Conference/Tech Event

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

SharePoint Saturday Michigan 2010 Recap, Slides, and Photos

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

michigan

This past weekend I attended SharePoint Saturday Michigan (SPSMI) in Ann Arbor, Michigan.  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 third SharePoint Saturday attended and second I’ve spoken at.  I believe today it was announced that about 210 people total attended the event.  I was very happy with the turnout, especially the ratio of male to female attendees.  Typically with computer related conferences the ratio leans towards more males attending, but both Peter Serzo (one of conference organizers) and I both commented to each other that at the end of the day it appeared to be close to 40% women in the crowd.  So here’s my recap of the weekend.

Arrival

Friday afternoon I drove up from Columbus, OH to Ann Arbor, MI and arrived around 4pm.  I was attempting to avoid the rush hour traffic and construction backups.  Turned out to be a good idea because other speakers coming up Friday got stuck on a highway which literally closed down in both directions due to a bad accident.  I was talking my friend Sean McDonough through the highway closing and this was the first time I had seen a solid black traffic line on Google Maps.  Most of us are familiar with Green, Yellow, and Red, but this line was black if that tells you how bad it got.

Speaker “Dinner”

Fast forward a few hours and it was time for the speaker “dinner.”  I put “dinner” in quotes because with this night alone SPSMI set a new bar for nicest and most extravagant speaker appreciation events for SharePoint Saturday.  By tapping into some very influential contacts, the conference organizers were able to provide a truck limo (yep you heard right) with refreshments, access to an underground suite at the Palace of Auburn Hills, and courtside tickets to see the Detroit Pistons play that night.  Being a Michigan native I have to say that I was absolutely floored by this experience and very thankful to our conference organizers Peter, Sebastian, and Jesse along with Trillium Teamologies.

Sessions

The actual conference started Saturday morning at 9am with the keynote by Rob Collie who is the Microsoft program manager for PowerPivot.  The day continued and I attended the following sessions:

  • Mike Watson (@mikewat) – “SharePoint 2010 Fight Night: Devs vs. Admins”
  • Karl Swedeberg (@kswedberg) – “A Walk on the Client Side with jQuery“
  • [my session] Brian Jackett (@briantjackett) – “Real World Deployment of SharePoint 2007 Solutions”
  • Jeff Willinger (@jwillie) – “Social Computing and Collaboration Inside and Outside the 4 Walls”
  • Paul Schaeflein (@paulschaeflein) – “PowerShell for the SharePoint Developer”

My Presentation

I had a great time presenting my session on Deploying SharePoint 2007 Solutions, but it wasn’t without its fair share of technical issues.  As my session was right after lunch I came in to my room 10 mins early to set up my laptop, slides, and demos.  As a quick background note, a few months ago I got an upgraded laptop from my company Sogeti and have been dual booting it between XP (factory installed) and Windows Server 2008 R2 w/ Hyper-V.  As such I had prepared all of my demo virtual machines to run under Hyper-V.  About 3 minutes before my session was scheduled to start though it became apparent that I did not have the correct display drivers to connect Windows Server 2008 R2 to the projector…

As you can imagine this was a slight cause for concern as I was potentially going to be unable to give my presentation.  Luckily for me I usually prepare for such unforeseen issues and had my presentation and some spare VMs that would run on XP on my external hard drive.  Knowing this I rebooted my machine into XP and began my presentation without slides until about 5 mins into the session when everything was up and running on XP.  Despite this being the first time I gave this presentation I have to say it was one of my favorites I’ve given so far.  The audience was very engaged in the session and I received some great, positive feedback afterwards.  Thanks to all who attended my session, I appreciate it very much.

Link to Presentation Files

For those of you who attended my session and would like my slides or demo PowerShell scripts they can be found on my SkyDrive at the link below.  Also, if you have a few minutes and wouldn’t mind rating my session I have this session posted on SpeakerRate.  As speakers we always appreciate any and all feedback attendees offer, so thank you if you are able to provide any.

