So its the night before the first day of the European SharePoint Best Practices Conference. Twitter is busy marshaling the SharePoint community from football matches to various minor ShareFood and SharePint type events. Like minded people are gathering to discuss, debate and disseminate. It astounds me how the community of devs, IT pros, end-users and managers that surround SharePoint are so willing and able to embrace people from all walks of the SharePointSphere. They will even involve SharePoint admins and that has to be good for them as at work they have to sit on their own table at lunch and friends are hard to come by 
. That is a joke by the way – in reality I find myself more and more an administrator/architect and less of a developer with every day that passes.
I will have been to all 3 of the Combined Knowledge SharePoint conferences and so far they have been absolutely fantastic value! Not only do you get the most fantastic breadth, depth and quality of SharePoint speakers (even when most of them get trapped by volcanic ash clouds), but when you’ve got home and had a chance to relax you get a massive DVD box set through the mail with video of ALL the sessions on it! This DVD is invaluable to me and allows me to dig deeper as and when the work commitments demand more depth of knowledge than I possess in a given area.
I have some objectives for the next three days, some are personal and some are driven by upcoming projects at work. I have no doubt that I’ll get some answers – some through session content, possibly through some exhibitors too, but more than likley I’ll get some real world advice from talented SharePoint bods who have done these things ‘on the coal face’ so to speak.
Last year during the Evolutions Conference I had intended to post an article each day covering what sessions I had attended and what I had picked up. However as with the best laid plans I never got enough info together to post anything. This time I am confident that I can complete at least a post for the first two days. I’ll have to dash home on Wednesday as I’ll be longing for some family time, but I’ll get the third done as soon as I can.
I have published the commitment this time so maybe that will force me into a corner.
Good luck to all the speakers tomorrow – most of them are seasoned pros but some may be in front of a large crowd for the first time. If that is the case then SharePointers have to be the best crowd for you. They normally embrace anyone who is prepared to stand up and feed their frenzy for knowledge.
If you cannot be there then follow the action. #bpcuk.
I’m turning in now – though I’ll probably keep an eye on the US Masters which is still going on (though Rory McIlroy has had a spectacular and yet gut-wrenching fall from the top of the leaderboard!)