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8/25/2008

I travel enough that sometimes, I get my weeks mixed up on when I'm travelling and when I'm not travelling. In looking at my calendar this morning, I'm reminded that I'll be in Cleveland Wednesday night to speak to the Cleveland SharePoint User Group. I'll be speaking on Findability and Taxonomies: Notes from the Field.

Here is the abstract that went out to the Cleveland user group: In this presentation, Bill English, MVP, will cover the latest research on Findability and discuss why Findability is much more than a set of applications or technologies. Bill will outline the inherent problems with keyword queries and offer suggestions on how the SharePoint product can be improved to be a foundational technology in an overall Findability solution. This session will challenge assumptions about search technologies and is appropriate for technologists as well as project managers, information architects and CIOs.

The meeting time is 4:00 – 6:30pm this coming Wednesday, the 27^th of August. The location is at 6050 Oak Tree Blvd. Independence, OH, 44131. If you need more information, you can contact Melissa Lucarelli via e-mail and she can assist you.

Bill English

Posted at 8:16 AM by Bill English | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

8/21/2008

SharePoint Best Practices Conference Sells Out

At roughly 3pm today, we were able to accept our last registrations for the SharePoint Best Practices Conference for September 15-17 in Washington, DC. We're looking forward to a great conference with roughly 35 speakers, Tom Rizzo keynoting this event and over 60 presentations. There are over 20 sponsors for this event too, so it should be a great time to kick back and talk more directly about the "why" of SharePoint. Nearly half of our registrants, based on their titles, are in Senior IT Management roles. It should really be a great time.

Now, what about those who wanted to come but who couldn't register in time? Well, you need to know that we're looking to do another conference like this after the 1^st of next year. We're currently working on a specific location as well as dates, but our rough goal is to hold another BP Conference in the 1^st Quarter of next year. We're also engaged in discussions with Combined Knowledge about doing a conference in London next Spring or Summer. No promises, of course, because we're still pretty green/new to this whole conference business and we want to ensure we do it right.

At this conference, we'll have roughly 350 attendees along with another (roughly) 75 exhibitors/speakers/support staff. We'll be running 6 different sessions in each time slot, which one of those sessions being exhibitor demonstrations. In addition, nearly each presentation will contain 3-5 best practices, at least 1 worst practice and perhaps a tradeoff decision. Our list of speakers is outstanding and we hope to incorporate more of the industry leadership at our next best practices conference.

Thank you all for your trust and confidence. We will work hard to give you the best conference we can. As always, if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to e-mail me at bill@mindsharp.com.

Bill English
Mindsharp

Posted at 4:58 PM by Bill English | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

8/19/2008

Bamboo Solutions Hosting an after-hours event at the BPC (Best Practices Conference)

Looks like Bamboo Solutions will be hosting an event that is TBD. You can follow their announcements here: http://community.bamboosolutions.com/blogs/bambooteamblog/archive/2008/07/29/dc-best-visiting-practices.aspx

Bill English

Posted at 4:30 PM by Bill English | Category: Best Practices Conference | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

8/18/2008

What is a “Best Practice”? A Blog Post by Mark Schneider

In advance of our Best Practices Conference, Mark Schneider has asked the most obvious and basic question: What is a best practice? In his post, he discusses his answer to this question. It is worth reading before you come to the conference.

By the way, I've heard from the folks at Microsoft Press that our Best Practices book is selling very, very well. Early returns are not always indicative of long-term, sustained sales, but for those who have purchase this book, I just want to say "thanks" and hope that you'll communicate with me (bill@mindsharp.com) and Ben Curry (bcurry@mindsharp.com). We'd love to hear from you about what you're learning and what your thinking is regarding the book or points we make in the book.

Bill English
Mindsharp

Posted at 9:29 PM by Bill English | Category: Best Practices Conference | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

Increasing Space for the Best Practices Conference

We have managed to increase the amount of space we're utilizing at the Hilton Hotel in Tyson's Corner, Virginia. This will give us some additional registrations that we can accept for the event, but even at the current rate of registrations, I suspect we'll be sold out by Friday, if not before. This will be a *full* event with more SharePoint vendors coming on as sponsors even this week. We'll have over 35 different speakers and over 60 presentations – all of them offering best practices, tradeoffs and worst practices in some scenarios. If I'm not mistaken, we have close to 20 speakers from Microsoft.

