SharePoint, Office 365, Azure, and Other Musings…
September 24, 2018 Leave a comment
Registration is available for SharePoint Saturday New England on October 20 in Burlington, MA. We’ve also posted the agenda. You can find out everything about this year’s event on our Web site: https://SPSNewEngland.org
To register, please go to https://spsne.news/Register2018
We hope to see you this year!
May 1, 2014 Leave a comment
Are you curious about Office 365? What it is, how it can save you time and help you be more productive? Are you getting the full benefits of all that Office 365 has to offer?
One of the ways for people to get the most out of this new and constantly evolving suite of products is to have people to turn to; a place to go to explore new features and functionality or just learn more, share experiences and ask questions. Formal training is great (we strongly encourage ongoing training for users of the Office 365 suite of products), but there are times when you just want to interact with others or ask a simple question.
Help has arrived. Jornata is pleased to be a founding organizer of the Boston Office 365 User Group. Our co-organizers include Microsoft, Wellington Street Consulting, Slalom Consulting and Cognizant Technology Solutions. The group will met monthly, beginning on Thursday, May 22nd, and on the third Thursday of every month thereafter. The event will take place at Microsoft’s New England Research and Development Center (NERD) at One Memorial Drive in Cambridge. Attendance is free and food and beverages will be provided. You can learn more and register for the meeting or join the mailing list.
Fittingly, for the initial event, Microsoft’s Chris Bortlik will present an overview of Office 365. His discussion will include an overview of current Office 365 functionality, including Yammer, Lync Online, mobile applications and Office 365 Pro Plus. He’ll also explore administration and update issues. Chris is an Office 365 technology architect at Microsoft.
There are plenty of ways to keep the conversation going. We have a web site, Linked In group and Yammer group, or you can follow us on Twitter @Bos365.
We want this to be your group. Feedback, ideas, and suggestions are welcome. What topics would you like to see the group address? Are there other elements that you feel should be added to the program? We’ll provide a place to air your grievances and perhaps learn how others have dealt with the issues you’ve encountered.
We’re also looking for event sponsors to provide food, beverages and raffle prizes for the events or pick up the tab for the Office 365 Happy Hour that will follow each meeting at a local bar or restaurant. If you’re interested, or know anyone who might be, please contact us.
We look forward to seeing you there!
April 18, 2014 Leave a comment
Join me, and a host of other SharePoint experts on Tuesday, April 29th at Noon EST for a TweetJam to discuss Microsoft’s Strategy for Social Influence
Below is a re-post from Christian Buckley’s blog:
It’s time once again for my monthly #CollabTalk tweetjam scheduled for April 29th at 9am Pacific / 12pm Eastern focusing on the theme of “Microsoft’s Strategy for Social Influence” which is a supporting activity for a panel event I’ll be running at the European SharePoint Conference on this subject next month. I ran a tweetjam on a similar topic last summer, but wanted to touch on the topic once again because of the ESPC panel – and because we now have more details on Microsoft’s social strategy following the SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas last month. Specifically, Microsoft announced their new OfficeGraph technology, which plays a key role in the company’s efforts to identify, utilize, and measure social influence through various “listening” tools within the business and productivity platforms we use every day, like SharePoint, Outlook, Yammer, Dynamics CRM, and of course from our use of the internet to search, communicate and collaborate. It’s pretty simple – to identify social influence and do something with it, you need to track social activities….so OfficeGraph is a HUGE step in the right direction, and I’m pretty excited to see Microsoft innovate in this area.
