European SharePoint Best Practices Conference Wrap Up
I just got back from London and all I can say is, “Wow!” This was the first time that myself and my wife and daughter have ever been out of the US and we had an absolute blast – we did so much walking that we literally wore our shoes thin – it’s truly an amazing place with incredible history everywhere you turn.
As for the conference itself, first off I want to thank Steve Smith and all those that were involved with organizing such a wonderful conference – as a speaker they definitely set the bar for other conference organizers and I hope that attendees saw the same attention to detail and overall quality that the speakers saw (this conference is truly unique amongst all the ones I’ve spoken at).
In regards to my two sessions – I totally blew my timing on both of them (more so on the developer one) and was unable to show everything that I planned but I do hope that those that attended got some useful information for the time spent (virtually nobody left when I ran late so I’m going to take that as a good sign that people were getting value out of the presentations). I plan to post some of the sample scripts that I demonstrated during the presentations but that will come over the next few weeks; for now I’ve posted my slide decks (saved with notes so you can see some of my examples) for you to download:
 | Windows PowerShell for SharePoint 2010 Administrators |
| Windows PowerShell for SharePoint 2010 Developers |
Don’t forget that you can also download the PowerShell cheat sheet that I provided during the sessions (see my earlier post).
Thanks again to everyone that attended my sessions and for all the great tweets that came out during and after the sessions – I know I still have lots to learn when it comes to public speaking so any kind of feedback is very much appreciated!
SharePoint Best Practices Conference Wrap Up
The SharePoint Best Practices Conference has come to a close and I had a great time. I presented two topics, one on using Content Types to improve discoverability and the other on sub-sites versus site collections and I helped out on a couple of experts panels. For the site collection talk I had the honor of being able to co-present with Jason Medero and we got to do the talk twice – I was pleasantly surprised when the second session was almost as full as the first. All-in-all the presentations went really well (particular the site collection talk). I had a bit of a hard time with the Content Type talk – I stupidly started up the wrong virtual machine and was rather embarrassed when I went to do my demo and none of my demo material was there. Fortunately everyone seemed very understanding – I guess I should have expected something to go wrong with my first ever solo conference presentation but I suppose it could have been much worse. For those who attended that talk, thanks for your patience 
. If you made it to any of my talks this week please write a comment and let me know what you thought – I’m eager to do more presentations in the future and would love some feedback to help me know what worked and what didn’t.
If you’d like a copy of my slides here are the links:
- LapointeMedero_IW_265_SubsiteOrSiteCollectionBestPracticeApproachesConsiderationsAndLessonsLearned.pptx
- Lapointe_IA_260_UsingContentTypesToImproveDiscoverability.pptx
It was great getting to speak with so many people who had used and benefited from my extensions – I even had someone ask me for my autograph . It was definitely a great week and a great conference – not sure when the next one will be but I highly encourage folks to put it in their budget to attend (I love that the attendee to speaker ratio is low which makes it really easy to spend some quality time with speakers from all different disciplines).
I’ll be Speaking at the SharePoint Best Practices Conference
Catch me at the SharePoint Best Practices Conference in San Diego, California. The conference will be held February 2-4, 2009. I'll be presenting two topics, both currently scheduled for the last day, Wednesday:
IA260, Using Content Types to Improve Discoverability
Content Types are one of the great new features included with SharePoint 2007 and they can be used to serve many different needs. In this session we will discuss some best practices and lessons learned when trying to use Content Types to make information more discoverable to users with different navigational needs. We will discuss some simple approaches to help determine which Content Types are needed and how to utilize those Content Types to address the specific goal of helping users find information more easily. We will also discuss various page design, taxonomy, and search capabilities that can be utilized as well as the lessons learned from real-world implementations.
IW265, Sub-site or Site Collection ? Best Practice Approaches, Considerations, and Lessons Learned
One of the more difficult tasks planners face when designing a WSS or MOSS environment is whether to use sub-sites or site collections and in what combination. This is a critical process to get right from the beginning as it could have extreme ramifications on the overall success of the implementation. This session will cover the pros and cons of using site collections and the best practices that affect the decisions to use them. We will look at the various ways in which a logical, hierarchical, taxonomy can be met using site collections and how to keep various assets synchronized between related site collections. Also, because sometimes even the best laid plans can’t account for the unforeseen we will delve into the various approaches available to change the site collection architecture post implementation (how and why you might need to convert sub-sites to site collections and site collections to sub-sites).
This will be my first conference talk so I'm real excited (and admittedly a little nervous) so please stop by and give me your support! If you're not currently registered you can do so from here: http://www.sharepointbestpractices.com/ - it's sure to be a great conference!
