On the Road for SPTechCon Boston

Quality time in the office is always so short-lived in the life of an evangelist. After a week home, it’s time once again to prepare for the road. But I’m really looking forward to this trip – SPTechCon is a well-run machine, and after a few days in Atlanta for TechEd 2011, I’m looking forward to being surrounded once again by my SharePoint peers. The SharePoint crowd is the most passionate (and fun) group of people in technology, and I am looking forward to being in the middle of it all next week.

I will be joining Axceler partner Grace-Hunt for an event Tuesday night at the Microsoft Waltham building and (hopefully) spending some time with my good friend Geoff Varosky finalizing details surrounding our joint presentations. SPTechCon Boston kicks off on Wednesday, June 1st with a day of workshops, but Geoff and I have a joint 4-minute “lightning talk” at the end of the day in which we will try to convince the masses to attend our Thursday afternoon session. Our pitch is entitled “Going Gaga for SharePoint: A Look at Becoming a SharePoint Rock Star” in which we will attempt to recreate a popular Lady Gaga video. Or something.

Our session – focusing on SharePoint 2010 for beginners – takes place Thursday from 3:15pm to 4:30pm:

9 Ways to Become a SharePoint Rock Star
So you want to become a rock star? We’re talking actual rock star, not a metaphor for “finding stardom” at your company, but that little “band thing” you do on the side after putting in your 9-to-5 each day.

In this session, we will lead you on a fun and adventurous journey where you can not only learn SharePoint, but also springboard into that life of fame and rock stardom that you’ve been dreaming of, using the tools at your disposal during the daily grind. If, by chance, your wildest dreams of becoming a rock star do not come to fruition, you can be rest assured that you can apply what you learn in this session to become a SharePoint rock star – because it's always good to have a backup plan

If you are new to SharePoint, you do not want to miss this session. We’re going all out. Also on Thursday is an exclusive attendee party hosted by Axceler, Jornata, and Microsoft. You must register to attend! Details here.

On Friday, I will conduct two sessions – the first (on metadata best practices) is from 10am to 11:15am, and the second (on migration planning) is from 1:45pm to 3pm:

Looking Under the Hood: How Your Metadata Strategy Impacts Everything You Do
For many users, the importance of a strong metadata and taxonomy strategy is unclear. This presentation will walk through some common end user scenarios (adding documents to a library, participating in an enterprise workflow, finding technical expertise through some of the new social search features in SharePoint 2010) and discuss the metadata and taxonomy implications. The goal of the presentation is to show the importance of metadata and a taxonomy strategy, how the lack of a strategy can impact these common scenarios, and the ability to leverage the full functionality of SharePoint.

Don’t Just Migrate: Transform Your SharePoint Environment
Migration is not just a technical activity (provision a new system, attach and move databases), but should be a much more thoughtful and planned activity. This session will help attendees understand the difficulties surrounding migration and the ample opportunities to transform their data—building a new system that meets their environment vision.

We will discuss fundamentals of capacity planning, the overall migration schedule, how to involve end users in the process, understanding the as-is and to-be system views, outline strategies for taxonomy, and metadata management. Attendees will walk away with an action plan for their transformation and migration efforts.

Please be sure to stop by the Axceler booth to say hello. Hope to see you there!