Listening

The SharePoint Conference 2009 (SPC09) in Vegas was, to put it simply,  AWESOME!  Seven thousand people in one place all buzzing with excitement about the new features in SharePoint 2010.   Although I had the privilege of playing with some of the bits before the event,  it really was at the event that you’re understanding as to the size of the investment,  the amount of improvements and the amount of information and knowledge that we are going to have to take in over the coming months and years became clear.  If you thought SharePoint 2007 was a big product – ‘you ain’t seen nothing yet!’  It was also great to be part of the Worlds Biggest SharePint at the Eye Candy Bar – Kudos to Andrew Connell for putting this on.

Speaking

One of the things that I find the most enjoyable about being part of the SharePoint community is the opportunity to share my passion and knowledge.   I do like to speak (not for some personal gratification) but to be able to share all of the cool things that I have discovered.  Having such a great platform to talk about just makes it so much easier. 

MVP Open Day

The week after SPC09 I attended the UK and Ireland MVP Open Day in Reading.   This is a great opportunity put on my Akim and Vicki (MVP Leads) to say thanks for the work we do,  but more importantly a way for people of different disciplines and social networks to get together and socialise.   Timing for this event was great,  I was able to demonstrate SharePoint 2010 to a fairly big audience and from the feedback I got I think people were impressed.

SUGUK Manchester

On Tuesday 10th November Mark Stokes has arranged the first official North West SUGUK event where we will be talking about all things SharePoint 2010 and also getting feedback on what the community wants from the user group – it’s your opportunity to really have a say on how the community works in your area.    Currently the event is full,  if you still want to attend please respond to the post on SUGUK but we may have to have bouncers on the door     – needless to say we will be continuing the conversation over a SharePint after the event.

SharePoint Conference Slovenia

The 27th November sees the second Slovenia SharePoint Conference, having never travelled to this part of the world I thought it would be a great way to visit, enjoy some local beers over the obligatory SharePint.   The timing of the event is great as it allows people to get hands on with the SharePoint 2010 bits (hopefully they will be out by then).

Training

Having guest taught a number of SharePoint training courses for Combined Knowledge over the past few years,  and having spent time helping review the 2010 courses I am going to be in Ullesthorpe for the week of the 30th of November for the first SharePoint 2010 Beta Developer Track.  If you are looking for an early insight and training in the latest platform get in touch with Zoe and see if she can fit you in. 

SharePint

Do I really need to say anymore?   At any event or during ant trip I will be looking to take part or organise a SharePint where we can talk about SharePoint over a Pint.   I’m preferring good local brewed ales lately so recommendations always welcome

Having authored this post I think I really need to offer an apology as it does seem like a little bit of self promotion,  it is not meant to be – more like I’m going to be here, would love to meet up.

The End of 2009 is going to be the start of things to come in 21apps,  I am really excited about the changes taking place and look forward telling you more.   Rest assured that I will be blogging more technical stuff and providing more information on how to improve the way you develop your SharePoint projects.  

2009 has been good 2010 is going to be awesome

Have you implemented SharePoint? If you have, how did it go? How is it being adopted in your business?

How would you like to have four leading SharePoint thought leaders in
Organizational Change, Project Management, Requirements Development and Agile Methodology from around the world mentoring you to make sure you can deliver SharePoint success?

Not wishing to pass up on an opportunity to get together to talk SharePoint for a few days we, Andrew, Dux, Paul and Ruven, thought it would be an ideal opportunity to be a bit more productively and have set up a 3 day mentoring workshop running from August 19-21st in Reston, VA, so that we could share our experiences and knowledge in a small focused workshop.

Dux has posted full details of the workshop and why this one off event really should not be missed.