Ben Curry, Jim Curry (yes, they are cousins) and myself are spending time reviewing the speaker decks and offering ways to improve their presentations. I'm also now hearing some rumors that some of the vendors will be hosting parties on either Monday and/or Tuesday nights. *IF* any of these parties come to fruition, we'll communicate this to you ASAP and will likely include an insert in your bag about the parties.

Did I mention we're giving away a bag at the conference? For those who have plenty of bags, just add it to your stack. It will have the Best Practices conference logo on it and some goodies on the inside (the goodies are still be decided). But be prepared to take home on the airplane more than you came with. For most of us, it's standard practice to leave room for take-home items when we go to technical conferences.

I also want to mention that we're looking into the possibility of hosting this conference again in the future. When, where, etc… is TBD, but we think, given the demand for this conference, that there is a need for other Best Practices conferences in the future. If you have suggestions or ideas along these lines, please e-mail me directly at bill@mindsharp.com.

I'll post more later this week about our registration rate. If you're planning on coming but haven't registered, please consider registering soon.

Bill English, MVP
Mindsharp

Posted at 8:59 PM by Bill English | Category: Best Practices Conference | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

8/9/2008

Registrations are Strong for the Best Practices Conference

In my effort to keep the SharePoint Community informed about the SharePoint Best Practices Conference, I write a weekly blog post about the conference and what we worked on in the previous week. This past week, our Conference team spent focused time on trying to enlarge the use of the space that we have because our registration rate is so strong. With all of our speakers, staff and attendees, we'll have maxed out the space that we contracted for at the hotel. But the rest of the hotel space is sold out to other parties, so our conference is limited to the maximum number of attendees/delegates for which we originally contracted.

This means that space is limited at the conference this year. If registrations continue at the rate that we have been experiencing, the conference will be sold out well before the end of August. What this means is that if you've been thinking about attending the conference or if you've made a decision to attend the conference, but you haven't registered yet, then you need to get your registration in right away.

We also sold out our exhibitor space for this conference this past week. I want to publically and personally thank the following exhibitors for agreeing to be a part of this first Best Practices Conference: Microsoft Press, Mindsharp, DeliverPoint, Infonic, Susquehanna Technologies, Neudesic, Bamboo Solutions, Syntergy, Quest Software, AvePoint, Smartronix, K2, EPMLive, Nintex, Echo Technology, Lightning Tools, Idera and Summit 7. You can read about all of these companies at our Sponsors page.

This coming week will focus on getting our conference tasks aligned with the flow of the conference. We also have some late speaker selections and topics to get onto the web site. I'll be working on that this weekend. As always, if you have any questions about the conference, you can e-mail me directly at bill@mindsharp.com.

Bill English
Mindsharp

Posted at 8:21 AM by Bill English | Category: Best Practices Conference | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

8/5/2008

Update on the SharePoint Best Practices Conference

I was out on vacation the last few weeks, so I've not had a lot of time to write this weekly update about the conference. Some of the more recent developments concern content, speakers and track information. First, we've updated the track information to reflect suggested tracks for the different groups to whom the conference is targeted: CIOs, information workers, ITPros, Developers and Project Managers. We understand that not every session will be a "bulls-eye" session that is suggested for each group. Instead, we think that each session will have good information for the suggested audiences.

Secondly, we're reviewing slide decks this week and next and are finalizing our speaker roster. We've had a number of late speaker opportunities present themselves and we're doing everything we can to accommodate those additional speakers.

Thirdly, we're created a LinkedIn group and a fan page at FaceBook. You're welcome to join either of these if you're so inclined.

Most of this month will be focused on getting the network and physical infrastructure for the conference finalized, getting the content and speaker's decks finished and getting other last minute preparations underway. Even though we do roughly 30 summits each year, doing this Best Practices conference is definitely a (good) stretch for us. As always, if you have any questions or ideas, you can ping me directly at bill@mindsharp.com.

I look forward to seeing you at the Best Practices conference. And if you can't attend, please be sure to purchase a copy of our Best Practices book from Microsoft Press.

Bill English
Mindsharp

Posted at 10:11 PM by Bill English | Category: Best Practices Conference | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

7/30/2008

SharePointPlan.com

I want to encourage everyone to add Mark Schneider's blog to your list of blogs to read. Mark has some pretty good ideas about governance and taxonomies for SharePoint. Please find his blog at www.sharepointplan.com. Given his corporate IT experience, PM experience and cutting-edge thinking on governance and taxonomies, I think you'll find his work to be interesting and very helpful.

Mark will also be speaking at the SharePoint Best Practices Conference.

