SharePoint Saturday DC 2010 Recap and Session Materials

What a weekend! With over 900 attendees (929 I think was the number), over 90 speakers, and over 30 sponsors – this was the largest event of its kind ever held, and it went extremely smooth, thanks to the efforts of Dux Raymond Sy, Dan Usher, Gino Degregori, Jennifer Davis, and all of the volunteers who helped keep it together. To grasp the size of this event, most SharePoint Saturday events average between 50 and 250 attendees. Great work everyone!

It was a dark, and stormy mid-afternoon. From the skies bellowed large hail, winds, and torrential rains. Luckily, we missed that by about an hour. Landed at IAD shortly after 5, grabbed my rental car, and headed with some co-workers to the hotel in Falls Church, with a quick last minute stop at Staples for some supplies for our booth (poster-board does not pack well…). We dropped off our stuff at the hotel, and headed to the Speaker + Sponsor dinner. It was an amazing site, that I did not expect to see at a SharePoint Saturday Event, lots of familiar faces, some of which I had not seen since the 2009 SharePoint Conference, and some of which I had yet to meet, and a LOT of old friends. Had some great conversations, food, and drinks, and then headed back to our hotel with a good percentage of the crowd.

The event itself was mind-boggling. The lines flowed smoothly for the close to 1000 people that were there, people were able to get in and register quickly. I in the meantime helped setup the Grace-Hunt booth, donned my “booth babe” shirt from the Women in SharePoint, and headed into the theater for the keynote. Dux and Marcy Kellar did a great job with their opening song, and we had a virtual keynote from Arpan Shah, the Director of the Microsoft SharePoint Product team.

After the keynote, as you might guess, the sessions started. And lots of them. There were about (100) 75 minute sessions happening throughout two buildings. My session kicked off at 2:30 – “From SharePoint Designer to Visual Studio – Prototyping and Deploying Solutions in SharePoint 2010”, and I think it went rather well if I do say so myself 🙂 Thanks to Brian Jackett for fielding a couple of questions from the audience as well, and donating his presentation mouse for the session. I always lose mine, but luckily found it later on. Thanks Brian!

Thank you to all of the (50, exactly) attendees that came to my session, it was a good one. This was the first time delivering that particular session, and I would LOVE any feedback you could offer. You were a fun crowd, at least, you laughed at my jokes (checks are in the mail, I PROMISE!).

Credit for the photo on the right goes to Ken Lo – he dropped into my session, so I had to do a little posing for the camera…. 🙂

I even got a cameo on Christian Buckley’s slide deck, as well as managed to help confuse Mark Rackley’s attendees for a bit. Fun!

The entire day I spent much of the time meeting existing and potential clients, new faces, friends, and catching up with old ones. By the end of the day, my dogs were barking something fierce, but, luckily Rackspace had the solution – free drinks at SharePint over at Greavys.

The night ended chatting with old and few friends, and was the perfect end to a great event.

So, without further ado – below is my deck from the event. I cannot wait for the next one!