TechDays San Francisco. Nifty small conference everyone should attend.

Howdy,

I don't know about you, but for me, money's just getting tighter these days. I can afford to attend fewer and fewer events. Despite their being the best way for me to connect with other IT professionals; meeting readers, meeting other industry experts, speakers, and trainers, I just can't afford to go to all of the events I used to, year after year.

Now I have to pick and choose.

As for information, training, insider tips, and simply finding someone qualified, that I can trust, to ask questions and get real answers-- I now mostly depend on the internet. Which, as all of you know, can be hit or miss.

I wish I were independently wealthy. I wish I could go to every industry event out there. Go to every party, every session, every mixer-- but I can't.

So, this year, I am going to go to TechEd. I will be (hopefully) volunteering again to staff the hands-on labs. Hopefully, I will also get to staff the labs at the SharePoint Conference later in the year. And, hopefully, I will be selected to speak at the SEF event in Stockholm, SE again in November.

I didn't get to go to SPTechCon, or the MVP Summit. I won't get to go to SPCincy, or WPC (Worldwide Partner Conference). I'm going to have to skip a number of SharePoint Saturdays too. Times are tough.

So, when I find a bargain, I like to pass it along. I am going to be speaking at a small, community driven, two day event in San Francisco call TechDays, run by the PacIT Pros (Pacific IT Professionals user group) in a couple of weeks. This two day event is going to be jam packed with the very people who do keynotes and incredible sessions at TechEd and other high profile events. People like Stephen Rose, Mark Minasi, Darren Mar-Elia, and Joey Snow.

Mind you, this is a Microsoft topics event, like TechEd, so the sessions won't just be about SharePoint  but will cover content from Windows Server 2008 R2 and the upcoming Server 8, IIS 7.5, DNS, MDOP, Deployment, Exchange, Linux, Hyper-V, System Center, Forefront, PowerShell, and even SharePoint (thanks to yours truly). This is the time to get some insight into those products you need to know about, while you're working day in and day out with SharePoint. Each speaker is doing two sessions about their favorite subjects, so you know they'll be good.

Ever attend a large conference and wish you had a chance to talk to the speaker, but there were too many other people around and not enough time? Maybe you attended a session at TechEd given by one of the people listed to speak at TechDays, and had a question you wanted to ask during the session, but the room was packed with hundreds of people and there was no way to get noticed before the session ended?

Well, now's your chance. That's the point of these smaller, shorter, cheaper events. They have the same great, experienced, professional speakers, at a fraction of the cost. And you aren't away from home for a whole week. And you get excellent, useful, sessions to learn about all kinds of Microsoft products from people you can trust. People who know what they are talking about.

The site for the event is: http://techdays.org/techdays-sf-sessions/
The date of the two day event is March 22nd and 23rd.
The cost for two, session packed days is just $400 (that's sessions from 9:00am to 5:00pm, with a meet and greet party the first night- when does anybody get two days of real expert training for just 200 dollars a day?!).
The location will be the Microsoft Office in downtown San Francisco at 835 Market Street, Suite 700, San Francisco, CA 94103.
The hotel that PacIT pros has a group rate with is Diva Hotel, within super easy walking distance from the event (I've really grown to love those Personality Hotels in San Fran. Ask me about Hotel Union Square. Adorable!).
There are a whole lot of seats still available. So quickly click the link to the event and sign up before it's too late.

I would dearly love to see you there. I am currently checking to see if Wiley can send me some free books to give away. So this may also be a rare chance to get a free copy of my Mastering Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 book (and get it signed), since I'm not going to be out speaking at as many events this year.

TechDays San Francisco- like bow ties, being there is cool. :)

Updates all around

Howdy everyone,

You might have noticed that my blog has lagged to a halt over the last month or two. My apologies.

I had a few distractions to contend with:

I was distracted by the preparations required to present at a conference in Toronto.

Then I was distracted by the pneumonia I came down with the day before, and suffered with during, the conference.

(I'd like to give a shout out to the wonderful, patient, and sympathetic folks who attended my sessions at the IT360 conference. Thank you for your kindness while I wheezed in a fever-induced daze through my four presentations. I promise that I will be building camtasia videocasts of my virtual server and data protection manager sessions just for you, so you can actually get that information sans delirium.)

Then I was distracted for about a month, recovering from the pneumonia that never wanted to leave.

Eventually though, I have gotten over those distractions enough to continue my work here, however haltingly. I'm, ironically, not entirely over the pneumonia, but I am getting better.

This catches me up to today, delay-wise. My worry is that, in two weeks time I will be in Orlando, Florida, working the MCT Community Lounge for the TechEd Developer's week and the IT Professionals week (yes, fourteen days of technical goodness, feel free to stop by if you're attending). So I really, really need to kick this lung infection thing before I get there. As it is, convalescence has really cut into my preparation time for the event-- not to mention all the things I wanted to do for this blog.