If you’re new to the tweetjam model, basically its an hour-long public conversation held on Twitter and using a shared hashtag (or as @sebmatthews would call it, “a shared octothorpe metadata field”) which is #CollabTalk. You can use your Twitter platform of choice OR go over to http://twubs.com/CollabTalk which automatically appends each message with #CollabTalk, and has a nice feature that allows followers to actually slow the dialog down to a readable speed (it can fly by fairly quickly). The questions we will be discussing are listed below:
"Microsoft’s Strategy for Social Influence"
As always, we will have a panel of experts on hand to help seed the conversation – but anyone can jump in and participate. That’s the point – we want to encourage people to share their perspectives, so don’t be shy. Our panel this month will include:
I’ll add to this list of panelists as I confirm them in the next day or two, and am excited to once again have a lively debate. We’re also doing something slightly different this time around – we’ll have a number of our panelists live via Google Hangouts, allowing viewers yet another way to participate, watching us as we “simulcast” the tweetjam via video. I’m not sure how it’ll turn out, or if it will provide any additional value – but we’ll try anything once, and it should be fun!
Mark your calendars, tell your colleagues, and get involved!
March 25, 2014 Leave a comment
Wondering what to do tomorrow? Miss out on the SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas at the beginning of the month? Then have no fear. Tomorrow, hosted at the One Cambridge Center Microsoft Office, will be an all day, free event, giving you the best sessions you missed, or want to see again from the Microsoft SharePoint Conference. Details and registration information is below!
The Northeast SharePoint Community is presenting you with a local, free event that delivers SharePoint Conference content and presenters so you can learn what is new and exciting with SharePoint 2013!
Presenting some of the most well-received session leaders of the SharePoint community, Best of SPC 2014 is your source for the news on SharePoint 2013 and the hot topics from Vegas.
Choose from a variety of sessions, including: (See full list on registration page!)
And don’t forget to join us afterwards for our SharePint at Champions just around the corner!
Make sure you catch the Keynote from the Microsoft SharePoint Engineering team! You will hear how their team participated in the development of SharePoint 2013/Online and the product roadmap and vision going forward!
If you have any questions, please contact: northeastbestofspc@microsoft.com
When: Wednesday, March 26th, 2014
Registration: 8:30am
Keynote: 9:00am
Event Sessions: 9:30am – 4:30pm
SharePint at Champions: 4:30pm – 6:30pm
Where: Microsoft Corporation One Cambridge Center Cambridge, MA 02142
December 2, 2011 Leave a comment
Registration is now open for the December 12th, 2011 meeting of the Boston Area SharePoint Users Group.
Please note the date change for this month’s meeting!!
December 12th, 2011 Meeting Information – Cambridge
PRESENTER
The presenter for our next meeting is Richard Harbridge, Senior SharePoint Evangelist for Allin Consulting. He will be presenting "Is Your SharePoint Really Healthy? What’s The Right Prescription?"
Session Abstract
In many organizations SharePoint is a critical enterprise platform. As an organization matures the platform must mature and grow along with it to ensure it can continue to meet/exceed the needs of the business. If the SharePoint implementation is unhealthy or has problems these will compound overtime and may lead to solution, project and potentially even platform failure. This talk is about how to ensure that never happens.
What we will discuss in this session:
About Richard
Richard Harbridge is an internationally recognized expert in Microsoft SharePoint and is a technology and business evangelist with deep expertise in information architecture, enterprise content management, and technology strategy. He has defined, architected, developed and successfully implemented well over a hundred SharePoint solutions from small implementations on a single server to over 80,000+ user implementations in international organizations.
As a sought-after speaker he often shares his insights, experiences, and advice around collaboration, knowledge management, social computing, ROI, governance, user adoption and training at many industry events.
Richard hopes to see you/speak with you at the Boston Area SharePoint User Group as it’s an amazing community where many people exchange and share experience, knowledge, and relationships to help us all become even better at our jobs and the things we are passionate about.
MEETING SPONSOR – Certeon
Certeon is the Application Performance Company. aCelera, our suite of software WAN optimization products delivers fast and secure data transfer for any user accessing any application, on any device, across any network.
As enterprises aim to make their IT infrastructure flexible for business agility, contain IT costs and deal with regulatory changes, they are adopting a number of initiatives:
The IT infrastructure is going through an evolution and the Wide Area Network (WAN) is now the backbone of both private and public cloud services. Each of the initiatives listed above further drives more and more remote access to data. If nothing is done, user productivity drops as WAN links are clogged and costs go up as IT tries to increase WAN links as consumption rises.
