Chris Johnson

How we demo…

chjohn — Sun, 03 May 2009 17:56:33 GMT

I get a bunch of questions at events etc… on how our team do demos. I don't mean the content of the demos, i mean the actual setup and execution.

You might think this is a simple question to answer, but it is more complex than you think.

First up there is no single answer to this, but it basically boils down to what type of event you are demoing/presenting at.

Here is how we break then down:

Tier A: Big high profile keynotes demos, usually done by or for an executive. Think of TechEd keynotes, PDC keynotes etc… These are demos you never ever want to mess up in :)

Tier B: These are still important demos, but usually a smaller crowd (less than 300). Sometimes for an exec or in front of a bunch of execs.

Tier C: Everything else.

Demo Tip: Don’t tell the owner of the event which bucket you have categorized their event in. They sometimes don't like you telling them they are a Tier B event :)

Physical Hardware:

Tier A & B events usually require a complete set of backup demo gear. This sometimes will save your day & or may never get used at all. Trust me, when the s**t hits the fan you will be counting you self lucky you have it on hand.

For Tier A events we usually get in server grade machines to ensure total stability and performance. Most of the time they just run Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V.

For other event types we tend to need to be more portable & we run most demos on a grunty laptop. Currently we are using HP 8530w machines with Quad core extreme processors, 2 SATA 7200 RPM disks (important to have the 2nd drive for Virtual Machine performance) & 8GB RAM.

If you need 2 machines in the set up then a crossover cable between them for networking is ideal. Not using a hub/switch is good because that is one more single point of failure you want to rule out. Most gigabit network cards can just use a regular network cable, you don't need a cross over cable as they auto detect.

Remember what i said earlier about backup gear. For Tier A & B events we usually run two identical sets of gear.

Software Setup:

For SharePoint demos this usually requires 1x Server with SharePoint, AD, Exchange, OCS etc… on it. We have a library of ready to go Virtual Machines (Hyper-V) that we spin up when needed. We run this image on one of the HP laptops spec’d above & give it 6GB RAM.

For Tier A & B events we sometimes we also need to add another machine, or two, for the Client machine(s). This is usually a Windows 7 machine with Office and IE on it. Joined to the same domain as the server virtual machine. It is usually a physical machine so we get Aero effects etc… working.

Fail over:

If the worst happens you want to fail over to your backup kit quickly. This means it needs to be in exactly the same state your primary kit was in when you flip the video switch over.

How do you do this i hear you ask? … easy … you have someone on the backup kit back stage following mouse and keyboard strokes click for click.

When you switch to back up the other person (we call them our shadow) takes hands off keyboard and mouse and the presenter is back in control.

To make all this work you need some pretty sophisticated KVM technology. This allows two sets of screens, keyboards & mice to be plugged in and working on the same machine at the same time. One set up front on stage … and another back stage.

Demo Prep:

They say preparation is the key. IT IS. When prepping for a Tier A & B event we script every mouse click and movement in a demo script & then learn it. On stage we have a shortened version that you can follow along with in case you get lost.

They key here is that your shadow will have also learnt the script and will be following along. They will be watching you screen and following along … but it is much easier if they know what should be coming next.

Remember, every time you deviate from the script you potentially run into something you were not expecting :)

Demo Tip: Have an automated way to get back to the starting state of your demo. For us this usually means a snapshot in Hyper-V. You must be able to roll back to a good known state time after time. This bit me during my PDC session when my machine was not quite in the right state to begin with & my demo didn't work right.

Demo Tip: For Tier C events where you don’t have a shadow backstage you can use Hyper-V snapshots very effectively. Snapshot the major areas of your demo after you have completed them. In the event of demo meltdown you can simply roll forward to the next snapshot and move on. This is really important if a latter part of your demo relies on a previous part working!

Summary:

I hope this has given you some insight into what goes into some of the demos we give & how seriously we take them.

Final note: For Tier A events it is usually a 500:1 ratio of prep time to demo time. So if you have a 15min demo on stage plan on spending 125 hours in prep. That includes working out what you are going to demo, building it, scripting it, debugging anything, setting up the hardware & software etc… i.e. LOTS of work. For Tier B & C events the ratio drops significantly.

SharePoint Conference Tweets

chjohn — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 15:41:35 GMT

Letting blog readers know that the official SharePoint Conference tweet stream is up: http://www.twitter.com/SPConf Follow!

VS 2010 and SharePoint

chjohn — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 02:21:09 GMT

Soma posted on the new SharePoint and Visual Studio integration coming in the next release of Visual Studio. http://blogs.msdn.com/somasegar/archive/2009/02/19/sharepoint-tools-support-in-visual-studio.aspx

This is something I have been working on with the developer division and it is very cool to see this finally being talked about! Great work Reza, Mike and the rest of the team.

