Speaking Engagements

PSU MacAdmins Conference 🎤

Over the years, I’ve had the privilege of presenting at the PSU MacAdmins Conference, sharing real-world workflows, automation strategies, and lessons learned from managing Apple devices at scale in K-12 education.

Most of these sessions come directly out of day-to-day work: building better deployment workflows, reducing friction for support teams, and finding practical ways to make Apple administration more sustainable.

Below is a running archive of those talks.

2025 - Leverage the Air in your Mosyle iPad Deployments

This session focused on strategies and tools for managing large-scale iPad deployments in K-12 schools with Mosyle OneK12 MDM. Topics included:

• Gateway School District’s setup: 3,200 students, 600 staff, 1:1 iPads in K-8, Chromebooks in high school, and a student-led help desk.
• Homegrown tools: Bash, PowerShell, and PHP scripts to automate iPad management, including MOSBasic, ShakeNBake, Loaner Station, and Musky web interfaces.
• Deployment techniques: “Limbo” setup for preloading essential apps, Return To Service (RTS) workflows, and fast device provisioning.
• Use of AI (ChatGPT): coding assistance, building tools like Musky, and even recreating legacy logos.
• Musky platform: a web-based interface for streamlining help desk support, lost mode, device wiping, and custom module integration.
• Future roadmap: class-level visibility, documentation, modular flexibility, and support for more student and teacher workflows.

The goal of the session was to show how creative scripting, automation, and AI can simplify iPad fleet management while also giving student help desks better tools to support their communities.

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2023 - Managing iPads from the Command Line and Scripting it too!

This session explored how command-line tools and scripting can make Apple device administration faster, more consistent, and easier to scale. It centered on practical workflows, not theory, with an emphasis on repeatability and reducing hands-on setup time.

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2022 – iPad Deployments Using Mosyle Manager and Custom Tools

This session covered the district’s migration from JAMF Pro to Mosyle Manager in 2020 and the operational changes that followed. It highlighted Mosyle’s “Limbo mode” for pre-configuration, workflows for damaged devices and loaners, and MOSBasic, a custom command-line tool built to automate tasks through the Mosyle API. It also touched on using CFGUtil to quickly re-image and reprovision devices.

This presentation was part of the Campfire Session years and was my first virtual presentation, delivered with my co-presenter Jennifer Czyzewski.

• Slides to be added.
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2019 – iPad Evolution at Gateway School District

This session was a case study on Gateway School District’s iPad journey, including the mistakes from the initial 1:1 rollout in 2014 and the lessons that shaped the 2017 redeployment. It covered the move to K-8 1:1, large-scale Shared iPad deployments in elementary schools, Apple TV rollout, and the use of the JAMF Pro API.

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Other Speaking and Community Events

• Presenter for May ‘24 Apple IT Roundtable at GSD
• Co-presenter for April ‘22 Apple Virtual Tech Event, //Onboarding iPads to MDM Using Apple Configurator//
• Co-presenter for March ‘22 Apple IT Roundtable at GSD
• “Ask Apple: Mosyle Spotlight” presenter, April 2021

Want to Connect?

If you attended one of my sessions and want to follow up or ask questions, feel free to reach out:

• GitHub: github.com/jsmillie
• Email: jesse@smilliefamily.net