Ok, I know it’s been pretty darn quiet around here for awhile.  Well, you know life has a way of grabbin’ you by the whatzits and turnin’ you every which way but loose.  It certainly has been a wild ride for yours truly these past few months.  But fear not SharePoint junkies!  I’m heading to Vegas!  Twice! 

First for the Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2009 in October (can you say SharePoint 2010?) and then again for the SharePoint Connections 2009 Conference in November.

I’ll be giving four presentations at SharePoint Connections the week of November 9th.

HDV309: Build Better Records Management Solutions Using Dynamic File Plans
HDV310: Building Custom Routers for SharePoint Records Management
HDV311: Building Information Policy Features in SharePoint Server 2007
HDV312: Office Document Assembly Made Easy with OpenXML and XSLT

Luckily, I’m just an observer for the SPC 2009 conference that starts in a couple of weeks, and you can believe I’ll be soaking it all in.  I’ll also be joining a bunch of other SharePoint bloggers and twitterers in the Live Blogging event setup by Mark Miller at EndUserSharePoint.com.  He already has about 150 people signed up to send little tidbits from the conference to a live stream on his site.  This should make for lots of interesting reading for those who can’t make it to Sin City themselves.

This is going to be a fun couple of months, and I hope to see you there!

SharePoint training provider Combined Knowledge will host the first European SharePoint Best Practices conference in London April 6-8, 2009.  Microsoft veteran Joel Oleson will deliver the keynote and the speakers list reads like a "who's who" of the top SharePoint experts, MVPs and Microsoft product team members. 

I'll be presenting a session on designing and building records repositories using the powerful records management features provided by Office SharePoint Server.  I'm pretty excited about it, since this will be my first trip to London.  The conference will be held at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, which is right in the middle of all the London sights, so I'll be sure to stay busy before and after my talk! :)

Hope to see you there.

Mark you calendars!  Microsoft has announced the SharePoint Conference 2009, which is scheduled for October 19-22 in Las Vegas.  This promises to be a very exciting conference because it will be packed with information about the next version of SharePoint, codenamed SharePoint "14", while at the same time including real-world guidance for the current version. 

This is one conference that is not to be missed - so you'll definitely see me there.  (BTW, this will be my first time in Vegas, so any tips you have for what to do (and what NOT to do) will be most welcome!)

Early bird registration is available here. 

Back in the day, I would never miss a PDC.  It was always a great experience, and I'm sure this year will not disappoint.  Unfortunately, I won't be able to attend this time and I'm kind of bummed about it.  If you're planning to be there, then be sure to check out the following SharePoint sessions. 

Also, I just learned that everyone will get their own PDC 2008 hard drive loaded with software that will include a pre-configured VPC with 10 hands-on SharePoint developer labs! 

Now I'm really bummed. :(

Here is a list of the SharePoint sessions I'll be missing...

• SharePoint 2007: Creating SharePoint Applications with Visual Studio 2008

Chris Johnson will be talking about how to use Microsoft Silverlight and SharePoint together.

• SharePoint Online: Extending your Service

Troy Hopwood will discuss ways to access and manipulate SharePoint files and data remotely with Web Services along with other extensibility points for SharePoint Online.

• SharePoint 2007: Advanced Asynchronous Workflow Messaging

Alex Malek will build an employee on-boarding application that depends on a server located inside another company by constructing a document workflow and have it asynchronously message a business service hosted behind another company's firewall.

• FAST: Building Search-Driven Portals with MOSS and Silverlight

Jan Helge Sageflåt, and Stein Danielsen will do a deep dive into FAST search and the FAST ESP Search Web Parts, including the use of Silverlight to deliver unique search experiences.

So, if you're gonna be there and you don't really need that extra hard drive...

Oh, nevermind!

Our next meeting is Thursday, March 20, 2008.  We'll be talking about item level auditing and regulatory compliance. Here's an abstract:

Regulatory Compliance - Item Level Auditing in SharePoint

Speaker: John Holliday, MVP Office SharePoint Server

Dealing with regulatory compliance issues in the midst of an ever-increasing volume of content at least requires a robust method for tracking what happens to a document as it moves through a SharePoint portal. Windows SharePoint Services includes built-in functionality for keeping tabs on the "who, what, when and where" for every document in every document library, but this functionality is not enabled by default. In this session, we'll examine programming techniques for controlling the auditing support provided by WSS and we'll look at the enhanced audit reporting features provided by MOSS. We'll also explore strategies for implementing item-level auditing while minimizing its impact on the overall performance of a SharePoint farm.

• Date: Thursday, March 20th, 2008; 6p-8p
• Location: Bank of America, Building 500, 9000 Southside Blvd; 2nd Floor; Sea Oats room
• Meeting Location Map: http://floridaofficegeeks.org/JOG/Pages/Meeting%20Logistics.aspx
• RSVP Required: http://www.clicktoattend.com/?id=124804

Note: Jacksonville Office Geeks is also known as the JAXDUG Office Developer SIG.