Kathy Hughes, MVP

Office DevCon 2008 Sydney Australia

Kathy Hughes — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 00:01:00 GMT

Plans are well and truly underway for this year's Office DevCon Sydney event. Don't forget to check out our Web site www.officedevcon.com.au - for updates and register to be notified of updates by e-mail. The venue is still being sorted and should be announced soon. The agenda is being updated on a regular basis, and will be jam packed full of great technical Office presentations.

Here's the lead into this year's event.....

Welcome to OfficeDevCon 2008, Sydney, Australia - 1-2 November, 2008

Wow! I didn’t know I could do that!

Office DevCon is an annual community-driven conference that allows Microsoft Office developers and power users to come together in one location to hear expert speakers present on a wide range of Office-related topics.

Over 2 days, you will hear presentations on advanced core Office technologies for Office 2003 and 2007, including Word, Access, Excel, SharePoint, PowerPoint, Groove, InfoPath, OneNote and Outlook. We may also be able to provide some previews of Office 14, the next version.

The inaugural Australian event was held in November 2007, and was an unprecedented success - check out last year's programme at http://www.block.net.au/devcon/programme.htm. The 2008 event has already generated an extraordinary level of interest from many local and international speakers and organisations, and promises to ‘raise the bar’ even higher.

This year, the format will be even more exciting. We’ll still have our popular deep-dive sessions and hands-on labs, but we’ll also have RapidFire and OpenSpace sessions to provide greater opportunities to learn about Office technologies and techniques, and to interact with world-class experts.

It is free to attend Office DevCon, but accommodation and transportation costs are up to you, as are the cost of your meals.

To enable the Office DevCon 2008 organisers to arrange event catering and seating, you must register to attend the two day event by completing the registration form - http://www.officedevcon.com.au/registration/default.aspx.

Sydney SharePoint User Group 26th August - Special Event

Kathy Hughes — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 22:39:00 GMT

Two sensational SharePoint presentations delivered by internationally renowned SharePoint MVPs Todd Bleeker (Mindsharp, USA) and Steve Smith (Combined Knowledge Ltd, EMEA)

When: Tuesday, 26th August, 2008, Sydney, Australia, 5:30pm – 8:00pm
Where: 280 Pitt Street, Sydney CBD

Don’t miss out! Register now - http://www.sharepointusers.org.au/Sydney/Lists/Events%20Calendar/DispForm.aspx?ID=16&Source=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Esharepointusers%2Eorg%2Eau%2FSydney%2Fdefault%2Easpx

We are running two separate presentations for our August session. These will be running at the same time, so you need to decide which one you want to attend. E-mail sydney@sharepointusers.org.au with the word AJAX or Scalability in the subject line.

AJAX-style SharePoint Web Parts
Todd Bleeker

This session will delve deep into the AJAX-style SharePoint Web Part development demonstrating several different approaches to achieving REST partial page updates. Discover what ASP.NET AJAX brings to the table over ASP.NET alone. Explore the client side of Web Parts and how they can be used to improve a user's overall Windows SharePoint Services experience. Leave with ideas that will make your Web Parts sing.

Scaling Out SharePoint and Load balancing the Web Servers using Microsoft Network Load balancing
Level 300
Steve Smith

From the Back to Basics series : Most companies start off with one SharePoint Server and an SQL box but what happens when more capacity is required due to higher concurrent connections or furthermore what if resilience is being demanded in order to protect data availability and 24/7 access to sites and files by the users and management.

This session will take you through a step by step process in adding additional servers into your SharePoint farm , configuring and reallocating server services such as Excel and Search and then configuring the Network Load balance service on the two web servers in order to support resilient web requests.

Due to limited numbers, you need to reserve your spot in your session of choice. E-mail sydney@sharepointusers.org.au with the word AJAX or Scalability in the subject line

As part of this special occasion, we'll be giving away one copy of the new SharePoint Server 2007 Best Practices book, authored by Bill English and Ben Curry, co-authored by Kathy Hughes, and contributed to by several talented SharePoint professionals.

On-demand Webinar now available: Best Practices for using SharePoint for E-mail Management

Kathy Hughes — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 11:49:00 GMT

Last week's Webinar - Best Practices for Using SharePoint for Email Management A Practical "How To" Webinar - is now available as an on-demand Webinar:-

http://www.colligo.com/webinars/Colligo-Email/register.asp

We'll be addressing those questions that we didn't get a chance to answer during the Webinar throughout the next week.

I'd like to thank Barry and Genese of Colligo Networks for organizing and sponsoring the Webinar.

Summing up BI Features in MOSS - Take Two

Kathy Hughes — Wed, 21 May 2008 05:39:00 GMT

Hi everyone,

Back in February I presented a session on BI features in SharePoint, including the out-of-the-box BI features like Excel Services and extended BI features including SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services and PerformancePoint Server 2007. I've uploaded a PDF of my presentation to this post.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to mention our upcoming Microsoft Press book - “Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Best Practices” - http://www.microsoft.com/MSPress/books/12197.aspx which I co-authored along with Bill English and Ben Curry. The book includes two solid chapters around MOSS BI integration and best practices. Here's Bill English's overview of the book:- http://admincompanion.mindsharp.com/BillBlog/default.aspx.

Go grab the presentation: “Summing up BI Features in MO$$“ - http://mindsharpblogs.com/files/kathy/summingupbifeaturesinMO$$_UG.zip.

Kathy