Thank you all who attended my Week3webinar today! I always enjoy chances to speak, and enjoy being involved in Week3. Generally my sessions are more technical than not, and Week3 gives me a great chance to bring it down to the business user level.
As promised – here are the slides from my session today. Please leave me feedback letting me know how you thought it went, and if you have any questions!
Be sure to catch other Week3 webinars in the coming months – lots of good content from great speakers. Within the next couple of days, a recording of today’s webinar will be available here: http://www.week3.org/Pages/Sessions.aspx
SharePoint Saturday New Hampshire was a great event! A job well done by the organizers. This was the first SharePoint Saturday New Hampshire, and there seemed to be a great turnout, and the location worked out well. Saw a lot of familiar faces, as well as was able to meet a bunch of great new people. This was also my first official event as a Jornata employee, even though today is officially my first day 🙂
This next part of this post is special for those who attended my session, it’s out little inside joke.
My session was very well attended, and I got nothing but great remarks.
Thank you all again for attending, and for the standing ovation – really, you didn’t have to. But thank you none-the-less. Below you will find my slides from the event.
And if you missed my session, or just want to see it again, come see me in a couple weeks at the Granite State SharePoint Users Group, where I will be presenting the same session, on October 13th.
One of the groups I help out with has been Week3. And while I have helped in the planning and marketing of it for some time, I have yet to speak for one of its online sessions. This is changing next month, I will be presenting a session on search. See below for more information on Week3, as well as the session, and I hope you can make it! (it’s free, and online!)
Who? What? Where? – Searching in SharePoint
This session will cover the importance of search in a SharePoint environment, as well has how to make use of it from the end user, site collection administrator level. We will not discuss search architecture, or managing search in Central Administration. This session will focus on finding information, as well as making information findable.
We are an online interest group designed to provide a platform of discussion and learning around how collaboration technologies can optimize business productivity. Our focus is on ROI, not code.
Week3’s mission is to create an open, unbiased community of business professionals, dedicated to the growth and development of collaboration techniques, using technologies such as Microsoft SharePoint (2010, MOSS, WSS) as a means to improving organizational productivity.
Organizing and maintaining a SharePoint Saturday can be hard work. LOTS of hard work. Luckily, the way we run SharePoint Saturday Boston, we have less hard work than other SPS events. We put the responsibility of ordering shirts, pads, pens, food, etc. on the sponsor, so we do not only have to deal with the event, speakers, sponsors, etc., so we do not also have to order shirts, food, etc. It makes life a lot easier.
Then there are other SharePoint Saturday events, such as SharePoint Saturday New York, they take it to the next level, and deal with all of that. Now, these are just single day events.
Now, with SharePoint Saturday – The Conference, this was a 3-day event, they had roughly 1800 people registered, well over a thousand attend. IMAGINE STUFFING 1800 ATTENDEE AND SPEAKER BAGS?! GAH! They had LOTS of volunteers however. It was not the best well-oiled machine, but, there was no chance of the motor seizing up on this one. They did one heck of a job. This is not to slight the conference in any way, the organizers of this event actually have day jobs, that are not all about planning and putting together conferences, so this was done in their spare time, if they had any.
I was amazed at the level of sophistication that a basically free ($39-$59 for a 3 day event is the best price out there for a SharePoint conference of this size). They had the ability to change name tags on the fly, lots of volunteers had radios, there were session and schedule updates on monitors around the campus, people all over the place directing traffic and offering help getting from building to building, and if for some reason your session time and date had changed, people to find you and drag you to them! (more on that in a moment).
Great job by everyone involved! I was happy to be a speaker and attendee at the conference, and look forward to another one down the road!
With that, I delivered 3 sessions. Below is information on each, as well as slide decks. Thank you to all who attended my sessions!
9 Ways to Become a (SharePoint) Rock Star
This was supposed to take place on Saturday, not Friday. So, when I arrived at the conference on Friday at 5 after 11 in the morning, I saw the lunch table, and headed over… got a plate of food, and then all of a sudden, I was approached by one of the volunteers, and a friend of mine, Jennifer, and the interaction went something like this…
Jennifer: “C’mon! You’re 15 minutes late for your session!”
