SharePoint 2010 Training - Late Night with Nate Baum - Site Home

One question that I’m hearing more and more often from customers and partners is “how can I get ramped up on SharePoint 2010?” And they want to go a little deeper now, more than just a teaser site. So to that end - the post below is dedicated to resources and options as of today, April 9th, 2010, and with a local (Michigan) spin. Obviously this will change over time, especially after the product launches next month and more content is published. Hopefully, this gives my customers and partners a great consolidated view as a starting point. I will likely update with a follow-up post after launch.

Online Sites/Blogs

Let’s start with online resources. Here is my top 5 list of SharePoint 2010 sites.

Main SharePoint 2010 site – lots of short videos and docs by workload: http://sharepoint2010.microsoft.com
SharePoint 2010 training portal – great single view of Microsoft training options: http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/training/sharepoint.aspx#2010sec5
TechNet information for IT Pros – a lot more content due out soon: http://MSSharePointITPro.com
MSDN – main information site for SharePoint developers (also more content coming soon!): http://MSSharePointDeveloper.com
SharePoint Product Team Blog – great real-time info and guidance: http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/

Obviously, there are several great blogs and other sites, but five is a good starting point. A list of good blogs could take up an entire post.

Local (Michigan) SharePoint User Groups

Both the Southeast Michigan SharePoint User Group (http://www.semsug.org) and West Michigan User Group (http://www.wmspug.org) meet monthly and cover a variety of topics. Since November, most topics have centered on SharePoint 2010 – including deep dives on social computing (communities), document management, end user features, and WCM. Our April topics include Insights with SharePoint 2010 (e.g. Business Intelligence) in Grand Rapids and SharePoint 2010 Upgrade Scenarios in Southfield, MI.

Local (Michigan) SharePoint 2010 Training events

We’ve already held several SharePoint 2010 focused seminars including free all-day SharePoint 2010 In Action events in both Detroit and Grand Rapids. I also participated in a partner-led SharePoint Saturday Michigan event in Ann Arbor, MI in March. Lots of SharePoint 2010 content. Consultants from Sogeti, CDH, and Trillium Teamologies did a great job organizing the event – and over 200 people showed up – on a Saturday!

OK, that’s great but what’s coming up in terms of local training? We do have a few SharePoint/Office 2010 launch events in the works. The official virtual launch is May 12th, as announced on the SharePoint Team blog. We’ll have a few Microsoft-held events scheduled after that date. Tentatively, we will have events in the Detroit area on May 13th and May 25th. I will post links/info as a comment as soon as it’s available. Stay tuned!

We also have a few local partners that have held free SharePoint 2010 seminars. I’ll include a sampling below. If I missed your organization, send me info and I’ll add a link.

C/D/H (http://www.cdh.com) – C/D/H has been way ahead of the curve, holding seminars on doc management and social computing before the beta release was even out. C/D/H has a number of very talented consultants who are dialed in to SharePoint 2010, and they do a great job in putting these events together and sending out communications. See Seminar and Events on the top navigation.
RCM (http://www.rcmt.com) – a variety of seminars and free training options; some in person and some as webcasts. Contact the local office to find out about upcoming events.
Sogeti - (http://www.us.sogeti.com/) – this is a national site, but you can contact the local office for upcoming local events.

Customized trainings/consulting is also available at a cost from these folks as well. Again, this isn’t an exhaustive list of skilled Michigan-based SharePoint 2010 consultants, just a short list of our partners that I know of that have put on seminars and events around the technology.

Regional training and webcasts are also available from a few key partners. Examples below:

SharePoint 911 - (http://sharepoint911.com) – SharePoint 911 has live webcasts offerings around SharePoint 2010 for a small fee. This organization is headquartered in Ohio, a short drive to Michigan. More details here.
Critical Path Training (http://www.criticalpathtraining.com) – offering a free 10-week webcast series on SharePoint 2010. Details here and more info below on Critical Path Training: http://www.criticalpathtraining.com/Schedule/Webcasts/Pages/default.aspx

UPDATE (4/12): Also, a quick shout out to Mindsharp (http://mindsharp.com), one of our key SharePoint training partners, See my comment at the end of the post for links/info to SharePoint 2010 training options.

Hands On SharePoint 2010 Training

And finally, if you are interested in hands-on training, where you actually get to sit down in a lab environment and use the technology there are options available. The organization I’m most familiar with – and feel very confident in recommending – is Critical Path Training. Critical Path Training has several top consultants and MVPs on staff. Many of these folks have actually been training on SharePoint 2010 for well over a year, including training several Microsoft employees including me. I took a great SharePoint 2010 Dev Ignite class from Ted Pattison and Scot Hillier last July. Here’s a great starting point for finding training that suits your needs: http://www.criticalpathtraining.com/Courses/Pages/default.aspx

Books

A quick search on Amazon for SharePoint 2010 books shows that there are a lot of titles in the works, but nothing available yet. One that I’ll be ordering when it’s available is Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Administrator’s Companion by Bill English. The 2007 version of this book got a lot of mileage for me. A little on the big side (my wife mocks me when I pack this with my “vacation reading”) but if the 2007 edition is any indication, it will be packed full of great info. The second book that I’ll almost certainly get is Inside Microsoft SharePoint 2010 by Ted Pattison. From the description, this will be similar to the Inside Office SharePoint Server 2007 book, written by Patrick Tisseghem. I loved the content in this book, and I hope the 2010 version delivers the same format and real-world scenarios/examples. I’ve given away dozens of the 2007 version of this book.

Also, quick shout outs to books by Steve Fox and Steve Caravajal, two colleagues of mine in the SharePoint trenches. Both are seasoned authors and have a ton of experience with SharePoint, Silverlight, and .NET. Check out Professional SharePoint 2010 Administration by Todd Klindt, Shane Young, and Steve Caravajal. And also Beginning SharePoint 2010 Development by Steve Fox.

The SharePoint Conference 2009 Guidebook

OK, this is great. But all these books have availability dates of June or July. What if I want a book now? I mentioned the 270-page SharePoint 2010 “book” provided to all SharePoint Conference 2009 attendees in an earlier post. This really is a great, easy-to-consume resource – providing a nice look at capabilities. The good news is that almost all of the content is available as a free download.

In looking at the guide, It is broken up into five sections. Section titles and links to the sections below: