November 2008 - Posts
'Tis the season for hardcore SharePoint. I'll be doing a presentation for the Toronto .NET User Group with the understated title: Secret Strategies of Successful SharePoint Projects. This is a two-part session on designing knowledge management solutions and then implementing them in SharePoint. We'll discuss taxonomy design, infrastructure design, the mapping of knowledge domains, common mistakes, the practical limits of SharePoint, the practical limits of people, and field questions from the audience. It's going to be an exhausting bunch of fun, hope to see you there!
From the announcement:
When? TUESDAY December 9th, 2008, 6:00 p.m. - 9:00
p.m.
Where? WE HAVE MOVED!! MISSISSAUGA CONVENTION CENTRE
at 75 Derry Road Mississauga, Ontario, L5W 1G3 (near corner of Hurontario St -
Hwy 10).
Is this meeting CATERED? NO CATERING FOR THIS
MEETING. NOTE ABOUT FOOD: Our current budget for the remainder of the
year DOES NOT allow us to cater food for this meeting. ANY COMPANY -
would you consider being a food sponsor for a given meeting? If so,
please contact Ed Musters!
6:00 p.m. - Meet and greet! Arrive early! Great Prize give
aways!!
6:30 p.m. - Opening Remarks from the User Group President
6:45 p.m. - Secret Strategies of Successful
SharePoint Projects. How to turn diverse requirements into great
deployments from design through release, with respect to: team skills, farm
topologies, site and navigation taxonomies, and site composition, all within
the confines of SharePoint's practical limits. And in the second half we'll
really blow your mind!
8:00 p.m. - Wrap up and Prizes!
HOW TO REGISTER:
- We prefer you register on the web at http://www.torontoug.net. There is NO
COST to attend.
- PLEASE we need your registration if you are going
to attend! We need to be able to properly plan according to the attendance.
- If you are a member, please Login! If you are
not yet a member, click "Register". There is NO COST to join.
- If you have logged in or just signed up as a new
member this DOES NOT automatically sign you up for the event!
- Please go to the "User Group Events"
section, and click on the "Read More" to see the event details.
You will see the "Click here to register" link.
- If all else fails, please contact Ed Musters at
416-817-3330 and leave a message. The Toronto .NET User Group currently has
over 4,000 registered members, making it one of the largest in North
America! Thank you to all for your tremendous support.
Joel posted a teaser this morning, here's a little more to look forward to - the December meeting of the Toronto SharePoint User Group will be SharePoint for Lunch on Friday, December 12 from 11:50am to 1:30pm at a (still undisclosed) downtown restaurant. Our featured guest is none other than Joel Oleson, SharePoint mentor to many, ex-employee of the Redmond mothership, and "SharePoint Expert" at Quest Software. Seating is limited to 40, and to keep it simple but raise the quality bar for the holidays, we're aiming for a flat $15 cover charge for lunch and a drink.
After we seal the deal for the location, you'll be able to RSVP. Watch this space and your inboxes (if you're a registered member), you can expect that announcement before the weekend.
Reminder: Toronto SharePoint Camp Call for Speakers
The Second Annual Toronto SharePoint Camp is January 24th, and the deadline to submit your session abstracts is this Sunday, November 30. This is a great opportunity for first-time speakers and seasoned veterans alike. Contact me to receive the package.
Our next Toronto SharePoint Usergroup Meeting will take place next Wednesday, November 19, 2008.
This month’s speaker, Sean Hopen (New Toronto Group), will give a tour of the development process with Silverlight and an overview of developing web parts for use in SharePoint. There will be a discussion of the benefits of using Silverlight in a SharePoint implementation.
To demonstrate Silverlight in action, Sean will show you how to create a web part that can be used by non-programmers to display a chart of data from any SharePoint list.
Sean has been developing software for the last 25 years and is now a Senior Consultant for the New Toronto Group. He has lead development teams working on desktop-, client server-, and multi-tier internet applications for Health, Financial and Education sectors. SharePoint development with a Silverlight focus is his current area of concentration.
When: 6:00 pm, Wednesday, November 19, 2008.
Where: Nexient Learning, 8th Floor, 2 Bloor Street West, Toronto, ON
Pizza and conversation at 6:00, meeting at 6:30, presentation starts by 7:00, closing and prizes at 8:20.
To RSVP, please email Susie: susie.ibbotson@cyberplex.com
Look forward to seeing you next week!
Today we confirmed that Saturday, January 24th is the date of the 2nd Annual Toronto SharePoint Camp! For a second year, I'd like to thank Manulife Financial Corporation for generously providing the facilities that not only make this event possible, but also keep it free to all attendees.
TorontoSharePoint.com will be updated soon with information about the event. In the meantime, mark January 24 on your calendar and watch this space for news about registration, opportunities for sponsorship and the call for speakers as we ramp up.
Today Microsoft's Ramp Up program launched a new track: SharePoint for Developers, Part I. This is a free, online, community-based program that only requires a Live ID to sign up and dig in.
I worked through all the learning materials for the first module (creating Web Parts) and it looks good. The module includes a Word document that describes web parts, a narrated PowerPoint ("slide-cast", ~20 min), a web-cast style Visual Studio capture ("code-cast", also ~20 min), and a Virtual Lab (up to 90 min) where you can build on a remote control box. The only downside is that all assume you're creating a web part in an IDE where "SharePoint Web Part" is an available project type (so either VSeWSS for VS 2005, or Visual Studio 2008 is installed); while these templates make good demo-ware, they are not recommended for "real" development. STSDEV is one good alternative, though my old-school beliefs say you should build your first web part in Notepad, or at least start minimal with the VS "class" project. Once you get past that, all the core ideas are there (adding attributes, creating properties, connecting web parts for master-detail views, data-binding, etc.) so these are great learning tools even if your implementation will be a little different.
The Word document is an okay (if minimal) introduction, the narrated slides and code-cast are really well done, and the Virtual Lab gives you a chance to apply your learning on a virtual machine. You do need to provide additional business contact information to use the VPC, but this a terrific offering for anyone without the horsepower or inclination to run your own local virtual machine. The speed is surprisingly not awful, and it's pretty cool to be able to get full remote control to write and deploy code in a browser. If the other modules are as good (and I suspect they are), this is a great new offering that takes all the excuses away for learning SharePoint development. Get to it!
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