Me: “What? I don’t have a session until the end of the day”
Jennifer: “No, you have one now”
Me: “Ok then, what session is it?”
Jennifer: “9 Ways to Become a (SharePoint) Rock Star”
[EDITORS NOTE: She did not exactly use parenthesis when she said it.]
Me: “That’s not until tomorrow”
Jennifer: “There are 40 people waiting in there for you now”
Me: “Uh oh, [expletive deleted] [expletive deleted] [expletive deleted] [expletive deleted] [expletive deleted] [expletive deleted] [expletive deleted], Let me grab my bag!”
Jennifer: ”Let’s go!”
[winded dash to another building … then walking, well, being dragged into the classroom]
Me: “Sorry I am late everyone! I slept late and am hung over, you know, living the rock star lifestyle”
…and then we began the session, after my laptop booted up. So we only got through about 6 of the 9 steps. Luckily, Christian Buckley (the band broke up before the session, so he wasn’t there), is starting a blog series at EndUserSharePoint.com here 9 Ways to Become a SharePoint Rock Star, which will cover each of our “9 Ways”.
For some background on “the best fake SharePoint band EVER, EVER”…
Our lightning talk from SPTechCon in Boston in June, 2011
Horse’s End–Behind the Music
Legal Notice from Christian for SPSTCDC
and without further ado… the slide deck.
Just Freakin’ Work! Overcoming Hurdles in SharePoint Development
This basically boils down to a best practices around SharePoint development. As well as a fun edu-tainment session with my co-presenter, Mark Rackley. We had a blast, had some good questions, and got through the entire session. Here’s the deck!
Planning and Configuring Extranets in SharePoint 2010
And my last session, which after this was delivered, I had to run to the airport to head home. Again, a great session, great questions, and again, finished up on time. I hope to have that Cloudshare virtual image up and running soon.
I have to hand it to the organizers of the event, Becky Isserman (@MossLover), Jason Gallicchio (@PrincetonSUG), Greg Hurlman (@ghurlman), and Tasha Scott (@TashasEv) as well as their volunteers, for putting together once of the best organized SharePoint Saturdays I have been to. Great job! Lots of great sessions, sponsors, and speakers made this quite the memorable event! I was able to connect with old friends, and meet plenty of new ones.
The organizers also did something very special and unique with the speaker, volunteer, and organizer shirts – each of them either had a patch for the NYPD, NY Port Authority, or FDNY, remembering the attacks on the World Trade Center, as in just over a month from now, will be the 10th anniversary of that tragic day, in which thousands of lives were lost. This shirt will be definitely one of the conference shirts that I will be holding on to. There were lots of conversations about that day – the people we knew, where we were, and what we were doing… and how it has affected our lives since.
I had a great time giving my session (once I caught my breath after literally running around right up until the starting bell, searching for a power adapter, as mine would not work!), and had a lot of great questions from the crowd! With that, here are my slides from the event, with one important update – the CloudShare link no longer works… found the expiration notice in my junk mail folder the day after the environment was removed 😦 I will work on getting a new one up and running within the next couple of weeks – then the link should be functional again.
Thank you all for attending, if you were able to make it. Someone was even there due to my extranets blog post series (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3), so I know at least once person is reading this!
If you’ve read my last post on the matter, or, if you are reading this for the first time, or, just do not remember anything I write… the schedule (or “shedjule” if you’re British, or, just are into non-American English dialect), has been posted for SharePoint Saturday – The Conference in (well, near) Washington, D.C.
Registration is now open for the August 10th, 2011 meeting of the Boston Area SharePoint Users Group, at the Microsoft New England Research and Development Center (NERD) in Cambridge, MA.
August 10th, 2011 Meeting Information
PRESENTER
The presenter for our next meeting Paul Schaeflein of Schaeflein Consulting. He will be presenting "I need to make SharePoint look like that!"
AUDIENCE: Developer (Level 200) SESSION ABSTRACT How do we deploy custom branding to SharePoint? We will start with the assets provided by our designer and fit them into a predictable, repeatable process. We will also discuss techniques to enforce the brand, enhance the navigation and put some professional touches to the solution
ABOUT PAUL Paul Schaeflein (MVP, MCPD) is a solution architect/developer with experience in all versions of the SharePoint platform. Paul is a top-rated speaker, having presented at the Microsoft SharePoint Conference and TechEd conferences, as well as user groups. Paul has more than two decades experience in architecting, designing and developing software solutions. This experience covers a vast range of technologies, languages and industries. Having developed many line-of-business applications, Paul has a firm grasp on the challenges that corporate developers face when integrating them into a corporate portal.
MEETING SPONSOR – Rackspace
Fanatical Support® has made Rackspace the world’s leader in hosting. We deliver enterprise-level hosting services to businesses of all sizes and kinds around the world. We got started in 1998 and since have grown to serve more than 99,000 customers, including over 80,000 cloud computing customers. Rackspace integrates the industry’s best technologies for each customer’s specific need and delivers it as a service via the company’s commitment to Fanatical Support. Our core products include Rackspace Managed Hosting, The Rackspace Cloud™ and Rackspace Email & Apps. There are currently over 2,900 Rackers around the world serving our customers. More information at http://www.rackspace.com. SUSTENANCE Food and beverages will be provided at the event!
RAFFLE PRIZES We will be handing out raffle tickets at the BASPUG meetings.
The first event of it’s kind, SharePoint Saturday – The Conference (it’s not just for Saturdays anymore! However, this will end on one…), and I am pleased to be a part of it. I’m also very excited to see that SharePoint Saturday has grown so much over the past couple of years, and now there is a full 3-day conference. SharePoint Saturdays are great ways to share your knowledge with others, learn from peers, experts, MVPs and Microsoft Certified Masters. SharePoint Saturday holds a special place for me, as that is where I got my start speaking on SharePoint, back in the beginning of 2009 at SharePoint Saturday Boston. Since then I have spoken at 11 others to date from New York to New Orleans, and have helped organize SharePoint Saturday Boston since the beginning of 2010.
Unlike usual SharePoint Saturdays however, this one is not free, but pretty close to it as far as conference fees go. The current rate is $39, which will go up to $59 soon, so if you want to save twenty bucks… register today!
I could write-up all of the information about the conference, but it has already been done on the site, so why reinvent the wheel (http://www.spstc.org/Pages/About.aspx) – the text below is a copy of that.
WHAT
A community-focused, educational event filled with sessions from respected SharePoint professionals and executives covering a wide range of technical and business topics.
WHO
Anyone who interacts with SharePoint and its related technologies: Tracks for IT Pro, Developers, End Users, Business Process Owners, the Cloud and more!
Thursday, August 11 – Saturday, August 13, 2011: 8 am – 6 pm
Friday Night Attendee Event: 6 pm – 11 pm
WHY
SharePoint Saturdays are a community sponsored event with a huge following. As we take the SharePoint Saturday event to the next level, the goal remains the same: to encourage community participation and lower the barriers to learning SharePoint.
For attendees in any role (End User, IT Professional, Business Manager or Developer), this conference provides an unparalleled level of training, sharing, networking and one-to-one interaction with the SharePoint community. It’s not to be missed!
So you want to become a rock star? We’re talking actual rock star – not a metaphor for “finding stardom” at your company, but that little “band thing” you do on the side after putting in your 9-to-5 each day. In this session, we will lead you on a fun and adventurous journey where you can not only learn SharePoint, but springboard into that life of fame and rock stardom that you’ve been dreaming of, using the tools at your disposal during the daily grind. If, by chance, your wildest dreams of becoming a rock star do not come to fruition, you can be rest assured that you can apply what you learn in this session to become a SharePoint rock star. Because its always good to have a backup plan.
Just Freakin’ Work! Overcoming Hurdles and Avoiding Pain in SharePoint Custom Development
“Why am I getting a security error??” “Why does my code work sometimes, but not others?” “I wonder if McDonalds is hiring.” Writing custom code in SharePoint opens up unlimited possibilities but also throws many hurdles in your way that will slow you down if you don’t take them into account. So, before giving up and searching for careers in the fast food industry, equip yourself with the knowledge you need to succeed in writing custom code for SharePoint. Attendees will learn: 1. Commonly used methods to improve functionality and performance 2. Best practices for disposing of SP Objects 3. How to avoid common issues when writing custom code for SharePoint PREREQUISITES: Developers need to have a basic knowledge of SharePoint, know C# and be comfortable in Visual Studio.
