D'fhreastail mé ar mo chéad uair riamh SharePoint comhdháil this past weekend and it was a blast.

Tráthnóna Déardaoin, Thiomáin mé síos go dtí Achadh an Iúir, faoi ​​threoir ag mo cheannach nua- $50 GPS appliance plug-in thing to my phone. The device was flawless. After the five hour drive, Bhí mé an fuinneamh a dhéanamh a reáchtáil deas ar an muileann tread agus ansin, fiú níos mó ionadh, had the energy to head to the lobby for an advertised speaker’s cocktail hour. Conference n00b that I am, it turned out that the cocktail hour was really a ruse to get speakers to show up and help stuff papers and swag into shoulder bags for conference attendees 🙂

Had a hard time sleeping because I was speaking first thing Friday AM. Nervousness, a nagging feeling that I needed to add a slide to my presentation and a very disturbing cat show on Animal Planet kept me up late. Since I went to sleep late, I naturally got up early. I did add a fairly detailed technical architecture slide. It was well worth the effort because the 25 miontuairiscí Q&A would have been very awkward without it. I was lucky to get the first slot in the technical track. Sahil Malik was originally going to speak Friday AM and I was going to speak Saturday but he needed to swap times. This allowed me to do my presentation and then sit back and enjoy everything going forward Friday and Saturday.

The presentation went OK. I definitely have room to improve it. I spoke about how we can access and use web services from a SharePoint Designer workflow using a custom action. Le himeacht ama, Beidh mé ag cheangal an fhaisnéis seo isteach i mo sraith thar ag EUSP.com for End Users trying to get the most use out of that tool. I blew through my slides and demo in 35 nóiméad, to my dismay at the time. Luckily, Q&A bhí bríomhar, no doubt helped by the fact that it was early morning before lunch. Q&A is my favorite part of any presentation.

Bhí ábhar suimiúil go leor agus tá súil agam go blag mar gheall orthu níos mine an tseachtain seo (ama lena gceadaítear, mar i gcónaí). A fellow from CMS Watch provided a highly critical yet very hopeful review of SharePoint’s position in the market. A different discussion focused on the paucity of SharePoint resources and the difficulty that recruiters have finding good talent that is also "affordable" in this very tight market. The CMS Watch guy referred to the SharePoint human resources pool as being like a "guild." I’m mainly familiar with that term in MMORPG terms and it gave me a little thrill, to be honest 🙂

The highlight of the conference was just meeting and catching up with people I’ve "known" online for a while. The best was sitting at the bar with Becky Isserman (MossLover) le haghaidh 3 nó 4 uair an chloig (agus go, ól tar éis a bhí críochnaithe agam ar feadh na hoíche). I don’t often get to talk about Farscape nó Babylon 5 le Kansas City cónaitheoirí.

Bob Fox a bhí ann agus mar is gnách, Is whirlwind de intros, chats and just plain frenetic energy. He invited me to Saturday breakfast with Sahil Malik and that was great.

Dé Sathairn (lá 2), Mike Lotter dragged féin leis an gcomhdháil chun labhairt faoi InfoPath agus ansin chuaigh sé isteach Becky ag deireadh an lae a dhéanamh saghas ginearálta Q&A seisiún ar feadh thart ar 30 go 45 nóiméad dírithe go príomha ar InfoPath (Mike) and AJAX (Becky). I wish Becky had been able to go through her full/formal presentation but I’m sure I’ll get a chance to see that one of these days. I have a feeling she’ll be "hitting the circuit" ag dul ar aghaidh.

I could go on and on. Two last points — the financial purpose of the conference was to raise money for the Children’s Miracle Network and it raised $5,000. That was awesome. Mar fhocal scoir, Ba mhaith liom buíochas a ghabháil go poiblí Gary Blatt, Gary Vaughn and Bob Fox for alerting me to and allowing me to speak at the conference. Ar ndóigh,, the two Gary’s had a team of people supporting and organizing and all of you were awesome. I had high expectations before I went and it was better than I had hoped for.

Keep on the alert for the next conference scheduled for November 7th and 8th. Aside from some great content, Tá sé iontach chun freastal ar suas leo siúd go léir daoine ar líne atá tú a dtugtar trí blogs, twitter, fóraim, etc.

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