and Apple certified trainer at Apoio AB is responsible for making it all happen. It’s a huge undertaking, and the community is supportive and thankful for his efforts. In Tycho fashion, session documentation and recordings were made available nearly immediately, some of which we have the pleasure of sharing with you here.

The first video in a series of four plays out a scenario we’ve all encountered either in real life or our nightmares. Here’s a hint, it starts out with something like this:

“I think my laptop was stolen.”

Uh-oh. A lump forms in your throat. Depending on where you reside in this situation, there’s a headache in your future. Or is there? Andrina Kelly, Senior Systems Administrator at Bell Media, challenged this notion when she was asked to provide a resolution for an employee’s stolen MacBook. Find out how she handled the scenario, the role theCasper Suite played, and whether or not there was a happy ending in the video of her session, The Girl With the Guy With the Dragon Tattoo.

If you missed the MacSysAdmin conference in Sweden, consider Minneapolis for the JAMF Nation User Conference. The forecast is for no snow and three action-packed days of informative sessions dedicated to sharing knowledge with others managing Apple technologies in the enterprise.