Office Developer Conference 2008 Blog : sharepoint

Less than 3 weeks to ODC 2008!

khawara — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 22:04:00 GMT

Hard to believe but ODC is now only 20 days away! We've now published details of all technical content on www.odc2008.com so if you haven't yet, please check out the various tracks and sessions. There are some last minute updates remaining, and those will be posted in the next few days.

Behind the scenes, there are a lot of activities underway. Last couple of weeks, we've been busy finalizing details such sessions, speakers and times, as well as the food menu and the conference guide. There's also staffing arrangements for booths and labs, as well as shipping of collateral and giveways. It's all been a very interesting and an eye opening experience. More on these topics soon in one of the future blog posts.

BTW, if you have already registered and made hotel arrangements, thank you! For those who are still sorting out the details, just wanted to let you know we've been able to obtain an extension on the discounted ODC hotel rates from some of the hotels through Fri 1/25. So you now have a few more days to save on hotels costs. Register now.

- Khawar

ODC 2008 session and speaker stats

khawara — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 22:10:00 GMT

We recently did some internal analysis of ODC 2008 content and speakers and wanted to share some basic stats with you:

FYI - initial session list titles are now posted by track on www.odc2008.com and the abstracts will be published later today.

Total sessions: 82

(note: the total session count may adjust slightly as we fine tune the session list)

We had originally planned a more modest 60-70 sessions but had so many interesting and relevant submissions that we ended up adding some additional slots to accomodate the extra sessions.

MS vs External speakers: ~50% each!

Our original plan was to select the best sessions and then do a sanity check + any necessary adjustments to make sure we have at least 30% external speakers to really have a diverse mix of individuals, ideas and expertize. As it turns out, we are about even for internal vs external speakers, which is great.

Session distribution by track:

Server (primarly SharePoint server but also others such as project server, Duet, Dynamics) leads the pack in terms of total sessions. Client track is a close second in terms of # of sessions, and the rest are about equally distributed. The architecture and services tracks should be very interesting as these are both topics we're focusing on for the first time in an Office developer focused conference.

Session distrubution by level:

We have good 200 level content at ODC, but much of the content at ODC will be at the 300 level, and some 400 level sessions for the experts. BTW, if you are new to Office dev, don't let this discourage your from attending. In addition to the 200 sessions, we have an Office 101 pre-conference on Sun Feb 10 to ramp you up so you will be in good shape to go through the more advanced level sessions during the conference. Check www.odc2008.com for info on the pre-con.

More stats and details to follow :)

Happy Holidays!

- Khawar

Calling all developer insomniacs!

khawara — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 11:16:00 GMT

Several Microsoft groups have teamed up to bring a series of Sleepless events to you! The finals will take place in San Jose and winners will be announced at ODC 2008!

If you are wondering why Sleepless and what the event is like, check out this video to get an idea:

http://www.infusion.com/media/sleeplessmedia/SleeplessInNY.wmv

This time Sleepless is bringing the best of SharePoint, Office Development and Silverlight training to you AND a chance at $100,000 in prizes, including all-expense-paid trip to ODC 2008 in San Jose!

Events will take place in Atlanta, Dallas, LA, Silicon Valley, Chicago and Washington DC and SharePoint’s elite including Microsoft Product Team members and SharePoint MVPs will be there.

The weekend features:

· Training from Office and SharePoint development elites including Microsoft Product Team members and SharePoint MVPs

· A Mystery Game-show

· Overnight Developer competition

Think you’ve got what it takes??

Apply Now at www.infusion.com/sleepless and find out.

Good luck!

- Khawar

ODC track owners on Channel 9!

khawara — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 00:41:00 GMT

John and Jerome, track onwers for the realworld and server tracks respectively, recently sat down with Rob Barker and talked about themselves, hobbies, and of course ODC 2008!

You can check out their videos here:

John Graham: http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=365213

Jerome Thiebaud: http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=365211

- Khawar

Exciting sessions at ODC 2008

khawara — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 19:38:00 GMT

Some of you have asked about sessions planned for ODC2008. As you can imagine, selecting sessions for a conference of this scale is a challenging task, but we are on track to get the initial list published next week. In the meantime, check out the following blog posts form the track owners to get a flavor of the interesting sessions in the pipe!

ODC Services Track sessions: http://blogs.msdn.com/rbarker/archive/2007/11/29/an-early-view-of-the-odc-services-track-session-list.aspx

ODC Architecture Track sessions: http://blogs.msdn.com/odc2008architecture/archive/2007/11/07/breakout-session-abstracts.aspx

Stay tuned for more!

- Khawar

I'm a SharePoint . Should I attend ODC 2008 or SPC 2008?

khawara — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 21:45:00 GMT

The above question, or some variation, has come up a few times lately, so let's try to clarify this here.

The SharePoint Conference (SPC2008), which will take place in March 2008 in Redmond, WA is primarily intended for those in IT who use, deploy, and configure SharePoint. If you are focused on SharePoint deployment you should attend the SharePoint Conference. If you are a SharePoint developer you should attend Office System Developer Conference (ODC2008). Although there will be some developer oriented content at SPC2008, ODC2008 will have the deep developer-focused content you would want to know about to develop solutions that not only build on the SharePoint platform, but also take advantage of the other technologies in the Office system.

- Khawar