Better late than never…
It’s about time I wrote about the experiences of what was the SharePoint Conference, 2009 edition, in Las Vegas. By now many others have had their recap, and with my own experiences being somewhat similar, I shall try to keep mine succint, but entertaining.
My first major Microsoft conference was the Office/SharePoint conference in Redmond (or was it Bellevue) in March 2005. I had just started with Habañero Consulting Group, had just gone through a nasty learning experience on a custom “workflow” type issues and tasks solutions on SharePoint 2003 (which was NOT fun for many reasons), and so was pretty wide-eyed and overwhelmed when I attended the sessions. Aside from the two co-workers I went with, I knew no one else, didn’t know any of the “big names”, and didn’t really have any sort of game-plan whatsoever. We heard a lot of ideas, I saw some code, saw some bad presentations, and concluded the conference with pretty much a “meh”. The most exciting part was the road trip from Vancouver in my car, and I’ll never forget the “thud” that my car had to endure as I drove it off a curb because my “navigator” (she will remain nameless, for now…) missed the exit, it was dark, and I was desperate to turn around and find the hotel.
SharePoint Conference 2008 came to Seattle in February, if i recall correctly. Due to the success the product had in 2007, it was going to be a big deal for SharePoint 2007, with which I’d been working since the summer of 2006 (Beta 2). Having spent two years prior on MCMS 2002, I was fortunate to be involved in a WCM solution in the summer of 2007. By then, I had learned a lot through discovery, but also through reading the content of others. I also attended the first running of Andrew Connell’s WCM401 online class. I had a bit of a game plan this time, but it mostly involved the sessions, attending them as strategically as I could, trying to learn things outside of my SharePoint comfort zone. I learned some new things, saw better presentations, but generally didn’t feel as out of place as I did in 2005. I attended SharePint, met a few people throughout the conference, but pretty much stayed with my co-workers and didn’t realize the social aspect of these conferences. Since the two MOSS exams were available for free, I decided to give them a shot and passed both. Cool. The stay at the W was also a nice luxury that Habanero generously provided.
Throughout 2007 and 2008, I was focussed primarily on SharePoint projects. I learned more and more with each one (as one should), became more confident, and looked forward to the next conference. Soon after it was announced, I bought an early-bird ticket. Throughout 2009, I grasped on to Twitter, started following a few SharePoint people, and once in a while would engage in some sort of “conversation” with people whom I’ve never met. It was very cool. Heading down to Las Vegas for SPC09 I decided I would try to meet as many people as I could, to personally thank them for the work they have put into the community over the last few years from whom I’ve benefitted directly as well. I decided to splurge a bit and stayed at THEhotel, attended SharePint at EyeCandy, and throughout the conference just shook hands and tried to track down a few people to say “hi” and “thanks”. I had never been to Vegas before, but it wasn’t until Tuesday evening (after the 80s party with Huey Lewis and the News) that I even stepped outside of the Mandalay Bay Center.
It was a great conference with a lot of content (overload), but what made it really special for me was the chance to meet many of the cool people in the SharePoint community of which I’m proud to be part of.