This is very exciting for SharePoint developers!

-Chris.

Demoing SharePoint… how do you do it?

chjohn — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 17:43:26 GMT

Ivory Tower (Redmond) to all earth bound SharePoint peeps. I need some info on your l33t SharePoint skillz.

I am doing some research into how you, as SharePoint evangelists, demo SharePoint to others. This could be as part of a sales pitch or just a regular Thu night demo to the SharePoint Users Group. Anything really.

Some common methods include:

- Locally installed on my laptop (duel boot for example)

- In a Virtual Machine. For this one i would like to know if you use a Microsoft Provided one or build your own.

- Remote Desktop into a machine somewhere back in your office?

- Use a SharePoint site you have on the net somewhere that you use to demo?

You can either reply with a comment here. Or tweet/DM me here http://twitter.com/LoungeFlyZ

We are looking at how best to serve our customers/partners and would like to make sure we are providing the right material to help you do your best work.

-CJ.

SharePoint Conference 2009 announced

chjohn — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 15:38:43 GMT

Vegas, SharePoint & loads of great content & people … do i need to say any more?

http://www.mssharepointconference.com/

Early bird registration is open now. Best conference out there for under a grand USD.

New job

chjohn — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 18:49:10 GMT

No I haven’t been laid off from Microsoft … and hope I don't any time soon :)

I changed roles this past week. I have joined the world famous (in SharePoint circles anyway) Technical Product Management team run by Arpan Shah. This is the team that notable folks such as Joel Olsen, Mike Fitzmaurice & Lawrence Liu were part of in the past. I will be working with Richard Riley, Paul Andrew and a host of other great people on all things SharePoint. The team is responsible for the technical marketing efforts for SharePoint products and technologies. When I was working in MCS in the field a while back I worked with this team a lot on conferences/events etc… They are also the founders of the SharePoint ranger team that i was a part of.

They are a great team and I am really looking forward to getting stuck into some great work as we proceed towards the launch of the vNext set of products.

My move was from the SharePoint engineering team where i was a Program Manager working on the next version of SharePoint. In my new role I will get to help take all the great things that are being built to market. Its going to be a lot of fun & I cant wait to start telling you all about the new things we have lined up for you. Very cool stuff.

I also moved to building 17 and here is the view from my office … i have not unpacked yet :)

-Chris.

New SharePoint Ramp Up Training available

chjohn — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 20:35:55 GMT

If you are a new to SharePoint development then this series of training might be helpful. Part 2 just went live.

Community Technology Preview of Visual Studio 2008 extensions for SharePoint v1.3

chjohn — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 15:37:00 GMT

As you might have seen on the SharePoint Team Blog we released the Community Technology Preview of Visual Studio 2008 extensions for SharePoint v1.3.

This is really designed to address a number of pressing needs our users have with v1.2. Namely:

- x64 support
- Command line build support

There is a bunch of other great stuff in there too (like seperate package/deploy commands) but these two items above are really the big ticket items that should help a bunch of folks out.

Command line build support gives you the ability to better integrate with build systems and straightens out the workarounds you needed to use with v1.2.

x64 support helps for those that are standardizing on x64 bit development environments. Previously with v1.2 you needed to develop on x32.

I would encourage everyone to take a look at the v1.3 release and log any bugs you find on the connect site.

Thanks,

-Chris.

Zune pass is now officially beyond awesome

chjohn — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 19:21:00 GMT

I already subscribe to Zune Pass and love it for the ability to discover music using a subscription service. You just download whatever you like and don't have to worry about the cost. Don't like the music? Doesn't matter … just ditch it.

It just got better!

Now you get 10 songs a month (MP3 DRM free to boot) to keep forever included!

This has got to be the BEST deal out there.

For $14.99 a month you get $10 worth of music to keep AND all the music you want to download on subscription.

So if you are buying 10 songs a month anyway its like getting all the rest for $4.99 a month!

You don't need a Zune to use Zune Software (which I find WAY better than other stuff out there). At the moment you can get a 14 day trial of Zune Pass here.

BB13: SharePoint 2007 Creating SharePoint Applications with Visual Studio -- Sample Code

chjohn — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 00:58:49 GMT

Here are the code samples I demonstrated in my PDC Session last week as promised.

You can watch the recorded session here: http://channel9.msdn.com/pdc2008/BB13/
(Silverlight streaming Video & slides + demo side by side)

Please read the “Contoso Sample Setup.rtf” file for setup instructions.

