This past Saturday I spent the better part of my day at SharePoint Saturday Indianapolis (or SPSIndy for the “cool” geeks.)  For those unfamiliar, SharePoint Saturday is a community driven event where various speakers gather to present at a FREE conference on all topics related to SharePoint.  This amazing community event marked my second SharePoint Saturday attended (read my recap of SPSCleveland) and my first SharePoint Saturday as a regular attendee (not presenting.)  From the stats side I heard that over 370 people registered with around 250 attendees the day of.  That is definitely a great turn out for Indy’s first SharePoint Saturday.  I know that many others like myself drove in (3 hrs each way for me) from far away to attend.  So here’s a little recap of my day and the event.

My Saturday morning started off very early leaving Columbus, OH around 5:30am.  I was driving with Jennifer Mason (President of COSPUG and one of the SPSIndy presenters) and since she was speaking during first session we couldn’t be late.  We arrived with plenty of time so I was able to enjoy some of the wonderful hot breakfast food and drink provided.  If you haven’t been to too many conferences, you may not know that hot breakfasts are a rarity so I took full advantage in this case.  I also got to meet some local SharePoint developers during breakfast who I ended up talking to quite a bit throughout the day.

The actual conference kicked off very well with an introduction by Rob Bogue (head of the local SharePoint user group and all around great guy) and the rest of the steering committee.  For sessions, I attended a variety of topics mostly focused on the development or administrator side.  These included:

• Woody “Windy” Windischman (@WoodyWindy) – “Intro to SharePoint Designer 2010”
• Steve Pietrek (@SPietrek) – “Developing Silverlight for SharePoint”
• Darrin Bishop (@bishopd) – “Goodbye STSADM, Hello PowerShell”
• Fabian Williams (@FabianWilliams) – “Business Connectivity Services…<long title>”
• James Curtis (@piercove) – “Intro to Client Object Model”
• (Caught tail end of session) John Ferringer (@ferringer) & Sean McDonough (@spmcdonough) – “SharePoint Disaster Recovery”

Overall I learned a great deal, met a bunch of great speakers and attendees, and even won a SharePoint Reporting book in Darrin Bishop’s session (hooray for my PowerShell knowledge being useful!)  It was especially nice getting to hang out with some new friendships I’ve developed through the SharePoint community.  Below is my album of pictures I snapped throughout the day.  Feel free to take a look through them.  The next SharePoint Saturday I’m planning on attending will be SharePoint Satuday Michigan on March 13th.  Mark your calendars and register for it if you’ll be around the area that date.  Hopefully I’ll see you there.

Ohh, one last note.  A big thanks goes out to all of the organizers, speakers, sponsors, and attendees of SPSIndy.  Without all of you this event couldn’t have been possible.  Please continue to support the SharePoint community.  It has a lot to offer and it’s all made possible because of these people, companies, and events that continue to amaze me every time I get involved.  Thanks so much.

-Frog Out