Toronto SharePoint User Group: Meeting One

I just returned from the first TSPUG meeting and it was a blast! Thanks to Heather, Kaylie, Martin and everyone else at CDI Education who put in extra-long days to coordinate registration, arrange the fine catered food, and generally help it to all run smooth beyond expectations.

There were about 45 people in attendance, coming from a variety of backgrounds, industries and SharePoint experience. We spent about an hour, hearing from everyone who wanted to take a turn, just talking. We learned what people are working on, where they are in deployment, asking questions and discovering the sorts of things we'd like to learn more about. It was like "old-school user group" and set a great tone. Maybe we open every meeting with a conversation (15 minutes?), what a concept.

For the second half I presented "An Introduction to SharePoint" and walked the group through a demonstration of the main features. The we drew for prizes (congrats to Don and the other winners), worked through a few more questions and called it a day.

It was great to see a number of familiar faces in the crowd, like Graham Marko of the Metro Toronto .NET UG and author Ken Cox. There were several .NET developers interested in expanding their repertoires like Sanjeev and Jibey. Dave was one of many just implementing WSS and interested in learning more about how to make the most of it. We even had someone who works with a "competitive technology" come out to see what all the fuss was about. And yes, he seemed to dig it.

It was also a pleasure to finally meet Michael Herman of ParallelSpace. Michael wrote several of the SharePoint whitepapers found on microsoft.com, and will be presenting three sessions at the SharePoint Advisor Live conference this June in Las Vegas. It's great to have people of this caliber involved -- and speaking as tonight's presenter -- especially for those monents you can turn and say, "So Michael, how would you handle that one?"

What will future meetings cover? We'll cover the gamut -- from beginner to deep developer. It's clear we have a wide range of experience around the city, and we'll make sure the coming months bring a healthy mix of topics. Bring your questions, this is a great group of people to have together in a room.

The next meeting is scheduled for May 18. Details will be posted at the official TSPUG site. Following that we'll be back to the second Wednesday of each month.

Thanks to everyone who came out, ate, conversed, shared stories, asked questions, answered questions, volunteered to help out, and made this a great start for the newest group on the block. I can tell we're in for a bunch of fun.