#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)

#SPEVO – It’s a wrap! (part 1)

I’m now on the train, heading back to the frozen wastes of Scotland (I’ve heard that it’s been snowing up there over the last couple of day).  The weather during our time in London for the conference was great!  Warm and sunny from start to finish.  And what a conference!  @SteveSmithCK and all the guys involved in arranging to conference should be commended for doing a stand up job.  Given that they had to re-write all the schedules at the last minute due to the ash cloud speaks volumes for his and all the speakers dedication.

I had hoped to post a new blog from each day of the conference but with the sessions/meeting people from the community/visiting the vendors (it has to be done) etc took up all of my time so instead, I thought best to just do a couple of posts at the end.  So here we go….

In the beginning….

There were Volcanoes and they brought forth ash – lots of ash.  And chaos! .

But it would not dampen the spirits of the SharePointers and the conference would march on.

The effects of the #ashcloud were far reaching and pretty much halted the entire American attendees and speakers from making it to London.  This was a massive disappointment for me as I was looking forward to meeting so many of them as we’ve spoken through twitter etc for a while now but have never met in person.  Their absence prompted Steve Smith and the speakers to hastily rearrange the schedules for each day in what they dubbed the “war room”.  Many of the speakers took on the orphaned sessions and did a fantastic job.  My favourite of these was by far and away @AndrewWoody’s session on wicked problems (originally a Paul Culmsee session) but more on that later.

Sunday saw me arrive in London and meet up with @WorTony, @m_macrae, @SharepointAlex and @Sam_Wainright at our hotel before heading up to the Crowne Plaza for a beer or 2 with some of the other guys.  Had some good banter and could tell that even with the American contingent missing, we were still in for a great conference.  As I had to rearrange my travel, I didn’t make it to the football comp which I was really looking forward to but hopefully, we can arrange another one at some point.  The reports came back saying that it was a good laugh and some photos are doing the rounds so well worth a look.

Monday

The first thing that got me on Monday was the number of people still at the event.  I was expecting a much quieter conference but the turnout was awesome.  And so it was onto the sessions.  Day 1 for me consisted of:

• Build a SharePoint Web Site in 60 minutes with Ben Robb.  This was a good session and although some of the demos didn’t quite go to plan, the theory behind using PowerShell scripts to provision your servers means that they will all be consistent and will therefore give your devs a much better platform on which to get their teeth stuck into.  I can see me looking into this more in the future.  It was clear that a lot of people are going to need to skill up on PowerShell (myself included).
• Business Connectivity Services – What’s new with Nick Swan.  Another good session as Nick walked through the new BCS features which has gone from enterprise level CAL to SharePoint Foundation (i.e. it’s free!)  BCS (or indeed BDC in MOSS2007) isn’t something I’ve really had much involvement in so it was good to get some exposure on this area and will be playing with this on my VMs.
• Encouraging User Adoption and Quick Wins in SharePoint 2010 with Steve Smith.  Steve has such a natural presentation style that it’s hard not to enjoy his sessions.  Very informative and lots to take back from this one – well worth attending.  User adoption, whilst not necessarily a techy subject, is still vitally important to any and all implementations.
• Utilizing Roll up Web Parts in SharePoint 2010 with Brett Lonsdale.  Brett took us through the new features in the SharePoint 2010 CEWP, RSS, alerts etc and it’s great to see some improvements have been made in this area.  I still think that it’s lacking in a few areas and if you want to make full use of content roll up and really make it sing, then 3rd party is the way to go *cough* Lightning Tools *cough*
• Everything you need to know deploying SharePoint 2010 in virtualized environments with Brian Wilson and Simon Walker.  Bit of a light-hearted ding dong battle between the HyperV and VMWare camps on this one.  Was a bit dry as no demo but some good advise nonetheless.  Still not 100% convinced that virtualising the SQL instances are the way to go but I’ll be watching this space closely over the next few months.

After the last session, we had the exhibitors evening where the main exhibitor hall was transformed into a casino with blackjack, roulette, craps etc.  We even had someone dressed as a statue on a column who kept giving us drinks vouchers.  I really must learn to just say no as there was plenty of drink going and little did I know at that point what adventures we were going to have later on….

@chris_e_forbes and a statue at #SPEVO

By this time, I had met some fellow Scottish SharePointers: @Chris_e_forbes, @SharePointScot, Liisa Kinnear and @Dianeeva and what a great bunch!  We had such a laugh and I can’t wait for the next SUGUK in Scotland so we can meet up again (There’s a Scotland SUGUK on the 5th May in Edinburgh if anyone’s interested – let me know or even better, ping Chris Forbes on twitter (@chris_e_forbes).

One of the vendors I met were the guys at ClearPeople and had a really good chat about Office integration with SharePoint and in particular Outlook.  This has to be my number 1 issue with SharePoint as I need much more than what is currently on offer.  3rd party hasn’t really been that much more helpful as we have very specific requirements.  However, the ClearPeople guys have a great product called MacroView DMF which displays a tree view of your SharePoint system within Outlook and enables drag and drop emails and attachments into any document library.  The kicker was that you also had access to the SharePoint search through this and it also allows you to add SharePoint libraries/folders etc into your Outlook favourites – that’s cool!  I’ll definitely be following up with them in the near future.

Monday night’s venue

Then came the #SharePint event at the Old Star pub where we all gathered and continued the merriment!  I’d been meaning to meet @AndrewWoody for some time so finally got my chance and we had a good chat.  Before we knew it, we started to get hungry but soon discovered that central London shuts down at 11:00pm!  We ended up spending a fortune on taxi fares and wandered the streets for hours, desperately looking for somewhere to eat – all to no avail.  Only when we got back to our hotel did we find a shop directly opposite that had food……..

We ended up back in the hotel and feasted on beer, crisps and nuts – nothing but the best for us! 🙂

Food fit for kings.....

To be continued….