There are a few things you need to do!

The best place to start is to download the WSS developer VPC from here. The PDC session was conducted on this VPC and the setup instructions are built assuming you are using that VPC. Of course you can use this on any machine, but the setup instruction may vary slightly.

Please leave a comment or use the “Email” feature of my blog if you experience any setup issues.

Packin for PDC

chjohn — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 21:03:03 GMT

Its always a geeks worst nightmare packing for a conference and getting the balance of gadgets, clothes, number of bags and weight.

Do you go for a gadget for every occasion? or carry on only? dilemma!

I personally prefer the minimal approach to things … but my limit for carry on only is a 2 night trip, so that means another bag.

As for geeking techy stuff… I am having to take a bunch of kit down with me for my session and related stuff which is adding to my weight big time :(

Thankfully I have a lightweight Lenovo X60 lappy and not one of these poor souls I see lugging portable desktops around with them.

You can follow my PDC experience via the following:

http://friendfeed.com/loungeflyx (will get updates from all the below)

http://twitter.com/LoungeFlyZ

http://www.flickr.com/photos/loungeflyz/

If you have not seen or heard about Eye-Fi cards you should check them out. Will be using mine to squirt photos up to Flickr via WiFi.

Heading off tomorrow morning to LA.

PDC 2008: SharePoint 2007: Creating SharePoint Applications with Visual Studio 2008

chjohn — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 00:05:18 GMT

I hope everyone is getting as pumped as I am for the PDC next week. So much dev geek goodness in one week … its all good!

Plug for my session:

SharePoint 2007 Creating SharePoint Applications with Visual Studio
Thursday 8:30am

Abstract: “Learn how to use Microsoft Silverlight and SharePoint together. See us build a SharePoint application using the Visual Studio 2008 extensions for SharePoint.”

Put it in your calendars:

That is this abstract from the PDC site … here is my more detailed version…

We wont be sitting watching slides .. 10mins MAX. After that we will be jumping head long into a 50min demo that builds out a full application. None of this cake in the oven nonsense

We are going to do that in 5 bits:

- Design – Do the branding stuff
- Extend – Extend SharePoint to add the things we need
- Integrate – With other systems using WCF
- Social – Everyone loves social stuff!!
- Visualize – Use Silverlight to show stuff

(Come and learn about new Silverlight stuff that has not been released yet! no … its not Silverlight 2.0 that is already out)

-Chris

RoundTable

chjohn — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 17:34:52 GMT

So i was in a meeting today and we had a remote participant. We were using Live Meeting to do the presentation and demo. We were in a meeting room with a Round Table … so i decided to plug it in and see what happened :)

20 seconds later the video popped up and we were up and running.

I had been in a meeting using this before … but not tried using it myself.

Very cool stuff … and greatly helped with the meeting.

PS: I am the guy second from the left.

T minus 13 days and counting

chjohn — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 16:31:28 GMT

My presentation is complete, demos are done & final fit and finish is under way.

More importantly, the first social event of the PDC calendar just got organized by AC... the SharePoint by Day, SharePint by Night. Sunday 7pm @ the Millennium Biltmore Hotel.

More on AC’s blog here: http://www.andrewconnell.com/blog/archive/2008/10/14/SharePoint-by-Day-SharePint-by-Night--PDC2008-Edition.aspx

Looking forward to seeing a bunch of like minded SharePoint folks there to chew over the mountains of rife PDC announcement speculation :)

See ya there!

PDC 08 & SharePoint

chjohn — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 19:05:27 GMT

I am really looking forward to PDC this year. There is an awesome lineup of very cool stuff being announced. The best thing about PDC is it is all about developers and seriously cool geeky new stuff … and to top it off I will be presenting a session on SharePoint development!

SharePoint 2007: Creating SharePoint Applications with Visual Studio 2008

We will be using some very cool yet to be announced Silverlight features integrated with SharePoint.

I did an end to end dry run of the session today and it is shaping up really well.

This is no marketing session. Most of the session is about building a real application live on stage for 45mins. Showing you how you can build apps on SharePoint easily and all from within Visual Studio.

If you want to meet up at the PDC fire me a comment via this Blog. Surely there must be some SharePoint folks going to the PDC? I know AC is going! (Hey AC … we should do a SharePint)

PS: finding the PDC web site was an enjoyable experience with Live Search…

Live Search backgrounds are super cool too … today's is stunning. Dont be afraid if you think this will slow down your searching … it doesn't … its loaded async after the rest of the page.

http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=PDC+2008&go=&form=QBLH

If you are not in the USA you can switch to the USA using the locale picker in the top right: