NZ Community SharePoint Conference 09 Recap

Well done Chandima, Debbie Ireland, and Mark Orange.  I am so pleased with the fantastic and up beat crowd here in Wellington.  It’s very refreshing.  The energy around SharePoint world wide is so up beat.

We opened up the conference with those 3 as MCs and doing the chand and mark show.  Most conferences of this size are run by events companies.  This one is run by SharePoint geeks, it’s a rich social experience.

Above, @chandimak, Mark Orange, Debbie Ireland – All SharePoint MVPs right before the keynote kickoff.

 

Michael Sampson handing me a signed copy of his new book “SharePoint Roadmap to Collaboration.”  Check it out at http://www.sharepointroadmap.com.  The book launched on day one of the conference.

I had a side meeting with Steve Smith around his end user adoption training materials/kit app.  It’s really cool.  He gave a preview to the crowd here.  A sneak peak…

 

I had 3 presentations on day 1.

1. Keynote with a modified version of my 10 Steps to Successful SharePoint deployments with a Kiwi slant.
2. SharePoint Best Practices to Infrastructure Fundamentals and Information Architecture
3. Large Scale SQL SharePoint Deployments – a SharePoint SQL database focused session on scale and performance

At Day 2 I joined the Ask the Experts Panel.  Good group of experts.  From left to Right (Mark Orange (missing from photo), @SteveSmithCK @Chandimak, @joeloleson (me), @PaulCulmsee, and @pstork

 

They had a special treat a sea urchin called Kina.  It smelled foul, very fishy, but I downed a big slice of the stuff.  None of the other speakers joined me.

The exhibit hall is great.  A few companies I hadn’t spend much time with yet.  The surf board and smoothies booth is awesome.  Haven’t seen that idea anywhere else.  Lot of Good SharePoint partners to meet with.  Quest is well represented, as is AvePoint, Mimosa, Intergen, K2, and more…

 

Everyone is having a great time.  Tons of good content.  Do a twitter search for #NZSPC and you can see what everyone is chatting about…

You can also find a stream of photos out on flickr on the conference.

 

What about the non conference stuff?

The Speaker dinner was great.  Steaks, Fish, and an assortment.  Last night a few of us went to the national museum Te Papa and saw a ton of whale and fish skelletons as well as a giant squid.  We also went on a little ride and earthquake simulator.  After that a few of us speakers ended the night at Macs.