Year: 2010

Stir Trek: Iron Man Edition Recap and Photos

Brian T. Jackett Conference/Tech Event

Stir Trek Logo2     If you’ve noticed my blogging activity has reduced in frequency and technical content lately it’s primarily due to all of the conferences I’ve been attending, speaking at, or planning in the past few months.  This past Friday myself and six other dedicated individuals put on Stir Trek: Iron Man Edition as the culmination of a few months of hard work.  For those unfamiliar, Stir Trek is a web developer conference that was founded last year as an event to showcase content from Microsoft’s MIX conference and end the day with a private showing of the then just-released Star Trek movie.  This year’s conference expanded from 2 to 4 content tracks and upped the number of tickets from 350 to 600.  Even more amazing was the fact that we had 592 people show up day of the event for the lowest drop-off percentage of any conference I’ve been to before.

Nerd Dinner and Swag Bags

IMG_1279

The night before Stir Trek: Iron Man Edition we hosted a nerd dinner at the Polaris Shopping mall food court with about 30 in attendance.  Nerd dinners are a great time to meet others passionate about technology and socialize before the whirlwind of the conference hits.  After the nerd dinner 20+ volunteers headed to the conference location and helped us stuff swag bags.  This in and of itself was a monumental task of putting together 600 swag bags with numerous leaflets, sponsor items, and t-shirts.  A big thanks goes out to all who assisted us that night so that we could finish in just under 2 hours instead of taking all night.  My sleep schedule also thanks you.

IMG_1282 IMG_1288 IMG_1291

Morning of Stir Trek

After getting a decent amount of sleep I arrived at Marcus Crosswoods theater at 6am to begin setting up for the day.  Myself and Jody Morgan were in charge of registration so we got tables set up, laid out swag bags, and organized our volunteer crew to assist with checking-in attendees.  Despite having 600+ people registration went fairly smoothly and got the day off to a great start.  I especially appreciated the 3+ cups of coffee from Crimson Cup, a local coffee shop.  For any of you that know me you’ll know that I rarely drink coffee except a few times a year when I really need the energy, so that says a lot about how good their coffee is.

IMG_1293

Conference Starts

Once registration was completed the day kicked off with Molly Holzschlag keynoting.  Unfortunately Molly suffered from an ear infection and wasn’t able to fly so she had a virtual keynote and a session later in the day.  I was working behind the scenes on various tasks so I was only able to drop in very briefly on the keynote and rest of the morning sessions.  Throughout the day I tried to grab at least 1 or 2 pics of each presenter.  See my album below for the full set of pics.

IMG_1307     For lunch we ordered around 150 pizzas from Mellow Mushroom, a local pizza place (notice the theme of supporting local businesses.)  Early on we were concerned about Mellow Mushroom being able to supply that many pizzas and get them delivered (still hot) to the theater, but they did an excellent job day of the event.  I wish I had gotten some pictures of the old school VW van they delivered the pizza in, but I was just a bit busy running around trying to get theaters ready for lunch.  We had attendees from last year who specifically requested that we have Mellow Mushroom supply lunch this year and I’m glad everything worked out being able to use them again.

During the afternoon I was able to attend a few sessions and hear some great content from various speakers.  It was also nice to just sit down and get off my feet for a bit.  After the last sessions the day concluded with a raffle.  There were a few logistical and technical issues that hampered our ability to smoothly conduct the raffle.  To those of you that agree the raffle wasn’t the smoothest experience I would like to say that the Stir Trek planning committee has already begun meeting to discuss ways of improving the conference for next year.  We are also accepting feedback (both positive and negative) at the following link: click here.  If you don’t wish to use the Joind In site you can also email me directly and I’ll be sure to pass along the feedback.

