The Toronto SharePoint Camp Kicked Ass
A giant shout-out to the organizing committee, volunteers, sponsors and attendees of this year’s Toronto SharePoint Camp, what a great day! Chairman Bill Brockbank was pretty raspy (and full of Buckley’s), so I was the “voice” for the opening, and facilitator of the speaker round-table and raffle, but these things don’t happen without great people and planning. Everyone did a great job to be proud of.
We had well over 200 attendees for 20 sessions delivered by 19 speakers including 5 MVPs representing a variety of specialties. Feedback was phenomenal (here's the first review from the wild) with a lot of comments like “greatly exceeded expectations” and “I can’t believe you guys can offer this for free.”
There were a few benefits we didn’t expect. A Mississauga SharePoint user group has a strong chance of launching with its first meeting in the next 2-3 months. Just as Toronto supports downtown and suburban .NET user groups, I’ve long thought a suburban SharePoint UG would do well. Three people stepped up to lead it, and about a half-dozen people have already volunteered to get involved (comment here or contact me if you want to get involved too). Fantastic!
Several people suggested adding end-user content in either next year's Camp or in our monthly meetings. After a little probing, it seems there are existing Knowledge Management interest groups in Toronto, for example in the public service and among law offices. The best way to get end-users involved will be to “go where they are.” So to meet the need, our user group will start offering a list of speakers and topics geared to end-users and knowledge management.
And there is interest in holding a local SharePoint Saturday. Unlike a mini-conference format these are (near as I can tell) hands-on day-long projects where people show up with their laptops, get assigned to a task and then go off to develop in hives. It sounds like a great idea and even though I’m not fully up to speed on the format, I wouldn’t be surprised to see one spring up in Toronto this year. One again, if you're interested in coordinating or volunteering, comment or contact me and I'll facilitate.
The presentations and sample code are being posted to the site as we receive it. As a bonus, last year's content is still there for the browsing.
One of the topics requested will be delivered at our very next TSPUG meeting on Feb 18: How to structure solutions, and automate the build and WSP generation. Building SharePoint Solutions (WSP) is the most painful part of the development process. In this session attendees will learn how to take the pain away for SharePoint 2007 by structuring Visual Studio Solutions for easy management, and by automating the build and WSP creation. As always you can RSVP by sending a message to Susie. See you there!