Beyond the 10 or so customer meetings I had, 6 or so partner meetings, and 2 analyst meetings, I did find some time to attend some social events that were a lot of fun. If you're looking for my decks or notes on the keynote and announcements I posted them in a recap. You can also see the SharePoint Conference press pass PR content and keynote announcements.
If you were at the conference you may have seen me with Paul Graham a SharePoint newbie from Portland. He's so passionate about SharePoint he's willing to drop everything, and is planning on working for in an "internship" if he can't find something fulltime. I introduced him to plenty of SharePoint folks who are looking for SharePoint people and who might be willing to give him on the job training. I'd like to give him a boost if there is someone looking for people with passion and lacking deep skills. (Ping me through this blog if you have ideas, or openings, he is willing to relocate.) He's been to Shane Young's Advanced Admin class in December, and since has been running MOSS on his home machine. His background in IT, network & desk side support and troubleshooting is a good start.
One big background social theme throughout the conference was... it's hard to get good SharePoint talent. The talent pool on SharePoint is a small elite group. One quote I over heard in passing was, "why miss a week where I can make 10K for a week at the SharePoint conference where it covers what I already know?" I'll tell you... Because the sum of this social network of MVPs is of more value than the parts. Hence what I consider a big SharePoint reunion and tight social network. Sorry if you didn't make it or tried and it was sold out. Many a scalper was turned away.
The first night, Monday night, there were 4 concurrent events. From the Ted Pattison and Ascentium social to the HP dinner, MVP dinner, and Syntergy appreciation party. It was tough determining where to go. The MVP dinner was so well attended I ended up taking a decent contingency (Chandima, Todd, Matt, Ivan and a few of his Auzzie buddies, Mike, Paul, and a few others to Mortons. The was some count that there were ~35 SharePoint MVPs at the conference, but there were 60 who showed up. I had a group of about 10 MVPs with me. The steak was great. The Ascentium/TPG party was pretty good as well, it's advantage of starting earlier I saw a few MVPs like AC and Shane Young who were trying to fit in both. When I first arrived I ran into Brian Cook and Brett Campbell from Nintex. Brian and I walked through our deck and decided on some slight changes and arrangements. He's got such a dynamic and great personality that grows on anybody. They keynote went off with very little concern. The customer deployments and simply having Bill talk about his passion for SharePoint is always fun. I saw the keynote from building 16, Rob Silver, Rob Lefferts, Dustin Fr, and Derek Burney were there as well, so I was definitely in good company. It was fun to watch their faces during the Q & A and with the solution accelerator demos by Tom Rizzo. Michael Herman's unified storage question for example brought a few eyebrow raises, but Billg handled it well. SQL08 makes some major steps in the right direction with the new data types.
Tuesday night, the Museum of Flight party was the official one. Heather Solomon's Ruth Chris spontaneous dinner really hit the spot, great food, great company. There were 20 of us with the SharePoint Experts crew. It was good meeting Matt from SP Experts for the first time. I can see he's very passionate about the IT Pro and ensuring SharePoint deployments are successful. His focus on planning and working with the business and not against it... he's got something. Sitting next to Matt I could feel his passion. It was fun to watch Shane's reactions to his stories. Welcome Matt Passannante to the SharePoint community. Hanging out with Shane Young, AC, Todd, Nicola, Dustin, Todd (x2), Chris, Medero, and Heather (amongst others) is one of my favorite things to do at Conferences. Dustin Miller has his new challenge... Integrate guitar hero into his session, not just the words, but the actual game. After the dinner we went back to the Crown, where most of the gang was hanging out. Adam Buenz, Bob Fox and cronies, Jason Medero, AC, Chris Regan, Steve Smith, Ben Curry, Ted Pattison, Nick Swan, Todd Klindt, Darrin Bishop, Todd Baginsky, Spence, Steve Smith, and more.
Wednesday started off seeing most of the biker keynote. Then Bob and my session.
SharePoint Jokes I made up especially for the WS08/SQL08 Bob Fox and Joel Oleson session:
1. What does SharePoint and Paintball have in common?
A. The more experience you have, the more likely you'll be to miss the zingers. (It pays off to learn or to work with experienced MOSS architects or experts.)
