Mark Kenny

Career

Tue, 13 Aug 2024 12:00:00 +0100

I currently work for Omnicom as macOS Endpoint Engineer. I manage a small number of Jamf servers, but a very large number of macOS Endpoints and ABM servers!

I maintain the managed Git repo’s for automated tooling, backups and our AutoPKG instance.

I built a tool to manage 65 Apple Business Managers during the migration of 20,000 Macs. That was after we migrated the first 20,000 Macs from one Jamf to our primary.

Wrong Mark

Tue, 13 Aug 2024 12:00:00 +0100

It turns out there are a few Mark Kennys out there, I learned that when I started getting their emails. So now I have a label in my email and an auto-reply and am keeping track of the cool ones.

The Journalist. Well, he was, with the Age, Sydney Morning Herald and Canberra Times in Australia. He’s a professor now. Twitter.

The Keynote Speaker. Veterinary Products. (He’s got markkenny.com) There are media people, the actor Mark Kenny. The Producer. The Singer. The Professor. The Counselor. The Doctor. The Hand-Walker. There’s an Irish Footballer and although his name is spelt Marc, he’s got my Wikipedia page!

180

Tue, 13 Aug 2024 12:00:00 +0100

23 YEARS ON THE CANALS

“DO YOU WANNA WORK ABROAD? HOW ABOUT AMSTERDAM? CAN YOU GO TOMORROW?” — COLIN

February 1999 — Colin Wainwright, the ‘Guvnor’ of Abacus Studios asked me on the Monday and I landed on Thursday morning with my Syquest Drive, couple of cans of SprayMount and Ronsonal and a few Swann-Morton handles and 10A blades, (all carried on the flight in hand-luggage!). The agency was already finalising the TV for TAKE WHAT YOU WANT and I was free to start artworking the print.

AxM Manager

Sun, 27 Sep 2026 00:52:00 +0200

After Apple announced the API for AxM (Apple Business Manager and Apple School Manager) cantscript released his scripts for token management. That got me thinking about our 11 ABMs, so I “variabliseded” it and have a .env and folder structure to add as many AxMs as you need. My effort has been in the optimisation of process as the Apple API can be hit easily.

Had too really, we’d onboarded another company with 57 ABMs and 20,000 Macs and couldn’t change MDM assignments for their serials until the user accounts had moved!

180 Thinking

Tue, 13 Aug 2024 12:00:00 +0100

Dean Maryon and Sean Thompson had the idea of 180 thinking; turning the world on its head, and I wanted to play with WordPress installs.

The idea to show the world different thinkers. So I set up the site, under the domain 180thinking.com for the guys to post ideas.

We invited the agency to contribute their examples of 180 Thinkers and built a reception wall of the winners.

Your browser does not support the video tag.

Internet Archive from 2011.

adidas World Cup 2020

Tue, 13 Aug 2024 12:00:00 +0100

What for many of us was a four year journey to bring all the adidas marketing together for 2010.

Launch films, brand and product design, fonts, print, TV, Facebook pages, X-Box covers and daily updates throughout the tournament. We had over 150 people for the final 12 months which included our digital department RIOT, and a team of 15 on the ground in South Africa shooting content daily.

And it started with 11 threads. 11 national languages. 11 players. 11 colours. The shape and pattern that defined the adidas campaign.

adidas Rugby World Cup 2003

Tue, 13 Aug 2024 12:00:00 +0100

Stuart Brown and Simeon Roane.

WHY DID WE BRING THE WORLD’S GREATEST RUGBY PLAYERS TOGETHER AND COVER THEM IN ACRYLIC PAINT?

Impact — The force generated when two or more world-class rugby players collide is awesome. So when we set out to create the Rugby World Cup campaign for adidas, we wanted to do more than just make some ads. We wanted people to see and experience what it feels like to be hit.