 

Iron Man 2 Movie

Last but not least, what Stir Trek event would be complete without the feature movie.  This year’s movie was Iron Man 2.  The theater had some really cool props and promotions (see pic below) for the movie.  I really enjoyed Iron Man 2, but I would recommend brushing up on the Iron Man comics and Marvel’s plans for future movies to understand some of the plot elements that come up.  Also make sure you stay through to the end of the movie credits to see a sneak peak of something special, that’s all I’ll say. IMG_1309

Conclusion

Again a big thanks goes out to all of the speakers, sponsors, attendees, movie theater staff, volunteers, and everyone else involved in making this event great.  Also big thanks to my fellow Stir Trek planning committee members: Jeff Blankenburg, Matt Casto, Carey Payette, Jody Morgan, Rick Kierner, and Sarah Dutkiewitcz.  I am grateful for everything I learned while helping plan this event and look forward to being involved again next year.  For those interested we are currently targeting Thor as our movie theme for 2011 and then The Avengers for 2012.  These are tentative based on release dates that could shift as we get closer, but for now look solid.

 

Photos

Pics on Facebook (includes tagging)

Stir Trek: Iron Man Edition photos on Facebook

Pics on Live site (higher res)

 

 

-Frog Out

Slides and Files from Day of .Net Ann Arbor ‘10

Brian T. Jackett Conference/Tech Event, General .Net, Presentation

    This past Saturday I presented “Real World Deployment of SharePoint 2007 Solutions” at the Ann Arbor Day of .Net conference in Ann Arbor, MI.  Below are my slides and PowerShell demo scripts I used during the presentation.  Thanks to everyone who attended my session, as well as the sponsors, speakers, organizers and all attendees who made this event happen.

 

Slides and demo scripts

Motorola Droid App Recommendations

Brian T. Jackett Personal, Technology

motorola droid app screen

Just as a disclaimer, the views and opinions expressed in this post are solely my own and I’m not getting paid or compensated for anything.

Ok, so I’m one of the crazy few who went out and bought a Droid the week it was released a few months back.  The Motorola Droid was a MAJOR upgrade in phone capabilities for me as my previous phone had no GPS, no web access, limited apps, etc.  I now use my Droid for so much of my life from work to personal to community based events.  Since I’ve been using my Droid for awhile, a number of friends (@toddklindt, @spmcdonough, @jfroushiii, and many more) who later got a Droid asked me which apps I recommended.  While there are a few sites on the web listing out useful Android apps, here’s my quick list (with a few updates since first put together.)

Note: * denotes a highly recommended app

 

Android App Recommendations for Motorola Droid (Updated after 2.1 update)

RemoteDroid – install a thin client on another computer and Droid becomes mouse pad / keyboard, control computer remotely

PdaNet – free version allows tethering (only to HTTP, no HTTPS) without paying extra monthly charge.  A paid version allows HTTPS access.

SportsTap – keep track of about a dozen sports, favorite teams, etc

*Movies – setup favorite theaters, find movie times, buy tickets, etc

WeatherBug elite – paid app, but gives weather alerts, 4 day forecast, etc.  Free version also exists.  (Update: Android 2.1 offers free weather app, but I still prefer WeatherBug.)

*Advanced Task Killer – manually free up memory and kill apps not needed

Google Voice – have to have a Google Voice account to really use, but allows visual voice mail, sending calls to specific phones, and too many other things to list

AndroZip – access your phone memory like a file system

Twidroid – best Twitter client I’ve found so far, but personal preference varies.  I’m using free version and suits me just fine.

Skype (beta) – I only use this to send chat messages, not sure how/if phone calls works on this. (Update: Skype Mobile app just released, but uninstalled after few days as it kept launching in background and using up memory when not wanted.)

*NewsRob – RSS reader syncs to Google Reader.  I use this multiple times a day, excellent app. (Update: this app does ask for your Google username and password, so security minded folks be cautioned.)

ConnectBot – don’t use often myself, but allows SSH into remote computer.  Great if you have a need for remote manage server.

Speed Test – same as the online website, allows finding upload/download speeds.

WiFinder – store wifi preferences and find wifi spots in area.

TagReader – simple Microsoft Tag Reader, works great.