Bill English, MVP
Mindsharp

Posted at 6:47 PM by Bill English | Category: General Posts | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

7/23/2008

SharePoint Best Practices Conference Update

Our team at Mindsharp continues to work on conference and marketing plan for the SharePoint Best Practices conference. Ben Curry is in charge of the speakers and the overall presentation schedule. He decided to split up some of the Cabana 2-hour sessions into two one-hour sessions, so we've got some additional slots to fill with speakers. We are working on that now. You can submit session ideas to Ben Curry and they will be routed through our internal selection process.

We've maxed out our current sponsor slots and are working on finding room at the hotel to host more sponsors. We have several on a waiting list who want to exhibit. So, who is exhibiting thus far? You can find them here. You might also note that in the next week or two, we'll be assigning speaking slots to certain sponsors to demonstrate their software/services via a Cabana session at the conference. If you look at the conference schedule, we've built into the conference a way for sponsors to showcase their software (look under the Cabana 4 speaking slots). All of them are TBD as of now, but they will be assigned soon so you can see who will be presenting at the conference.

We're also working with our speakers to ensure that we deliver on the promise of the conference. What is the promise? First, you'll note that the tagline for the conference is "Clarity. Direction. Confidence.". This tagline encapsulates what we're attempting to accomplish at this conference. In short, we want to offer Clarity in areas where there is confusion. The presentations will take an area of confusion and bring clarity to that confusion. Secondly, we want to offer Direction in scenarios where there are multiple, seemingly equal choices. The reason I say "seemingly" is because once Clarity is brought to the situation, the choices usually become more clear in terms of good, better and best. We're working with the speakers to provide the differential diagnosis between good, better and best choices in their presentations. And finally, we want you to return to the office with Confidence that you can and will succeed with your SharePoint deployment. If you receive the first two elements – Clarity and Direction – then Confidence will naturally follow.

So, we are requiring our speakers to include 3-5 best practices in their presentations along with at least one worst practice and at least one tradeoff. Tradeoffs are built on the assumption that whenever you say "yes" to something, you always say "no" to something else. When designing/deploying/customizing SharePoint, it's easy to see how a "yes" is also a "no". identifying these types of choices is key to a great deployment. We plan to bring as many tradeoff choices to you as possible.

Also, we've developed some suggested tracks for different groups. Those tracks should be up on the web site soon, if they are not there already. We'll have suggested tracks for IT administrators, developers, CIO's, project managers, information architects and information workers. Please be sure to visit our web site about these tracks.

We've also started a LinkedIn Group for the conference. Please consider joining this group to stay in touch with other conference attendees.

Many thanks to Lawrence Liu and the product group for their plug about our conference:

http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2008/07/21/upcoming-conferences-with-plenty-of-sharepoint-oriented-content.aspx

Other blog posts for this conference are growing too. Here's a sample:

http://paulgalvin.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!1CC1EDB3DAA9B8AA!1482.entry

http://dotneteers.net/blogs/aghy/archive/2008/07/17/sharepoint_2D00_best_2D00_practices_2D00_conference_2D00_idopont_2D00_s_2D00_tma.aspx

http://planetmoss.blogspot.com/2008/07/sharepoint-best-practices-resources.html

http://kurtsh.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!DA410C7F7E038D!3266.entry

http://idubbs.com/blog/?p=118

http://www.officezealot.com/Sharepoint/Pages/index.aspx

http://www.brettlonsdale.com/Lists/Announcements/DispForm.aspx?ID=8

http://mindsharpblogs.com/pauls/archive/2008/06/26/5877.aspx

http://www.schaeflein.net/blog/2008/06/26/SharePointBestPracticesConferenceSiteIsUp.aspx

http://suguk.org/blogs/combined_knowledge/archive/2008/07/19/12295.aspx

As always, if you have any questions about the Best Practices Conference, please be sure to ping me directly, Bill English, via e-mail. Thanks for your interest in this conference.

Bill English, MVP

Posted at 8:19 AM by Bill English | Category: Best Practices Conference | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

7/16/2008

It’s Here…The ISPA.

What's the ISPA? Well, it's the International SharePoint Professionals Association. The International SharePoint Professionals Association ("ISPA") is the first independent, community-run, not-for-profit organization designed specifically for SharePoint Professionals. ISPA is a professional association dedicated to the promotion and global adoption of Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies. The Association provides support and guidance to the community by establishing connections between SharePoint professionals and groups, resources, education and information.

For more information, visit their web site and be sure to join right away.