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The Microsoft community was deeply saddened over the weekend to hear about the passing of Microsoft Exchange expert Andrew Ehrensing, who was scheduled to speak at the TechEd NZ 2014 event in Auckland this week.
"Our hearts and thoughts are with Andrew's family and our Microsoft colleagues at this time," says Paul Muckleston, Managing Director, Microsoft New Zealand.
"The Microsoft community is deeply saddened by his tragic passing and will remember his enormous contribution to our company and our people over the coming days."
Ehrensing had worked for Microsoft since 2005 and was a highly-regarded speaker and known for his humour and delivery style at industry events such as TechReady, Ignite and Interact.
Most recently he was a Solution Architect in the Americas Cloud Services organization, as well as being a Microsoft Certified Master.
It is understood that Ehrensing had a heart attack during his flight from the US to New Zealand and passed away before the plane arrived in Sydney.
A close friend of Ehrensing's, Scott Schnoll, a Senior Content Developer for Microsoft who was also scheduled to present at TechEd NZ this week, will now remain in the US due to these unforeseen circumstances.
The following sessions at TechEd NZ 2014 will now be rescheduled with new speakers:
· OFC316 – Data Loss Prevention in Office 365 (Thursday, 11 September)
· OFC311 – Outlook Connectivity and Authentication (Thursday, 11 September)
· OFC306 – Exchange Server 2013 Architecture (Thursday, 11 September)
· OFC321 – Exchange Server Managed Availability (Friday, 12 September)
Delegates who had signed up to attend these sessions should refer to the TechEd NZ web site for new details of the replacement sessions, to be confirmed soon.
TechEd NZ 2014 begins at 4.00pm on Tuesday, 9th September with keynote addresses to be held at Vector Arena. The event will continue over the following three days – September 10th to 12th – at SKYCITY Events Centre in Auckland city centre.