Post SharePoint Saturday Boston Thoughts

Congratulations to Geoff Varosky and Talbott Crowell, Pradeepa Siva, Michael Lotter, and Chris Bowen for putting on a great event this weekend at the Microsoft building in Waltham, MA! For those unfamiliar with these events, SharePoint Saturday is a free, community-organized event that brings together SharePoint experts and MVPs to share their knowledge about all-things SharePoint. These events are a fantastic way for professionals and newbies alike to come and learn, ask questions, and make connections.

I presented on “Metadata Management in a Social Media World” and discussed the underlying metadata and taxonomy related to the many different social media tools that user’s are considering implementing in SharePoint. It was a good discussion, with a lot of feedback and interaction from the audience. I’ll be posting material from my session on SlideShare this week, as well as the #SPSBOS website. I enjoyed some of the other sessions, as well, including Virgil Carroll’s discussion on metadata in 2010, which delved deeper into the new 2010 platform than was covered in my session. He’s a very enthusiastic and entertaining presenter who knows his content. (Unfortunately, his company High Monkey Consulting will soon become irrelevant when i open my new firm, Higher Monkey Consulting, with our wholly owned and operated subsidiary, Highest Monkey Consulting)

Participating in this event were some of the more familiar names in the SharePoint space, such as Chris Geier, Linc Williams, Steven Fowler (whose wife somehow made it through the entire day with him), Christina Wheeler, Virgil Carroll, Jerry Hughes, Ryan Tacy, Scott Singleton, Geoff Varosky, David Pileggi, SB Chatterjee, Richard Harbridge, Mark Rackley, Becky Isserman, Jeff Willinger, and others. And, of course, we saw familiar friends from the vendors area, including Sharon from AvePoint and Matt from RackSpace. And for those who may have attended and walked by one of the intense and very animated discussions inside the speaker’s lounge and wondered what we were discussing, one of the hottest topic was around the original MTV veejay’s, and which were our favorites — with the consensus being Martha Quinn (I still say Adam Curry was better). I believe, at one point, there was even a video stream to the speaker’s lounge at our sister event happening in New Orleans, where I believe the veejay question also came up. While there were a few technical hiccups impacting some of the web-based demos, just about everything went off without a hitch.   

Following the event, a group of us headed over to the pub Joe Sent Me in Waltham, where we enjoyed sitting in close quarters and texting/twittering each other for a couple hours. It was pretty funny. One topic did come up which I want to mention – if you are new to SharePoint and have questions, or would like to get more involved in the community, please feel comfortable in reaching out and talking to any one of the presenters listed here, or, generally speaking, at any of the SharePoint Saturday events. I’ve been in hi-tech for almost 20 years, and I can honestly say that this is the most fun, welcoming, and eager to help group of experts that I have ever worked with, and they are always more than willing to talk. So don’t be shy.

I am looking forward to presenting at SharePoint Saturday Charlotte on April 10th. see you there!

I also want to congratulate David McCordick from Westborough, MA for winning the Zune HD from echoTechnology at the closing raffle. I grabbed this quick snapshot with David at the close of the event.