I had the chance to talk at London Apple Admins 28th Meet Up @ Airbnb (July 2016).

We had three presentations:

• “Being nice with your management tools” – Graham Gilbert, Airbnb
• “Testing AutoPkg Recipes” – Ben Goodstein, University of Oxford
• “Full Stack DEP: Modern Mac Deployment” – Francois Levaux-Tiffreau

I loved Graham and Ben's presentations. Graham, who recently joined Airbnb, gave us some insights on how to "Be A Host" with your users. Ben shared his techniques on how to automate AutoPkg recipe testing. The most important part of his story was the background. Like many universities and businesses, Oxford has more than one IT. In fact, they have many, and they don't necessarily work together. How do you roll out a global IT project in this environment? By collaborating. Ben's goal is to allow every IT department at Oxford to create and push AutoPkg recipes.

My presentation was about focusing on the end-user by giving him the proper tools he needs while minimising IT involvement. It was surprisingly close to Graham's presentation while using radically different tools.

Key takeaways:

• Focus on your users
• Use Apple Tools 
• Leverage Apple Professional Services 
• Consider MicroMDM if using Munki

Thank you to our hosts, Macmule and Graham Gilbert!