XSAN

Tue, 13 Aug 2024 12:00:00 +0100

While at 180 I launched the in-house editing department under the guidance of Peter Cline. We started with a single G4 and a SCSI drive that could handle almost minutes of D1 SD footage! (I don’t even think that was 10bit, just a really crappy video codec!)

We added a small patch panel with U-Matic, DVD, VHS and Betacam ingest capability and a second station shortly afterwards. With the launch of DV and FireWire, we were able to store and edit day of footage building a library of assets for mood videos and ‘rip-o-atics’.

Al Jazeera

Tue, 13 Aug 2024 12:00:00 +0100

Al Jazeera defies those that demand its closure by issuing demands of its own.

When the UAE blockade on Qatar was enacted, part of the demands issued was the closure of the Al Jazeera news network. We created a counter campaign that reminded the world on the importance of having a free press. Using Al Jazeera’s own correspondents to issue some demands of their own – the campaign got the world talking and reinforced Al Jazeera’s legitimate moral authority.

Wacom Golf

Tue, 13 Aug 2024 12:00:00 +0100

We worked very long hours at 180, often with no notice. So I made sure my team had the best and most comfortable tools to help them any way I could; “uppy-downy-desks” and ergonomic chairs, we even had a visiting chair masseuse for a year!

We learnt one Friday night in 2008, late, that the uppy-downy desk dropped low, an A4 Wacom Intuos tablet presented on an Apple 20″ Cinema Display worked rather well with Tiger Woods Golf…

How to make a cup of tea

Tue, 13 Aug 2024 12:00:00 +0100

A very silly one here, but we all have to learn somewhere right?

When I started the 180 AV department, I needed to learn about video myself, so I purchased a Sony HC1 HDV camera and some pieces and taught myself to shoot and edit.

What I learnt was my wife doesn’t like being on camera, and cats walk away, so I had to film myself.

I also learnt the hard way about backing up Final Cut Projects and keeping master copies of edits. This was 2006 when YouTube was 4×3 and despite shooting and editing in HDV, this is my only copy.

Virtualising macOS

Sun, 27 Sep 2026 01:27:00 +0200

Inspired by Rob Potvin’s MacAdmins presentation and baking guide on virtualising macOS on Apple Silicon, I moved beyond standard UTM setups to explore a repeatable pipeline using Tart, Packer, and Ansible—fully “variablising” the workflow for automated VM builds.

Most guides rely on default admin/admin credentials, so I reworked the Packer templates to accept dedicated user configurations and Jamf Pro enrollment settings, while navigating Apple’s updated build orders and setup screens.

180 Mounter

Tue, 29 Oct 2024 12:00:00 +0100

So back in the good old days of macOS, when I ran a little Jamf at my old agency 180, you could launch an AFP link from web browser. So rather than populating ‘Connect to Server’ shortcuts or filling the dock or a folder with links, we added Jamf bookmark, embedded in Self Service for mounting all the network shares.

It was only three or four file servers as we had an old and new production server at the time, as well as AFP shares from our XSAN, And then moved links from production, supported storage to read-only archive on slower storage with no support contract. We could update links here and all staff could mount all shares from a single place; Self Service.

My Homelab

Tue, 13 Aug 2024 12:00:00 +0100

I’ve been “home labbing” for a good few years now, way before I even heard of r/homelab! I started as I had ‘needs’ and didn’t want to leave my primary workstation running all the time. (Apple eMac with external 15″ TV connected via composite video adapter).

My first I guess was my G4 MacMini I had plugged in to my TV with VGA. I had a Elgato EyeTV 200 connected by FireWire 400 and a matching external drive. All video was there, and I kept my audio on the eMac in iTunes as I only had WiFi at home.

My Jamf Scripts on GitHub

Tue, 13 Aug 2024 12:00:00 +0100

I don’t have much, and most is re-hashes of other folks code. But by stitching things together I’ve put together a few tools. Could be useful for folks…

https://github.com/markkenny/jamf

I also have a couple of recipes on Autopkg. Tag me for mistakes. I will fix them.

https://github.com/autopkg/markkenny-recipes