2. Three guys go into a bar to play a game. The first guy leaves on a stretcher, the second guy passes out. The last guy wins. It's Bob and it was a drinking game. Their did happen to be a fourth guy watching the game drinking pineapple juice. That was Joel.
3. What do SharePoint and Beer have in Common?
A. You have a little bit, and things start to not seem so bad.
Todd Klindt said he'd had a 50% chance that he might have a SQL 2008 CTP VPC with him the night before the session. I said bring it. I'd like to show off the backup compression and transparent encryption options. Sure enough he had it, and he said he had looked at these settings, so I invited him to show it off during the session. He really nailed it, and the crowd loved it. They wanted more SQL 2008. In the shower that morning I was thinking... hmmm what can I do to ensure that the session isn't super serious. If anyone had been to the SQL 2008 or WS08 sessions at the various launch events, or possibly any events since last TechEd, they might have seen most of our material, but I really wanted to put a SharePoint focus to the session.
Wednesday night was the game night. Snacks, drinks, and XBOX games with your top favorites. After chatting with folks at the game night, we split up and I ended up at the Dell and AMD social at Ruths Chris. It was good to see some of the Dell IT folks who visited recently and those working on AMD.com. Dino, Doron, and Mike were all enjoying themselves as well. Also had a chance to connect with Matt from Catalysis and connected with a few MS folks from the field. After we were all very hungry and on our way to AC and Bob's SharePint party at Kells, we couldn't find a good place to eat (little did we know Kells had Shepherds pie!) I suggested Wild Ginger, but the 15-20 minute wait was too much for Shane. He bowed out and took a portion of the crew (Todd and Nicola) with him to MCDs and then Kells and back to the hotel. We didn't see them after that. We did meet up with Woody and David Solomon. We even ran into Rob Bogue. Good chats with him about TechEd and the state of things in the midwest. Steve Carvajal had been chatting with Shane and ended up eating with us and following us to Kells. Kells is definitely where the party was. AC, Bob Fox, Fitz, Kimmo, the HP SharePoint experts like Kevin Laahs, Daniel McPherson (and gang), some Mindsharp folks, Keith Richie, Maurice Prather, Ted Pattison, Gayan, Patrick Tisseghem, Eric Shupps, Auzzies, Irish and Scots and on and on were there.
AC and Bob did very well, it was a good time. I told AC that we need to definitely do this for TechEd. Note we are looking for sponsors, and now that we have proof we can throw a party, I expect them to line up. You can start by contacting Andrew Connell via his blog. This is isn't his first such party, but we have a challenge... we need to beat Palermo's TechEd party. When we get more details we'll reach out more substantially. [Picture left from Kells]
I was dressed for the occasion. I was wearing the Bamboo Solutions "Revlolution" garb with the SharePoint Experts dog tags. I looked pretty mean. Meeting up with Mike Watson there, he and I followed the lead of the Avepoint folks. They suggested the real party was up on capitol hill and we found a local dance music venue as Kells was closing down. We'll leave it as "dance venue," but you can imagine it was a whole lot more than that. As the night went on as we shut the place down, someone suggested Five Points for cheesy tots. That was awesome! Very impressive local dive that lived up to the reputation. It is impressive that you can find cheesy tots at 3am. After a round of hot chocolate Mike and I caught a taxi to the W. It would be an early morning starting at 8am with an analyst meeting. Tony and the awesome group of Avepoint folks were a lot of fun. There's no doubt I'll be trying to hook up with them some night at an upcoming conference. His cousin has tight connections with Spongebob. Being only 3 steps removed from Spongebob is unreal.
Thursday night started off with a good visit with Fitz and Brian and a good chat with Steve Smith about his whitepapers. We all ended up at an interesting French cuisine place with the SharePoint Experts and the Ted Pattison group folks. It was good seeing Dustin, Heather, Shane, Nicola, AC, Ted, Penny, and a follow up chat with Matt about his session. We were also joined by some cool SharePoint Auzzies. We accidentally left AC in the back of the tiny SUV. As we walked off, he called Shane. By far the funniest thing of the day! Although watching AC eat the bone marrow was pretty funny as well. Shane's immediate reaction to the food brought back memories of France. Flashbacks.
[Photos courtesy Chandima SharePoint MVP]