SkyDrive folder with session files

Rate my SharePoint 2007 Solutions session

Picture Albums

For everyone else, here are my pictures from the weekend.  The first link is to my FaceBook album which will have tagging (recommend this one.)  The second is to my Live album if you care for higher resolution images.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2154482&id=21905041&l=a3fb72ee8c

Conclusion

A big thank you goes out to all of the organizers, speakers, sponsors, and attendees of SPSMI.  As I’ve said so many times, without each and every one of you these events wouldn’t be possible.  I thoroughly enjoyed this trip back to my home state and presenting a new session.  For those interested in my upcoming schedule I will be giving two sessions on PowerShell at SharePoint Saturday Charlotte in April, helping plan Stir Trek: Iron Man Edition in May, and I’m submitting sessions to Day of .Net Ann Arbor in May as well.  Beyond that I haven’t planned out any travels.  Thanks for reading my recap.  Look forward to more technical posts now that I have a short break in conferences.

-Frog Out

links: Michigan image

SharePoint Saturday Michigan Is Coming Up!

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

     Next Saturday March 13th Ann Arbor, MI will be hosting SharePoint Saturday Michigan (SPSMI).  For those unfamiliar, SharePoint Saturday is a community driven event where various regional and national speakers gather to present at a FREE conference on all topics related to SharePoint.  This will be my third SharePoint Saturday and second one I’ve had the honor of presenting at.  My presentation is titled “Real World Deployment of SharePoint 2007 Solutions“ (click here for the SpeakerRate link.)

    After taking a look at the speaker and session list I can tell you with great excitement that this event is packed with great speakers and topics.  Register here and come on out to SharePoint Saturday Michigan on March 13th.  If you’re attending feel free to track me down and say hi.  See you there.

 

      -Frog Out

Announcing Stir Trek: Iron Man Edition

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

    Today marks the official launch day of Stir Trek: Iron Man Edition.  This year’s conference will take place on Friday May 7th, 2010.  In case you are unfamiliar, Stir Trek is a regional conference hosted in Columbus, OH that focuses on covering topics from Microsoft’s annual Mix conference along with other web, mobile, and development related topics.  In addition to great session content from the conference, the day ends with a private screening of the new Iron Man 2 film.

    This is the second year for the Stir Trek conference and it is being expanded upon in every possible way.  More session tracks, more speakers, higher attendance capacity, and more excitement.  Here are a few things that you’ll get with your conference ticket [from the Stir Trek website]:

  • 6 hours of brand-new content, delivered by well-known regional and national speakers
  • Attendee packet
  • Lunch
  • Attendee T-shirt
  • A chance at winning prizes ranging from software licenses to an Xbox 360 and games.
  • Private screening of IronMan 2* at 4PM

    • Refreshments during the movie

    * An additional ticket to the movie can be purchased for $10.

     

        Last year’s Stir Trek conference sold out in less than 30 days, so don’t wait to reserve your spot.  Click here for registration.  Armor up your development skills today!

          -Frog Out

    SPTechCon San Francisco 2010 Recap

    Brian T. Jackett Conference/Tech Event, SharePoint

    As mentioned in a recent post, I attended SPTechCon in San Francisco, CA on Feb 10-12, 2010.  This was the first time I had attended this conference (now in it’s second year,) but I can easily say it was one of the best conferences (both personally and professionally) that I have attended since I started actively attending in the past 3 years.  Here’s a quick recap of the conference with links at the bottom to the many pictures and videos that I took.

    Arriving

    Heading out to CA was a bit of a struggle.  Due to massive amounts of snow and other bad winter weather I opted to take an earlier (6am instead of 2pm) flight out on Tues Feb 9th.  The earlier flight helped, but I still ran into delays with my connection in Detroit, MI.  [Ed. note: Kudos to Delta for allowing me to change my flight time free of charge and compensating me with bonus sky miles due to delay.]  Despite the delays, I was happy to arrive with all of my luggage only 3 hours later than scheduled.  Sadly many other conference attendees and even some speakers were delayed by up to days.

    Tuesday night was fun as I met up for dinner and drinks with a number of folks from the SharePoint 911 crew as well as other members of the End User SharePoint Live Blogging team.  This was the first conference I had volunteered to be a live blogger for, so it was good to meet some fellow volunteers ahead of time and get a feel for what to expect.  You can read archives of the live feeds here and a short explanation about our team of volunteers here.

    Conference

    SPTechCon was an amazing conference for two main reasons: the conference content and the networking opportunities.  First the content.  SPTechCon begins on Wednesday with 100-200 level workshops that are offered as full day or half day sessions.  Thursday and Friday follow up with 75 minute sessions with 8 offerings per time slot in a wide variety of focus areas ranging from admin to developer to business user and everything in between.  Here are the sessions I attended (many of which I live blogged.)

