SharePoint 2010 Extravaganza

Perhaps you’ve been hearing a lot about SharePoint 2010 lately… or perhaps not! Most likely the latter because most of the juicy bits have been locked under NDA. Until the SharePoint conference in Las Vegas next week that is!

Yes, and once the NDA wrappers are off there’s tons of goodness to talk about.

Which is why we’re having a special SharePoint 2010 Extravaganza at the Sydney Business & Technology User Group (SBTUG) on Wed 28 October (2 weeks away).

When: 6pm Wed 28 October 2009
Where: Microsoft, North Ryde (map)

It’s going to be a big night with SharePoint MVP and Microsoft Technical Specialists presenting.

Agenda

Here’s a quick (draft) agenda for the night:

6:00 – News & Intro (Craig Bailey)
6:15 – Introduction to SharePoint 2010 (Kathy Hughes + Aaron Saikovski)
7:15 – Pizza break + networking
7:30 – Overview of Office 2010 SharePoint Integration (Alistair Speirs)
7:45 – SharePoint Workspace (previously known as Groove) (Alistair Speirs)
8:00 – Diving into SharePoint 2010 (Kathy Hughes + Aaron Saikovski)
8:30 – Visio Integration Services + SharePoint 2010 (Jamie Hutchins)
8:45 – Final demos + Panel Session Q+A
9:15 – Finish + networking

Because this is a big SharePoint night, there’s also going to be a stack of Sydney’s finest SharePoint consultants and developers coming along. So, it’s a good chance to make useful contacts if you are looking to investigate SharePoint strategies.

Although the night officially commences at 6pm, most of us will be there from 5:30pm for general chatting and mingling. Feel free to come along early (and get a good seat!).

Oh, and here’s an obligatory graphic of the SharePoint pie :-)

 

A little bit about our presenters:

Kathy Hughes

Kathy Hughes is a long time SharePoint guru, Microsoft MVP, and author of the upcoming SharePoint Designer 2010 Unleashed book (which has over 1,000 pages – yikes!) . Along with Aaron Saikovski, she’s been preparing a stack of demos to showcase the new features in SharePoint 2010 Server. They’ve put together 2+ hours of detailed information and demos.

Aaron Saikovski

Aaron is well known in the SharePoint space, having worked for some of the largest SharePoint consultancies in Australia, before moving to Microsoft Services Australia as a Senior SharePoint Consultant a year or so ago. He’s a Certified Microsoft Technology Specialist and former MVP with experience as a consultant and trainer across a variety of sectors including defence, federal and state government, financial services, logistics and insurance both in Australia and internationally.

One of the advantages Aaron brings to the event is his close ties to the SharePoint product teams in Redmond, due to him being the local MCS field readiness champion for the SharePoint 2010 wave of technologies. If you are after a key contact to keep you in the loop, then make sure you have a chat with him on the night.

Alistair Speirs

After the pizza break we’ll be handing over to Alistair Speirs. He’ll be giving an overview of how Office 2010 fits in with SharePoint 2010, plus talk about his favourite Office app – SharePoint Workspace (what used to be known as Groove).

As an aside, I wanted to mention a few thoughts about Alistair (in case you don’t know him that well). Alistair is one of those quiet types who you might easily miss. However, I’ve noticed that every time I chat with him I come away really impressed. His knowledge & experience with all things Microsoft Office is vast! He’s also very considered (no off the cuff opinions here). He’s also pretty patient when you want to have a rant (as I tend to do at user groups from time to time :-) ) – and then comes back with a few wise thoughts after the meeting that totally re-align my perspective.

Why do I mention this? Well, simply this. If you haven’t had a chance to meet and speak with Alistair about Office & SharePoint, then this SBTUG meeting will be a good chance. As I mentioned, he’s quiet and unassuming so you’ll have to make a point of finding him. But if you have a real-world question about Office then he’s the one to see. He’s seen just about every conceivable scenario to do with Office, Groove, SharePoint and InfoPath used in enterprise and government departments around the country. Make sure you track him down.

OK, enough of the praise-Alistair fest! Back to SharePoint 2010.

Why SharePoint 2010 is important

SharePoint is already one of the biggest money-spinners for Microsoft (Steve Ballmer describes it as one of Microsoft’s Unsung Hero products). And there’s no indication that’s stopping anytime soon. But more than that, SharePoint 2010 is effectively the ‘version 3’ of a product that everyone waits for (or in the case of WSS it’s version 4!). Put another way: SharePoint 2010 is when they finally get it right (<- joke). So, you need to understand what’s coming in the product. We’ll be covering operational, developer and designer/user interface aspects.

Make sure you take a look at these sneak peek videos on the SharePoint 2010 site for more:

One other thing

There’s another thing I wanted to mention about the night. At the end we’re having a panel session with all the presenters up the front to answer any questions you may have. This will be a similar style to the way we conducted the Virtualisation Smack-down panel session a few months back. Come along with your questions and get informed answers. Both the good and bad. This won’t be marketing guff – instead it will be expert advice from people who work with the technology day-in, day-out.

Have I sold you on the event? I hope so. Let me just add this final note:

This event will be one of the first public demos of SharePoint 2010 in Australia. So, make sure you join us to find out what all the fuss is about. You can RSVP here on Facebook (preferred), or email me (if you aren’t on FB).

Free pizza?

Oh, and one more thing! I’m applying to get Microsoft funding for this event so that I can provide you all with heaps of pizza and drinks for free. If I can get a really big turn out it makes it easier to get the funding approved. So, please let all your work colleagues and friends know, tweet about it, RSVP on the event page, and then I look forward to seeing you on the night.

Let me know what type of pizza you want :-)

See you on Wed 28 October, at 5:30pm.

Many thanks: to Ivan Wilson (<- SharePoint guru) for promoting the event on Guru Web.