In this new world WAN optimization is not an option but a necessity. At Certeon we believe WAN optimization should not be considered as a point solution to solve pain at a couple of remote sites; instead it should be thought of a strategic initiative for the entire infrastructure. When deployed across the board at all points of access, CIOs and IT administrators will no longer have to worry where the data and where the user are. Data will be available instantly at LAN like speeds anywhere in the world.
Our mission is to deliver best of breed WAN optimization and application acceleration technology at a cost that is value based such that enterprises and cloud providers can afford to deploy it at every point of access in the network. No longer should you have to worry about the network or where the data is located, you should have instant access to it no matter where you are. Our software is scalable to be installed in the largest enterprise or a cloud provider’s infrastructure.
Only a software solution can deliver the lowest Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) that CIOs are searching for. Some examples of how costs can be saved from software versus hardware based solution include remote installation to anywhere in the world, leveraging commodity hardware and corporate standards for sparing and maintenance, and maximizing consolidation initiatives like virtualization to reduce cooling, power and rack space costs.
SUSTENANCE
Food and beverages will be provided at the event.
RAFFLE PRIZES
We will be handing out raffle tickets at the BASPUG meetings.
Black Blade Associates will be raffling off a license, valued at $2000 for their SharePoint Zip product.
Lightning Tools will also be raffling off a license for their BCS MetaMan (or other) product.
CubisOne will be raffling off a license for their SharePoint Power Pack iChat product ($1000 value).
We also have books, T-Shirts, and more!
LOCATION
We will be meeting at the Microsoft New England Research and Development center at One Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA.
LINKED IN
Join our group on LinkedIn today to connect with the rest of the BASPUG members, and spread the word!
FACEBOOK
We are also on facebook! http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Boston-Area-SharePoint-User-Group/113652405354617
TWITTER
Follow news about the Boston Area SharePoint Users Group on twitter by following us @BASPUG, and by using the hashtag #BASPUG
WEB
Visit the Boston Area SharePoint Users Group website at http://www.bostonsharepointug.org
July 28, 2011 Leave a comment
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.
Find it here: http://www.spstc.org/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=32
I’ve also copied and pasted it below, saving you a step!
July 14, 2011 Leave a comment
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.
A community-focused, educational event filled with sessions from respected SharePoint professionals and executives covering a wide range of technical and business topics.
Anyone who interacts with SharePoint and its related technologies: Tracks for IT Pro, Developers, End Users, Business Process Owners, the Cloud and more!
Northern Virginia Community College
Annandale Campus, Annandale, VA
(Visit the website here.)
Thursday, August 11 – Saturday, August 13, 2011: 8 am – 6 pm
Friday Night Attendee Event: 6 pm – 11 pm
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!
Registration Fee:
$39 Early Bird (until August 7, 2011)
$59 for Regular & Walk-Ins
(discounts available for groups of 10 or more)
And there are some FAQ’s on the conference about page as well… http://www.spstc.org/Pages/About.aspx
I will be presenting 3 sessions there, so please drop in to one and say hello if you go!
Co-Presented with Christian Buckley
Session Level: 100
Session Type: End User
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.
Co-Presented with Mark Rackley
Session Level: 200
Session Type: IT Pro / Developer
“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.
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.
January 11, 2011 Leave a comment
Wow, it’s been a busy few weeks, and lots of acceptances and confirmations have come through over the past couple of weeks, enough so that I have not been able to get out posts for each one. So, I thought I would cover a few bases at once, and get all of these out there. I also keep an updated speaking and event calendar hosted here: https://gvaro.wordpress.com/calendar/.
More events that I will be involved with, either through sponsoring, hosting, presenting, organizing, or other ways over the next few months are below.
Geoff Varosky's Blog 