    • Phil Wicklund – SharePoint 101: The Developer
    • Laura Rogers – Making the Most of Out-of-the-Box Web Parts
    • Todd Klindt and Shane Young – Administering SharePoint 2010 with PowerShell
    • Heather Solomon – Migrating Custom Branding from MOSS 2007 to SharePoint 2010
    • Tom Rizzo – Thursday morning keynote
    • Michael Noel – Lessons Learned from Years of SharePoint Deployments
    • Paul Swider – The “Humanizing” of SharePoint
    • Jennifer Mason – Putting Together an Effective SharePoint Team
    • Mark Ferraz – Team Development for Delivering Complex Projects (missed first half due to lunch)
    • Mark Rackley – SharePoint Web Services: The ‘Special Sauce’ of SharePoint

    What really impressed me was that I was able to learn some new things from some unlikely sources.  This includes Phil’s 101 developer, Laura’s out of the box web parts, and Jen’s team building sessions.  I like it when I can take a step back from so called “advanced topics” and revisit some of the basics and foundation areas to glean new information.  A big thanks goes out to all of the speakers for taking time to develop material, present, and answer countless questions from audience members.

    Networking was the other reason I appreciated this conference.  I’ve been to a number of regional and national conferences in the past from Central Ohio Day of .Net to Stir Trek to SharePoint Saturdays to TechEd North America and many more.  All of these were great for connecting with the community of attendees, but somehow SPTechCon took it one step further.  I got to finally meet and get to know a number of great members of the SharePoint community (see pictures below for some of our hanging out.)  There are so many I want to list, but a quick few I have to at least thank here.  Mark Rackley (@mrackley) for being my roommate and giving us car rides numerous times (especially to ski shuttle at 5am,) Joel Oleson (@joeloleson) for also driving us around throughout the week, Mike Noel (@michaeltnoel) for giving us a tour of San Fran attractions, Eric Harlan (@ericharlan) for initiating the ski event and introducing me to a number of the other folks I met, Jen Mason (@jennifermason) for also introducing me to others, and Lori Gowin (@lorigowin) and Cathy Dew (@catpaint1) for helping when I had live blogging questions and providing lots of laughs.  Thanks to all of the others I met; I had a blast and hope to see you again soon at another event.

    ShareSki

    After many days spent at the conference, my friend Eric Harlan and I took 2 days to head up to Lake Tahoe for some skiing.  If any of you don’t know Eric, he’s quite an avid skier.  A quick look at the header image of his blog shows off that fact.  Eric was able to find a great deal for our ski trip through Bay Area Ski Bus.  The deal included shuttle ride from San Francisco to Tahoe, lift tickets for 2 days, 1 night in hotel, continental breakfast both mornings, and an apres-ski party (food, snacks, and drinks) both afternoons for $260ish per person.  That is an amazing deal considering lift tickets out West are fairly expensive and then you throw in shuttle, hotel room, food and drinks and it’s hard to believe they are making money.  Both Eric and I highly recommend them for anyone looking for a way to ski Tahoe if you are around the bay area in California.

    Great  deal on shuttle aside, skiing was fun and enjoyable.  The first day we skied Northstar ski resort and the second we skied Sugar Bowl ski resort.  I’ve been skiing since I was about 10, but both resorts were larger than anything I’ve skied in the mid-west.  Weather could’ve been better as it was in the mid to high 40s during the day and not much cooler in the morning.  Happily I can report I only fell a handful of times with only one fall that was actually scary (think of a movie where the hero is sliding down a hill and can’t stop because it’s so steep, yea that was me.)  Overall I had a great time and don’t look forward to skiing the smaller hills back home from now on.

    Photos and Links

    Facebook album of below photos (includes tagging and comments, recommend this link more)

    Ski video 1 – 360 panorama of Sugar Land

    Ski video 2 – Eric showing off some sweet skills

    Ski video 3 – Me skiing down the mountain

    Conclusion

    SPTechCon was a great conference to attend this year.  I got to learn some great content, meet amazing people, and get a short break away from work.  I’ll definitely look into attending the Boston SPTechCon later this year as I hear great things about that as well.  Big thanks out to all of the speakers, vendors, conference planners, and conference attendees for making this such a memorable event.  Look forward to the next great event.

     

    -Frog Out