Meanwhile-- other news:

• I got the Birds of a Feather gig! :: insert sound of crowd going wild here:: Thank all of you who voted for my session, I am truly grateful. Now I get a chance to really speak one on one with people who are interested in WSS in my native territory-- a technical conference . Please come visit my BOF table on Wednesday night of the IT Professionals week, at about 7:25 to 8:30p. There'll be food and other refreshments there as well, so don't worry about having to go get food then come back after the breakout sessions that day.
• I am currently working on the second podcast in the Richard series, introducing WSS 3.0. The second session is going to touch on a little about WSS architecture, as in what web applications, site collections, top level sites, and subsites are; what you might want to consider when planning for them, and thoughts for backing them up in case of calamity.
• I needed a good place to offer videocasts to my attendees from the IT360 conference, so I have decided to offer the 'casts both at my callahantech site and here, just in case the attendees had a preference. Another reason, frankly, for the placement of otherwise non-WSS material on this blog is my web host provider has become very flaky in the last few weeks, crashing entirely over the weekend, causing me to go off topic here in order to have my stuff available in more than one place (basic disaster preparedness...). What this means to you, gentle readers, is that, although you might not necessarily be interested in anything not pertaining to WSS, you will get access to my other stuff if you are so inclined.
• And for those of you who have sent in comments, I haven't forgotten you. I will be responding soon (hopefully tomorrow, but at least by the week's end).

Because of my sudden need to find an alternative to my current host provider, I have been doing a lot of research into other hosts. In doing that I have been rather inundated with all the features they offer. Of those features, Joomla and Mambo seem to come up quite often.

Now, I'd heard of Joomla before (there was a Joomla booth at IT360), but I've been too busy to really check it out. I'd never even heard of Mambo, but both sounded interesting-- being open source content management products apparently similar to SharePoint. Because of this you might end up getting some insight into these products, and how they relate to WSS. I might even test a new host by implementing either joomla or mambo (or if I can, both) at an alternate domain. If I am allowed to let public users in, I'll post the address so you can check it out. Otherwise, I will at least screenshot it so you can see what they're all about.

Understand that I don't consider this being "unloyal" to SharePoint. I think, as a professional, I need to know what's out there. If something else is better, then it behooves me to learn it and offer it to my clients, peers, and friends as an alternative. Their success is my success. And if something else makes them more successful, well, I'd rather be the one that suggested it. Besides, knowing how it directly relates to WSS helps me better explain to people why they might want to stay with my focus product. See, I am not being blindly loyal or biased, just professionally interested. Yeah, that's it, interested...

Mind you, before messing with those other products, I need to first catch up on my 'casts here. Then I need to prep for TechEd, do TechEd, and then (inevitably) recover from TechEd. After that, expect more stuff about these SharePoint alternatives, as well as another thing I am interested in-- Search Server 2008 Express (especially as it relates to WSS, of course).

Thanks for being here so far, and stick around, more things are to come in the continued adventures of a servergrrl.

Are you considering going to TechEd 2008?

Well, it's official-- I am going to TechEd 2008. And, in order to be able to get in touch with my readers (both blog and book), I entered a proposal for a Birds of a Feather discussion session concerning WSS 3.0. The title is "The less costly path, Windows SharePoint Services 3.0." and the content is essentially:

"Are you supporting a small business or non-profit company that is interested in SharePoint? Considering installing Windows SharePoint Services 3.0? Join the author of "Mastering Windows SharePoint Services 3.0" to discuss the best practices, tips, tricks, and gotchas before you deploy WSS in your environment. Topics of discussion can include everything from what kind of installation to use (including Active Directory Account Creation Mode); to user management, tips on security, Directory Management Services, cost effectiveness, and more. Feel free to join us as we explore why, when, and how to implement Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 in a small/non-profit business environment."

Mind you, this is going to be an open discussion, so as long as your questions are general enough to be useful to everyone (I don't intend to do free consulting), you can ask things outside of the proposed topics. So that means if you are managing or considering a deployment of WSS 3.0 in a medium or large business environment, you are more than welcome to stop by.

There is a catch though-- I entered my proposal for the session, but that does not guarantee that the session will happen. Once sessions are approved to be proposed, they have to be voted on. That's right. If you are considering going to TechEd (you don't even have to be registered yet), and would like to join me in a discussion about Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, you need to vote for my BOF session. No votes, no session.

To vote for my session, go to: https://www.msteched.com/itpro/voting.aspx. Scroll through the list to the title of my session"The less costly path, Windows SharePoint Services 3.0", and click the checkbox next to it. That will put it in the selection box on the right of the list. Then (and this is important) scroll to the bottom of the page and click the "Save Selections" button. Only then will you have voted for my session.

The reason I wrote the proposal the way I did was, after reading all the others, it seemed that there was no love for the little guy-- the guy who doesn't have a 2 million dollar budget. I wanted to have at least one Birds of a Feather session that addressed saving money openly. That invited the little guy, the less than a million users guy. Also, I wanted to have a session out there presented by someone who wasn't actually selling their own product. I am there to talk about Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (service pack 1), I am not selling anything.

But remember, if no one votes for my BOF, it won't happen. So if you do go to TechEd, and see that I am not on the schedule, that's why. ; )