Planning and Configuring Extranets in SharePoint 2010
Session Level: 300
Session Type: IT Pro / Admin
Most companies, large or small, require contact and collaboration with external entities, whether they are vendors, clients, or contractors. SharePoint gives us the ability to open up portals for collaboration with these external entities – this session will show you how to accomplish this using SharePoint 2010. We will review what is required to make SharePoint “open” to the external world, discuss scenarios regarding security and privacy, as well as walk through configuring Forms Based Authentication, Claims Based Authentication, as well as using Business Connectivity Services in SharePoint 2010, to authenticate, and manage our external users. Once completing this session, you should have a firm grasp on how to configure an extranet environment using SharePoint 2010, as well as what should be considered during the planning of your extranet scenarios.
Most companies, large or small, require contact and collaboration with external entities, whether they are vendors, clients, or contractors. SharePoint gives us the ability to open up portals for collaboration with these external entities – this session will show you how to accomplish this using SharePoint 2010.
We will review what is required to make SharePoint “open” to the external world, discuss scenarios regarding security and privacy, as well as walk through configuring Forms Based Authentication, Claims Based Authentication, as well as using Business Connectivity Services in SharePoint 2010, to authenticate, and manage our external users.
Once completing this session, you should have a firm grasp on how to configure an extranet environment using SharePoint 2010, as well as what should be considered during the planning of your extranet scenarios.
SharePoint Saturday New York is one of the great SharePoint Saturday events – put on by some great people – Becky Isserman (@MossLover), Jason Gallicchio (@PrincetonSUG), Greg Hurlman (@ghurlman), with Tasha Scott (@TashasEv) coordinating volunteer efforts.
For more information on my session, check out my blog series on the matter here:
Registration is now open for the July 13th, 2011 meeting of the Boston Area SharePoint Users Group, at the Microsoft Office in Waltham, MA.
July 13th, 2011 Meeting Information
PRESENTER The presenter for our next meeting is Scott Jamison, Managing Partner and CEO of Jornata. He will be presenting "SharePoint 2010 Usage and Adoption Best Practices"
SESSION ABSTRACT This session will cover best practices for usage and adoption of SharePoint 2010. We’ll answer questions for both the SharePoint adoption team and users alike….
For the adoption team: • How can I get my employees excited about using this new collaboration technology (champions, incentives)? • How do I make sure all the employees in my organization understand and feel comfortable using SharePoint? • How can I make sure that SharePoint fits into existing business processes, and makes people’s jobs easier? • How do I manage the behavioral change required to integrate SharePoint into the way people work?
For users: • What collaboration methods and site templates are most appropriate for which types of situations? • What should I ask myself before setting up a SharePoint site? • How should I manage content? • What should I think about when tagging? • Etiquette for social interactions?
ABOUT SCOTT Scott is Managing Partner and CEO of Jornata a Boston-based Gold Partner and SharePoint consulting firm. Scott is a world-renowned expert on knowledge worker technologies and collaborative solutions and is an experienced leader with almost 20 years directing managers and technology professionals to deliver a wide range of business solutions for customers. Scott is a recognized thought leader and published author with several books, including Essential SharePoint 2007 and Essential SharePoint 2010. Scott received his master’s degree in Computer Science from Boston University, with post-graduate work at Bentley’s McCallum Graduate School of Business. Scott is a SharePoint Certified Master.
MEETING SPONSOR – KnowledgeLake KnowledgeLake provides an affordable, platform based solution for managing your company’s unstructured content right within SharePoint. More capable than even the more expensive legacy ECM applications, KnowledgeLake is an enterprise scalable and comprehensive SharePoint ECM solution for searching, securing, routing and annotating your company’s mission critical electronic content. The KnowledgeLake Solution is fully integrated with SharePoint, so it is easy to implement, easy to administer, presents low risk, and is cost effective. For more information please visit http://www.knowledgelake.com
SUSTENANCE Food and beverages will be provided at the event!
RAFFLE PRIZES We will be handing out raffle tickets at the BASPUG meetings.
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