*Google Listen – audible podcast catcher that allows putting items into a queue, sync with Google Reader RSS, etc. I personally love this app which has now replaced the iPod I used to use in my car, but have heard mixed reviews from others.

Robo Defense – (paid app) tower defense game but with RPG elements to upgrade towers over lifetime playing. I’ve never played FieldRunners but I’m told very similar in offering. Nice distraction when in airport or have some time to burn.

Phit Droid 3rd Edition – drag and drop block shapes into a rectangle box, simple game to pass the time with literally 1000s of levels. Note this game has been updated dozens of times with numerous editions so unsure exactly which are still on the market.

Google Sky Map – impress your friends by holding Droid up to sky and viewing constellations using Droid screen.

wootCheck Lite – check up on daily offerings on Woot.com and affiliated wine, sellout, shirt, and kids sites.

 

Side notes: I’ve seen that Glympse and TripIt have recently come out with Android apps.  I’ve installed but haven’t gotten to use either yet, but I hear good things.  Will try out on 2 upcoming trips in May and update with impressions.

 

-Frog Out

 

Image linked from http://images.tolmol.com/images/grpimages/200910191814100_motorola-droid.gif

Be Careful When Referencing SPList.Items

Brian T. Jackett General .Net, SharePoint

BeCarefulSafe

Be very careful how you reference your SPListItem objects through the SharePoint API.  I’ll say it again.  Be very careful how you reference your SPListItem objects through the SharePoint API.  Ok, now that you get the point that this will be a “learn from my mistakes and don’t do unsmart things like I did” post, let’s dig into what it was that I did poorly.

Scenario

For the past year I’ve been building custom .Net applications that are hosted through SharePoint.  These application involve a number of SharePoint lists, external databases, custom web parts, and other SharePoint elements to provide functionality.  About two weeks ago I received a message from one of our end users that a custom application was performing slowly.  Specifically performance was slow when users were performing actions that interacted with the primary SharePoint list storing data for that app.

The Problem

I took a copy of the production site into a dev environment to investigate the code that was executing.  After attaching the debugger and running through the code I quickly found pieces of code referencing SPListItem objects (like below) that were performing very poorly:

SPListItem myItem = SPContext.Current.Web.Lists["List Name"].Items.GetItemById(value);

// do updates on SPListItem retrieved

As it turns out the SPList I was referencing was fairly large at ~1000 items and weighing in over 150 MB.  You see the problem with my above code is that I retrieved the SPListItem by first (unnecessarily) going through the Items member of the list.  As I understand it, when doing so the executing code will attempt to resolve that entity and pull it from the database and into RAM (all 150 MB.)  This causes the equivalent of a 50 car pile up in terms of performance with a single update taking more than 15 seconds.

The Solution

The solution is actually quite simple and I wish I had realized this during development.  Instead of going through the Items member it is possible to call GetItemById(…) directly on the SPList as in the example below:

SPListItem myItem = SPContext.Current.Web.Lists["List Name"].GetItemById(value);

// do updates on SPListItem retrieved

After making this simple change performance skyrocketed and updates were back to less than a second.

Conclusion

When given the option between two solutions, usually the simplest is the best solution.  In my scenario I was adding extra complexity going through the API the long way around to get to the objects I needed and it ended up hurting performance greatly.  Luckily we were able to find and resolve the performance issue in a relatively short amount of time.  Like I said at the beginning of the post, learn from my mistakes and hope it helps you.

-Frog Out

Image linked from http://www.freespirit.com/files/IMAGE/COVER/LARGE/BeCarefulSafe.jpg

SharePoint Saturday Charlotte 2010 Recap, Slides and Photos

Brian T. Jackett Conference/Tech Event, PowerShell, Presentation, SharePoint

NorthCarolina     This past weekend I attended SharePoint Saturday Charlotte (SPSCLT) in Charlotte, North Carolina.  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 made my fourth SharePoint Saturday attended and third I’ve spoken at.  The event was very well organized, attended, and a pleasure to be a part of along with many other great speakers.