If your travelling from the UK there are a few sites that you should check out:

SUGUK – http://suguk.org/forums/thread/7678.aspx 

Mark Harrison has started a Groove workspace http://markharrison.co.uk/blog/2008/01/uk-sharepoint-community-us-conference.htm

I heard there was UK dinner on Monday 3rd 6pm – midnight http://garagebilliards.com/directions.htm   (Thanks to Mark Harrison for the info)

For those of you that think you can hold you beer,  SPC2008 After Hours Event is the place to be on Wednesday the 5th.  See Bob’s post or Andrew Connell’s for details.

and the Point is?   – Do you really need to ask

Much less push on the SilverLight front.   Even when it was presented we could not get anyone to commit to the things that are coming in in the next release or the timeframe.   So the lack of even a simple Silverlight TextBox means unless your really up for developing code that you will scrap I would look to avoid anything other than ‘just for fun’ projects.  Patrick did demo the use of Ajax and Silverlight in SharePoint and we can expect something to show up in the SmartPart space fairly soon.   

SharePoint Developer Story

To quote Ted Pattison ‘the developer story is pretty poor right now’ and this is not going to improve much from a tooling perspective for some time.   Patrick did announce there would be some books out on best practice,  although I’m not sure we’re going to see any new ideas – just a bringing together of what people are doing right now.   Away from the SharePoint world I did attend some great sessions on Unit Testing, Continuous Integration and Team System.   This is an area that I am planning to invest some quality time in prior to Christmas so hopefully you will see some blog posts around this.    Ignoring the tooling we really should be aiming to develop our solutions using the best of the .Net development techniques.

I was also disappointed to not see a much bigger show by the Microsoft developer team,  I know they are heads down on vNext and this week clashed with Vegas,  but a poor show none the less.   Probably down to the lack of any real announcements in this area with the one exception (see below).

Microsoft Sync Framework

This was new to me, see my last post, although having sat in on a couple of sessions I am not sure it is right for the SharePoint space.   The sync technology is not the same as Groove so large file sync’s will not, at least not today, do delta based syncs.   I am holding out for some improvements in the next release of Groove to add some real value around the offline SharePoint story.   If you do have a need for a custom sync solution then you should at least look at this space and there are some pretty clever guys working on this.

Visual Studio 2008

Biggest thing here is you can target multiple versions of the .Net framework,  which means that you can now upgrade you developer tools to the latest and greatest whilst developing your current code base.    

LINQ

Nothing really new in this space but what I did see was the amount of effort that has been put into making the LINQ to SQL conversions really slick,  they quality of the SQL statements were stunning so you can use the .Skip(10).Take(10) with confidence.   If you want LINQ to SharePoint then you need to be looking at the CodePlex project that will take LINQ and create CAML on the fly.

Big Announcement

Microsoft Search Server 2008 (MSS) and Microsoft Search Server 2008 Express (MSSX)

The introduction of Search federation extends the reach and capability of search significantly.   I plan to do something on this over the next few weeks (unless someone beats me to it at which point I will be doing a bit of link love). 

One thing to be aware of is the MSS/MSSX products will NOT work with existing MOSS 2007 installations in their current form.  For an upgrade to MOSS 2007 you will need to wait until next year around the release time frame.

Overall

Overall it was a good week.   The opportunity to network was fantastic as were the chances to consume the odd glass of wine or beer    – Those in Barcelona will know what I’m talking about!

I was a little disappointed that there was not any more big announcements,  but that’s probably down to the timing of the event.   Looking forward to the next bog SharePoint conference in Seattle next year when I am sure we will see some cool new features.

Microsoft Sync Framework - CTP available at http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/sync/bb821992.aspx

Will this integrate into SharePoint?   talking SharePoint content offline – merge conflict, version control?   Will this become part of the core system,  how will it compare to products like Colligio or Syntergy?   Will Microsoft leave the Sync Provider  and Sync Agents for SharePoint to the ISVs?

SharePoint was demo’d 

SharePoint was used to demo the KPIs and workflow based on the Contoso foods sample.  Not really talked about as a development platform but reinforcing its value to the developer community.

