European SharePoint Best Practices Conference 2009 Rundown...
The 3rd of the "SharePoint Best Practices"
conferences (1st in Europe) took place in London
earlier this week and I was one of the many "SharePointers" who were lucky enough to
attend.
The "European SharePoint Best
Practices Conference" consisted of 57 ‘expert' sessions, 7 ‘exhibitor'
lunch-time sessions and 8 (Open Mic) ‘Ask The Experts' sessions, all packed
into 3 fun-filled days brimming with invaluable information covering a variety of
aspects relating to SharePoint ....
Combined Knowledge did an outstanding job organising the event
(...personal thanks to Zoe Watson @ CK), whilst sponsors and exhibitors provided
plenty to do during "session breaks" (..not to mention loads of
opportunities to win various prizes - from 'rc tanks'
to 'ipods' and 'bikes' to 'flights')... and the "SharePint" evening rounded off the experience
superbly - with thanks going to Syntergy, who I heard (..although not officially) were kind enough to
put up the ‘Tab' behind the bar ...
Some of my personal highlights included:
- ‘Killer
Bunnies' Keynote from Joel Oleson to kick things off...
- ‘SharePoint,
SQL, and Storage: Best practices' from Mike Watson
- ‘Test
Driven SharePoint Development' from Andrew Woodward (...if only as an ‘intro' to the ‘TDD
and Unit Testing' discussions later on in the ‘Ask The Experts' session)
- ‘Designing & Deploying Enterprise Branding Solutions using Custom Site Definitions' from Eric Shupps
- ‘Creating
Custom Field Types: Best Practices' from Todd Bleeker (...although Todd's enthusiasm
alone could be regarded as a highlight)
- ‘Creating,
Deploying List & Item Events: Best Practices' from Maurice Prather
- ‘SharePoint
in Education: SharePoint User Group' from Alex Pearce and Andrew Woodward
- ‘Deploying
SharePoint sites through multiple environments: Best Practices' from Chris
O'Brien
- The
final ‘Developers Ask the Experts' (... Andrew Woodward's ‘pan faced' comments
in response to Chris O'Brien is a particular highlight which comes to mind)
Now you may think that's a reasonable amount of ‘highlights',
but I assure you that was the just the ‘tip of the ice-berg' when taking into account there
were up to x4 sessions running simultaneously at any one time.
I chose a mix of sessions over the 3 days, mainly attending "IT Pro" and "Dev/Des" sessions with couple of 'Info Worker' sessions thrown in for good measure (...Nick Swan and Robert Foster's 'BDC in theory and practice' and Penny Coventry's 'SP Designer: Best Practices' were too tempting to miss and didn't disappoint).
Day 1
KeyNote
10 Steps to SharePoint Success - (AKA 'Killer Bunnies')
Joel Oleson
DE201
Best Practices for Developing Web Parts
Todd Bleeker
IT106
SharePoint, SQL, and Storage: Best practices for a winning combination
Mike Watson
IT103
Legacy Stuff: Help me Kill my File Servers, Front Page Servers, and Public Folders
Joel Oleson
DE204
Test Driven SharePoint Development
Andrew Woodward
Day 2
DE205
Designing and Deploying Enterprise Branding Solutions using Custom Site Definitions
Eric Shupps
DE206
Best Practice for Customizing the Search UI in SharePoint 2007
Ben Robb
Lunchtime Session
Replication Best Practices: ...Server to Server Replication Solution.
Syntergy
DE210
Best Practices for Creating Custom Field Types
Todd Bleeker
IW308
Business Data Catalog in theory and practise
Nick Swan Robert Foster
DE209
Developer Ask the Experts Panel - Part 1
Open Mic for delegates to try and stump the panel of Top developers
Day 3
DE207
Best Practices for Creating, Deploying, and Managing List and Item Events
Maurice Prather
IW311
SharePoint Designer – Best Practices & Hints and Tips
Penny Coventry
Lunchtime Session
SharePoint in Education.
SharePoint User Group
DE212
Approaches and best practices for deploying SharePoint sites through multiple environments (dev, QA, UAT, production)
Chris O’Brien
IT113
Best Practices for implementing a virtualized SharePoint Production Farm
Brian Wilson
DE214
Developers Ask the experts panel part 2
Open Mic for delegates to ask lots of Developer questions to the panel.
Hopefully I'll get to add some further posts on the event over
the coming days (once I've had time to digest everything that is)... if not, then
I can't wait for "European SharePoint Best Practices Conference 2010'