Speaking at SharePoint Saturday DC 2013

UPDATE: Unfortunately I fell ill this week and the result is that we will not be presenting at SharePoint Saturday DC on Saturday.

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If you are in the neighborhood and/or have signed up for tickets for SharePoint Saturday DC, come check out Cicely Behne and I present "SharePoint Under the Surface: Doing More with Out-of-the-Box Features" at SPSDC in Chevy Chase, MD on Saturday, June 8th, 2013.

Here is an summary of what we're going to talk about. Lots of demos. It's geared towards SharePoint newbies and budding power users and front-end developers:

Your client wants SharePoint, but not plain old SharePoint. They won’t let you hire a developer. You cannot deploy solutions to the server. We see this often while working for various government and commercial clients, and on the surface it looks like it will limit our ability to provide the solutions they need. However, there are many features of SharePoint right under the surface that are often overlooked. SharePoint can do a lot if you just know what's possible.  

This session will discuss ways to create business solutions using SharePoint without complex programming or needing to deploy complied code solutions to the server. We will cover Functionality (Libraries & Lists, Metadata, Workflows, and Forms) and Visualization (List Views, Pages & Web Parts, Branding, and Reporting/Dynamic Content).  

The audience for this session is anyone using SharePoint, in particular new users, content managers, and budding Power Users and Front End Developers in scenarios where they do not have access or control to fully customize the instance of SharePoint they are using. You will come out of this session with some out-of-the-box features and front end configurations that can be used to enhance your SharePoint sites.

We hope to see you there!

Cloudy with a Chance of SharePoint

Thank you to everyone who came out to SharePoint Saturday The Conference today to watch Dave Shimko and me present "Cloudy with a Chance of SharePoint." We had a great interactive audience and I hope everyone got to learn a little bit about the options for hosting SharePoint "cloud"-side.

If you would like our slide-deck, you can view it online or download it here on Windows Live SkyDrive:
Cloudy with a Chance of SharePoint - SPSTCDC - August 12, 2011

Speaking at SharePoint Saturday The Conference DC

Update 8/3/2011: 
The SPSTCDC schedule has been posted! See: http://www.spstc.org/blog/Lists/Posts/ViewPost.aspx?ID=38

Dave and I will be speaking at 3pm on Friday, August 12th.

In just a couple of weeks will be the next iteration of the SharePoint Saturday franchise, this time with a little twist. SharePoint Saturday The Conference DC will be held from August 11th to 13th this year in the Washington, DC area (Annandale, Virginia to be exact). No, it's not just on Saturday anymore. This is not your father's SharePoint Saturday. They have expanded the conference to three days. It's still [almost] free--just a nominal $39 registration fee this time around. You can't get a better value anywhere else.

I will be presenting at SPSTCDC with my former colleague Dave Shimko on a topic very near and dear to my heart: "The Cloud." Yep, "The Cloud." Notice the quotes. The Cloud is not always what it seems. Our talk is entitled Cloudy with a Chance of SharePoint.

More specifically we'll be talking about moving SharePoint from your local area network to a remotely hosted environment and the considerations you'll need to address before you make any decisions. This could be in an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) environment, a Software as a Service (SaaS) environment, just moving your servers from on site to co-located data center, or something in between. Here's the session description:

"Moving to “The Cloud” is a popular topic these days. Many companies and even the government are looking to consolidate IT resources, work within more limited budgets, and the desire to simplify the management of their infrastructure. Naturally, “The Cloud” seems like a great idea.

But is it? And what does this mean for SharePoint?

First off, we will describe the different aspects of “The Cloud,” mainly that The Cloud is really not just one type of technology and often isn’t The Cloud at all. In fact, cloud computing is just a fraction of the services available for hosting servers and websites and SharePoint. You can have a locally “private cloud” or a remotely hosted dedicated Saas (Software as a Service). You might consider a public cloud IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) or a dedicated virtual infrastructure. Or just a plain old rack server in a co-located facility. Which do you choose?