True Development Story - a lot was talked about how Microsoft ’Dog fooded’  the VS2008 development and this has improved the tools specifically around the Visual Studio Team System offering and the planned  (see “Rosario” for more information http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/teamsystem/bb725993.aspx).   Now the killer question here is will we get the tools we need to make SharePoint development a first class citizen in Visual Studio?    The SharePoint MVP community is very vocal with Microsoft on this.

VS Extensibility -  World of War Craft development environment built in 4 man weeks (2 devs, 2 weeks).   How long will it take to do this for SharePoint?  (see note above).

Overall a fair Keynote.   Most of announcements were sort of known about.

I’m really looking forward to some of the demo’s on LINQ,  this is an area that will impact SharePoint.   It was also intersting to see less push for Silverlight which was the case at Mix 07.

Early start on Sunday 4th,  taxi was picking me up at 4.30am, so I do the sensible thing and go to bed at 1am after enjoying a nice bottle of Margaux that would really not keep for my return

Sunday morning taxi arrives on time at my house near Oswestry, and we head north to Liverpool.  The taxi ride took just over the hour and was without incident although patchy fog did get thicker as we approached and crossed Runcorn Bridge,  nothing more was said or thought.

Checked in,  quick shop for duty free – only to be told you can’t have that as your staying in the EU!,   leave duty free shop empty handed.   Through security,  glad I paid the extra for priority boarding.   EasyJet don’t do traveler plus but for £2.50 each way you get the pick of the seats.   Normal preflight checks go as planned,  announcement by the Pilot that there is going to be a slight delay due to fog and the restriction on flights when visibility is below 125yards. 

Time to catch some well earned sleep;  and with leg room to spare, unlike 90% of the people on the plane, this proved easy.   Woke with a start,  ‘Are we there already?  was I that tired!”  alas no, we were still in the same place.   Partake in a bacon sandwich and some coffee and continue to wait,   2 more hours pass.   I should have been at the hotel by now for a siesta,  further words of encouragement that the fog will clear.   Allowed to use mobiles at this point so I started to work on Plan B.   Phone Ellie and get her to start looking for alternative flights – this fog is not moving!

4.30 after boarding the plane we are officially informed the airport is closed and we will the flight is canceled.   More hurried calls to Ellie – nothing found yet but she’s doing her best.   Starting to plan my exit from the airport,  need to grab my luggage and head for the taxi’s.  Do I head for the station and try a London airport?   Can there be one from Manchester?   if there is it will be filling up fast as this nothing is moving from Liverpool today.

Eventually get my bag after helping passengers to remove the Ryanair bags that seems to be filling up the carousel with no passengers to claim as their own.

Call from Ellie there may be a flight from Manchester on Monach leaving at 3.40pm,    it’s before 12 noon I should make it!   Run out of the airport into the first cab and demand Manchester Airport,  and step on it!   – bit dramatic that more like how long to Manchester airport (less effect here).   Taxi takes an hour and add’s another £55 to the travel costs,  Ellie gets my seat booked and  through the wonders of Push Email I get the travel details a few seconds later.   I’m still going to TechEd, another £150 extra for the late one way flight.   but going to TechEd I am.

Now where in this damn supposedly International Airport can I get a wireless signal.

 Hopefully my next blog post will be from the comfort of my Hotel room!.  

[Update]  finally made it to my hotel at 7.45pm,   and in time to meet up with fellow SharePoint MVPs for a quite Sunday evening beer.

I know there will be two SharePoint MVPs at the event as Ben Robb is also going.   Any other SharePointer’s attending add me to your backnetwork so we can mingle at the event.

Is official! The SharePoint Conference 2008 will be held on March 2-6, 2008
in Seattle at the Washington
State Trade and Convention Center.
What You Can Expect:

• Keynote sessions by senior Microsoft executives
• 60+ sessions across several diverse tracks
• Hands-on and instructor led labs

Go to http://www.mssharepointconference.com and
submit your e-mail address, so you can be notified with important updates like
when the conference website goes live on MOSS 2007.

Will you be going? It’s already added to my calendar…now how do I justify it