At SharePoint Saturday Charlotte I had the opportunity to give two presentations.  First was “The Power of PowerShell + SharePoint 2007” and second was a new one “Managing SharePoint 2010 Farms with PowerShell.”  I want to thank everyone who attended either of my sessions and for all of the feedback given.  Below you will find links to my slides, demo scripts, and pictures taken throughout the event.  If anyone has any questions from the slides or scripts feel free to drop me a line.

 

Pictures

SharePoint Saturday Charlotte Apr ’10 Pictures on Facebook (recommend these with comments and tagging)

 

 

Slides, Scripts, and Rating Links

SharePoint Saturday Charlotte Apr ’10 Slides and Demo Scripts

SpeakerRate: The Power of PowerShell + SharePoint 2007

SpeakerRate: Managing SharePoint 2010 Farms with PowerShell

 

Conclusion

Big thanks out to Brian Gough (@bkgough), Dan Lewis (@sharepointcomic) and all of the other organizers of this event.  Also a big thanks out to the other speakers and sponsors (too many to list) who made the event possible.  Lastly thanks to my Sogeti coworker Kelly Jones (@kellydjones) for picking me up from the airport and a ride back to Columbus.  I hope everyone that attended got something out of the event and will continue to grow the SharePoint community.  I’m on a break from conferences for a few weeks and then have 3 more back to back weekends in May, blog posts announcing those coming later.  Enjoy the slides, scripts, and pictures.

 

-Frog Out

PowerShell Script to Create PowerShell Profile

Brian T. Jackett Conference/Tech Event, PowerShell, Presentation

    Utilizing a PowerShell profile can help any PowerShell user save time getting up and running with their work.  For those unfamiliar a PowerShell profile is a file you can store any PowerShell commands that you want to run when you fire up a PowerShell console (or ISE.)  In my typical profiles (example here) I load assemblies (like SharePoint 2007 DLL), set aliases, set environment variable values (such as max history), and perform other general customizations to make my work easier.  Below is a sample script that will check to see if a PowerShell profile (Console or ISE) exists and create it if not found.  The .ps1 script file version can also be downloaded from my SkyDrive here.

Note: if downloading the .ps1 file, be sure you have enabled unsigned scripts to run on your machine as I have not signed mine.

 

$folderExists = test-path -path $Env:UserProfileDocumentsWindowsPowerShell

if($folderExists -eq $false)

{

    new-item -type directory -path $Env:UserProfileDocumentsWindowsPowerShell > $null

    echo "Containing folder for profile created at: $Env:UserProfileDocumentsWindowsPowerShell"

}

 

$profileExists = test-path -path $profile

if($profileExists -eq $false)

{

    new-item -type file -path $profile > $null

    echo "Profile file created at: $profile"

}

    A few things to note while going through the above script.

  • $Env:UserProfile represents the personal user folder (c:documents and settings…. on older OSes like XP and c:Users… on Win 7) so it adapts to whichever OS you are running but was tested against Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.
  • “ > $null” sends the command to a null stream.  Essentially this is equivalent to DOS scripting of “@ECHO OFF” by suppressing echoing the command just run, but only for the specific command it is appended to.  I haven’t yet found a better way to accomplish command suppression, but this is definitely not required for the script to work.
  • $profile represent a standard variable to the file path of the profile file.  It is dynamic based on whether you are running PowerShell Console or ISE.

 

Conclusion

    In less than two weeks (Apr. 10th to be exact) I’ll be heading down to SharePoint Saturday Charlotte (SPSCLT) to give two presentations on using PowerShell with SharePoint.  Since I’ll be prepping a lot of material for PowerShell I thought it only appropriate to pass along this nice little script I recently created.  If you’ve never used a PowerShell profile this is a great chance to start using one.  If you’ve been using a profile before, perhaps you learned a trick or two to add to your toolbox.  For those of you in the Charlotte, NC area sign up for the SharePoint Saturday and see some great content and community with great folks.

 

      -Frog Out