OK, I know this post is a bit late, but better late than never!
Last week was another fantastic conference. Before I go too far, I have to agree with Joel that the best part of conferences is the social side... to see old friends from all over the globe that you don't get to see except at these events like my good WCM pal Spence Harbar from the UK and make new friends as well like Matt Passannante.
Days are always packed tight... and sometimes you get to see sessions (I actually made it to four last week, twice as many as ODC!) between talking to customers, friends and attendees. Nights are filled with parties and just relaxing with good friends. For us it always seems like downtown Seattle events always end up back at the Crowne Plaza bar (with the jacka$$ of a bartender)... unfortunately my friends and I have seen him close the bar down way too many times.
SharePoint by Day, SharePint by Night!
I'm really happy how our second SharePoint by Day, SharePint by Night event ended up at Kells Irish pub down by the water (the first was at SharePoint Connections in Vegas last November). At its peak we had close to 200 folks by some estimates. If you took some pictures of the event, please post them to Flickr, tag them with sharepint and let me know! I blew it and left my camera in the hotel and unfortunately the backup plan (Spence) lost his camera at the end of the night. I had a blast meeting tons of new folks... people who's names you're all too familiar with like Kimmo Forss, Daniel McPherson, Dan Winter and Vincent Rothwell. Also nice to see the usual suspects present like Lawrence Liu, Fitz, Mike Watson, Joel Oleson, Heather Solomon, Todd Baginski, Eric Shupps, Maurice Prather, Keith Richie, Nick Swan, Ted Pattison and Patrick Tisseghem to name a few. Yet another bar... we shut it down. :) Now Joel has a challenge: upstage Palermo's Party at TechEd. You got it! Just watch this blog!
Update on my MOSS WCM development book...
So many people asked last week, so here's the low down: yes, I'm still doing a book on MOSS 2007 WCM development. The first draft is complete (as of the last week of February) and I'm currently [feverishly] working through the technical reviewers comments and feedback to get to production. I'll post more details about this in the coming days.
What's up with that tool window you showed in your session @ SPC?
Ah... my little SharePoint development crutch. I promise I will give it away. At the moment it is what I call "me-ware". What is that? Well, I know what NOT to click to keep Visual Studio from blowing up. Let me tighten it down a bit over the next two weeks and I will post it for all to test and provide feedback... I promise. I said it would be out this week, but frankly I've got to get the book finished (see above) which will be the case this week. Just stay tuned... you'll have something in your hands to download by the end of March... WORST CASE. :)
The Future of MOSS WCM...
I have to throw one last thing in this post: how energized I am about the future of MOSS WCM adoption in the coming months. I was really [pleasantly] surprised by how many people came up to talk to me about WCM in general. The more people you talk to, the more you see companies giving it a solid look. More and more people are really interested in moving from some of the known content management platforms onto the MOSS Publishing stack. I got quite a few questions related to migrations and upgrades. I was really excited to talk to Rasool, Steven Cawood and Daphne (the great folks @ Metalogix) about the fantastic migration tools they've got for moving to MOSS and specifically WCM sites. If you're doing a migration, you've GOT to check out the Metalogix warez.
If you are a consultant and have [any] experience doing MOSS WCM/Publishing sites and are looking for work... please ping me! I'd love to help keep you busy!