VANSPUG and SharePointWhistler
Just wanted to add a quick recap of this past weekend when Joel Oleson, his son Scott and I made our way north from Seattle to the Vancouver SharePoint User Group for a joint presentation this past Friday (Jan 14, 2011). Thanks again to Sherman Woo and the rest of the team for making this happen on a Friday night, and then of course for everyone who came out to participate.
We had a pretty full house as I presented on the 11 Strategic Considerations for SharePoint Migrations, followed by Joel sharing his expertise on what not to do when upgrading 
SharePoint. Aside from my going too deep on past pains with SPDesigner (all pre-2010 experiences, folks) which were all due, I might add, to the wrong people having too much control, it was a great session with lots of questions and feedback from the audience. My summary on SPDesigner: wear your governance hat. It is the right tool in most cases, but make sure the right people are using it, and put the right controls in place to sandbox their solutions.
Following the SPUG event, Joel and I were invited out to dinner by the folks at Colligo, where we again talked SharePoint, community, and shared stories from our travels. Thanks again Randy, Shantel and Bill for dinner and great conversation!
On Saturday, Joel and I made our way to the first official SharePointWhistler. While 
nobody else from the SharePoint community joined us for a day of skiing, we “forced” ourselves to have fun anyway. It was a bit slushy on the lower half of the mountain, with drizzle on and off all day, but above the cloud layer it was perfect, with a foot of powder on the trails and an unexpectedly light crowd. Joel and I took the peak to peak ride over to the Whistler side, then returned to ski down Blackcomb for the remainder of the afternoon. I need to get back up there soon.
