I have the pleasure of being a speaker at Best Practices conference in Washington DC in August, 2010. Being a ‘best practices’ conference; speakers are given guidelines to work against to ensure their sessions fit in with the overall theme of the conference: Clarity. Direction. Confidence.

One of the challenges with best practices for a new platform is that a lot of these tend to be emergent at best, invalid at worst or just unknown. With this in mind my sessions at the conference are based on real world work that we have done at 21apps, sharing the lessons we have learnt and looking at the emerging practices that, at the time of writing, feel like they have some grounding in becoming or forming part of an accepted best practice.

The sessions I am presenting are both in the developer track; however they have a different target audience.

Automated Solution Testing with Visual Studio 2010

Audience: Developers, Testers, Project Managers, Team Leads, QA, End Users, Product Managers

Session Level: 300

Time: Wednesday 25^th, 2:45pm – 4:00pm in Lake Ann A

Abstract: In this session we will look at the enhancements to Visual Studio 2010 and how easy it is to automate testing of your SharePoint solutions from the user perspective. With the introduction of the Client Object Model and the fluent UI in SharePoint 2010 UI based testing is increasingly important, the ability to increase testing through automation ensures the quality of your solutions today and into the future. Automated testing is an essential part of your development lifecycle and Visual Studio 2010 makes this possible.

Should I attend: Do you have any involvement in the development, testing, deployment or maintenance of SharePoint solutions? If you do then you will want to attend this session. If you are a user or business owner who is frustrated with poor quality of solutions being provided this session will show what is possible and why there are no excuses.

This is the only session at this year’s Best Practices conference focused specifically on Testing!

Related Sessions:

· Wednesday  2:45-4:00pm, Regency B – Ben Curry, Performance and Capacity Planning 

Real World Sandbox Solutions

Audience: Power Users, Developers, IT Pros, Project Managers, Solutions Architects

Session Level: 200

Time: Thursday 26^th, 2:45pm – 4:00pm in Regency A

Abstract: In this session we will take a look at Sandbox solutions, understanding what they are, why they were introduced and why you would want to build one. Based on a real world project at 21apps we will look at why we chose to build one, how the limitations of the sandbox altered our design and how we mixed server side and client side frameworks to provide the solution. We will also take a look at what the future may be and how Sandboxed solutions could change the face of SharePoint forever!

Should I attend: This session will not be a deep dive into Sandboxed Solutions – this session is aimed at providing the audience with an understanding of where Sandboxed solutions fit, why they would want to use sandboxed solutions, why companies are targeting the sandbox and how this could change the way you work!

If you’re not a developer and want an understanding of what Sandboxed solutions are, this session is for you.

Related Sessions:

· Monday 4:15-5:30, Regency B – Maurice Prather, Understanding and Leveraging the Sandbox

Ask the Experts

I’m also delighted to be taking part in the Development Ask the Experts session on Wednesday 4:30-5:15 at the UserVersity Coffee Lounge.

If you haven’t already signed up I think there are still a few places left. I’m looking forward to meeting up with some folks and of course the infamous SharePint