SharePoint Connections - Orlando - Day 1: Here there be alligators

Yup, alligators. I said it right. There are alligators here in Orlando. Not only that, but at dinner tonight I ate one. Well, a tail anyways. Very odd as we were having dinner tonight and there was Florida Gator Tail on the menu. I had to do a second look but it was there. The waitress confirmed it and yup, gator was being served up at $9.50 a basket. Since I snapped a picture of the sign warning us of gators, I figure they just would go out to the lake and wrangle up one to serve for the night. Nothing like fresh amphibian to start of the evening. I just had to try some so I ordered it, even though I’m sure I’ve violated at least 9 separate PETA by-laws and a half dozen infractions for eating the poor little bugger. And yes, you guessed it. It tasted like chicken.

I missed Scott Guthries keynote as I favoured chowing down on some gator instead (sorry Scott). It was good (the keynote, the gator was a little rubbery) and covered a lot of Atlas stuff (Web 2.0, blah, blah, blah). Atlas is a big part of the conference here and you’ll find a lot of it (including Atlas and SharePoint integration). You can catch a video of an Atlas demo which is very similar to what Scott presented at tonights keynote here (although I think his keynote might be available online via the DevConnections sight shortly). The rest of the night here was mostly spent schmoozing (official word) with the vendors. SharePoint vendors dominate a large part of the booths here and there are some great people presenting great products.

The CorasWorks guys are here with their products. I was involved with CorasWorks way back when they started (I think I was like their 9th customer or something). They’ve just passed their 650th customer and keep growing. It’s guys like these that enhance what SharePoint can do out of the box, and provide really nice web part frameworks that do cool stuff. If it’s a choice between spending a couple of weeks building stuff or buying a supported third party product like theirs, I choose them hands down. It’s vendors like these guys (and others) that fill the gap that SharePoint misses or enhances what SharePoint provides. Remember they were the first with “roll-ups” and while it’s going to be a standard in the 2007 product, 3rd party products like these are always value-added and worth taking a look at so check them out.

Not to be out done by the two guys and a small dog setup at CorasWorks, I stopped by the Bamboo Solutions booth to chat with the gang there. Yes, those are real girls in the picture and they hang out and know SharePoint stuff. So what if there’s a 5:1 ratio of women to men, they make cool web parts. They’ve been putting together a lot of little web parts that make sense and again, fill a gap where SharePoint might fall a little short. If you’re down at the conference and have a chance to check them out, drop by and say hi and see what they have to offer. Who says IT isn’t exciting?

Finally I stumbled over a few MVPs and other presenters here. Some I knew, others I met for the first time. These shows are always a great place to get to meet old friends, create some new ones, and avoid the ones you don’t want to talk to. Brad Smith is doing a session on SOA and SharePoint here and like the last picture I snapped of him at the MVP Summit, here he is in his typical Brad pose, drinking his face off. Man, what a great job he has to be shuffled off to conferences to drink. Keep the faith Brad!

So remember to hunt me down at the conference and say hi. Tell me you hate my blog. Profess your love of SharePoint to me. Bore me with a story about your latest SharePoint installation. I’m easy.