Rick Claus engages with the Technical Community on behalf of Microsoft. Based at the mother ship in Redmond, WA, Rick's role is to support platform awareness and skills development through special events targeting the broad community. Unofficially, Rick is focused on spreading his enthusiasm, passion and excitement on all things technical to anyone who has the time for a coffee (or pint) and a chat (in English or français - naturellement). Prior to joining Microsoft, Rick most recently worked as an Enterprise Architect. His previous design experience includes working on over 100 Active Directory implementations and migrations, highly available Exchange messaging solutions, and overall systems management. Rick brings over 20 years of IT experience, ranging from front line “in the trenches” admin duties, to training / mentoring / facilitating individuals and teams on how to use Microsoft technologies more effectively in their organizations.