Unfortunately, there is no simple answer to that question. However, we will dive into the questions that you should ask in order to ensure you make an educated decision about where to go. Some examples:

• What does it mean for SharePoint? 

• Do you really need the elasticity of something like Amazon EC2, or are your computing needs more stable and predictable? 

• Do you want IaaS, where you are in charge of the SharePoint application? 

• Or do you want SaaS, where the hosting provider manages the SharePoint application level for you? 

• What about security? 

• How do you budget for unforeseen costs?

So when your boss, CIO, or the President of the United States says, “We’re going to The Cloud,” you will have a better idea which “cloud” you should hop on to."

Find #SPSTCDC on Twitter and visit the SPSTCDC website for more information about the speakers, sessions, and lodging information.

SharePoint Saturday DC May 2010

Just yesterday was the stupendous SharePoint Saturday DC 2010, held at the Northern Virginia Community College in Annandale, Virginia. This time there were almost 1000 attendees (929 officially) and over 80 presentations. Kudos to the team of coordinators: Dux Raymond Sy, Dan Usher, Gino Degregori, Jenn Davis, and all of the helpers throughout the day.

This time around I did a presentation titled Bringing Zest to SharePoint Sites Using Out-of-the-Box Technology alongside Ed Wells and Bethany Kaplan. We had a classroom of about 40+ chairs and ended up with about 50+ people packed in for the 9am session. Thank you to everyone who came out for our talk!

View slides on docs.com

View Slides on Slideshare

Presentation description

Results Show: SharePoint Saturday DC

The most recent iteration of the SharePoint Saturday franchise, SharePoint Saturday DC, was held yesterday at the Microsoft Technology Center in Reston, Virginia. The day went very well, thanks to Dux Raymond Sy and his team of event coordinators, volunteers, and sponsors! Over 200 people were there and most of the sessions were packed and a few were standing room only!

There were a variety of session topics, including Dan Lewis's Social Computing talk, Tom Resing's Business Data Catalog presentation, and Jonathan Distler's overview of Arlington County, Virginia's SharePoint pilot. All-in-all, there were twenty-eight sessions plus an open "Ask the Expert" discussion in the lobby.

Dan Usher and I presented our talk SmartCard Authentication: Considerations, Options, and Pitfalls with SharePoint during the last session of the day, 4:45-5:45. Surprisingly, we still had the energy in us to have a lively discussion about security, SmartCards, and how they fit into a SharePoint implementation.

View the slides on SlideShare or download the PowerPoint file (PPT or PPTX) which includes the slides plus notes and resource links.

View Online (slides only)
SlideShare

View PowerPoint (slides + notes/resources)
PowerPoint 2003 (PPT)
PowerPoint 2007 (PPTX)

A video of our talk may be made available at some point, and I'll post it here if it does.

Speaking at SharePoint Saturday DC

In recent months there has been a series of interesting free weekend events called SharePoint Saturdays centered around the topic of--what else--SharePoint! Well, SharePoint Saturday is coming to the Washington, DC, area!

Dan Usher and I are scheduled to present together on the topic of smart card authentication with SharePoint 2007. The talk is entitled SmartCard authentication: Considerations, options and pitfalls. Oh my!

With the ever present risks of data integrity and non-repudiation, several organizations have begun to utilize smartcards for authentication to systems. With the greater number of SharePoint instances being stood up within organizations, ensuring the smartcards can be used to access data is key. In this session, we'll discuss smartcard authentication, considerations when determining the appropriate architecture, options for integration with different authentication providers and implementation pitfalls.

There are a few different ways you can integrate smart cards (or other two factor authentication) into a SharePoint instance. We'll talk about the various methods, including the option of using a custom membership provider.

There is a special food drive going along with the event. Check out Dux Raymond Sy's explanation on the SharePoint Saturday DC website.