I'm speaking at the International SharePoint Conference

Yep, its that time again and one of the biggest, most innovative and best SharePoint conferences is back for another year.

This conference has been through a few iterations in its time going by the names "SharePoint Best Practice Conference" and "SharePoint Evolution Conference" but they have now dropped those for a more simplified "International SharePoint Conference".

The conference is held in London, Westminster  (April 23rd - 25th) and this year promises to be an absolute cracker! The best thing about this year's conference is that they are doing "Solution" tracks, following a single thread from concept all the way through. This will involve all angles from IT Pro, Developer, Information Worker .. and really helps to tie together all those pieces that make up a single complex problem. For the first time you won't have a session saying "well .. this next bit is really important but we don't have time .." at this conference they will make the time, whether they need 3, 4 or even 6 sessions to get through the whole problem.

One of the best quotes comes from the organiser, Steve Smith (@SteveSmithCK):

As you can see it is very exciting and different unlike any other agenda attempted by a SharePoint conference.

For example: A total of 10 solutions over the three Information Worker tracks based on different real world scenario's with one solution alone covering 7 sessions to completion and speakers working together over the sessions to build the solution.

A lot of people have asked me how I have been able to build such an agenda. The answer is pretty straight forward. unlike most SharePoint conferences that are run by conference events companies Combined Knowledge actually understands SharePoint and we know the people out there who are specialists in those subject areas to come and talk on it, we have been working with SharePoint for 10 years and over those years I have had the privilege to meet some very smart people in the SharePoint world and therefore I personally build the agenda and along with some specialist from each track we are working with the speakers to make it happen.

I also look at the current maturity model of the product and what type of content people are searching for and then finding the best way to deliver that content in a format that people will enjoy watching and listening to as well as learn from it. In my opinion that is the only way you can truly deliver a conference that provides the attendees with the knowledge needed to take away and use in the real world.

The Agenda and Speaker List looks amazing .. if you haven't bought a ticket yet then you are most definately missing out!

I'm speaking too ...

And this year I have my own slot talking about Real World: Building a global Business Intelligence Extranet, from End Users to Support and Operations.
(CS701).

This is basically a combination of technical and logistical problem solving involved at my main project over the past 12 months delivering a global Business Intelligence extranet in SharePoint 2010.

The main thing here is that we are not just talking about the technical problems (like multiple languages and scalability) but more about the operations and admin side of things, like how do you track and manage security for thousands of databases and thousands of users at the same time?

There is also the problem of processing and updating tens of thousands of OLAP cubes every month, and add to this other third party BI tools (which sit alongside Excel Services, PerformancePoint Services and Reporting Services) and you have a big challenge on your hands.

Well, I certainly hope to see you there. Even if you don't make to my session (there are loads of great session tracks on all three days) then grab me during one of the breaks, or one of the SharePints afterwards and I'll be happy to chat.