#SPEVO – It’s a wrap! (part 2)

This is a continuation from my earlier post on my SharePoint Evolutions conference.

Day 2 dawned to more glorious blue skies and the promise of even more fantastic sessions.

• Power to the People: Design in the Hands of the User with Russell Norton.  This session detailed what the end user can do within the SharePoint UX to modify the look and feel of the SharePoint environment.  I was expecting a bit more design info with SPD etc but was still a good session with Russell and really showcased the improvments made in this area.
• What does Web 2.0 and social networking mean to the user with Matt Groves. This was a great session from Matt and I caught up with him later and he described how he had used a macro developed by SAP that would post a tweet out onto Twitter when he moved onto certain slides.  This was a great use of the tech and tied in perfectly with the session’s subject matter.  Coupled with some great slides, this is one I will definately be watching again when the DVDs come out.
• Configuring Managed Metdata Service with Steve Smith and Spence Harbar.  Another great session and a good demo of the new managed metadata features in SP2010.  This is something that I was wanting more info on even before the conference so a valuable session for me and something I will be playing with more in my test environment.
• SharePoint 2010 Document Sets with Rob Pratt.  Well presented session.  Didn’t really learn much more than I previously knew on the subject but lots of demo which is never a bad thing.  Document sets (alongside the managed metadata service) will greatly improve the DM side of SharePoint.
• Wicked problems and SharePoint – “The one best practice to rule them all” with Andrew Woodward.  Best session of the week for me.  Great slides, great audience participation and a great message behind it all.  Using the IBIS method to log ideas, questions etc seems to be a cool idea and I can see how it helps to define where/what you need to achive.  Convincing people to adopt this method could be an issue but I’ll be looking into this further and will be watching again on the DVD.

Next up came the official conference Party night.  We decided that we should really make sure we get dinner before the party to avoid a repeat of the previous nights adventure so found a nice curry place just round the corner from the party venue.  When we arrived at the party location (The Grace Bar) where we were greeted by a couple of fire dancers: .  The entertainment laid on was awesome.  We had a guy from the UK’s X-Factor singing upstairs whilst burlesque dancers and comedians entertained downstairs.  More drink followed that night but at least we found somewhere to eat in the wee hours of the morning.  @sharepointscot and @dianeeva had arranged for us all to have a chat with Brett Lonsdale for the SharePoint PodShow for the following day.  This is a great site with many some really informative discussions on all things SharePoint with experts from across the globe.  If you haven’t paid a visit, make sure to stop by www.sharepointpodshow.com

Hot Stuff @ The Grace Bar

@brettlonsdale and @chris_e_forbes

Day 3 brought the final day of the conference and I only managed to fit in a couple of sessions as I had to get my train back home.

• Growing SharePoint from Small Libraries to Large Scale Repositories and Massive Archives with Mirjam van Olst. The content *****
• Configuring and managing the user profile service with Spence Harbar. I’ve struggled with this in  my own testing and ended up having to install everything under the one domain admin account to get it to work.  Not exactly what you would call best practise.  So it was good to learn exactly what is required from a service account view to get this up and running.  We did slightly run out of time to get all the profile imports through but Spence did a great job here.

And that was it for me.  I said my goodbyes to the people I’d met and headed off to catch my train knowing that I’d gained a lot of new knowledge and a lot of new friends.  There were still a load of people I simply didn’t get the time to meet so hopefully, we can all met up at another conference or a user group.

The conference was simply awesome from start to finish and I came away on a massive high, full of ideas.  And you know what – SharePoint totally rocks and the SharePoint Community rocks with it!

Dave.

PS. Here’s a couple of other photos from the conference (Apologies for the lack of quality in some of the previous photos – the iPhone camera truly sucks without a flash)

Westminster Abbey

The London Eye (right next to my hotel)