Month: May 2012

Categories
Community Conference

SharePoint Technology Conference – Boston 2012

For anyone that’s interested in saving a little cash and going to a great conference in Boston, you’ll be happy to know that myself and Scott Hoag will be taking our show on the road to the SharePoint Technology Conference this July in Boston. We’re excited to be a part of the event and will be teaching a half day workshop for new IT Pros and Administrators as well as two sessions that we’ve been revamping and tuning content for this conference based on feedback from other user groups, conferences and such – it’s kinda like the Million Dollar Man, we’ve been building something that will rock your socks off… but unfortunately we’ve been informed that the light show and disco ball won’t be able to be rigged in time.

Being a part of this conference is exciting for me for a couple reasons – one being that I’m honored to come back to speak at this conference. I was a speaker at the June 2009 event in Boston – a great experience and privilege to be a part of the event. This time around I’m stoked to be back co-presenting with my friend Scott Hoag who I met in October 2010 and have been working on different IT Pro and Architecture experiments in our free time when not SharePointing or watching AMC’s TWD. If you’re up for some dry humour, witty comments and rockin’ information I think you’ll enjoy our sessions.

Nevertheless, if you’re interested in getting an extra $200 off of the conference admission fee (on top of other early bird discounts) be sure to use the code USHER in your registration and save a little cache, errr cash that is :).

I’m looking forward to a fantastic week in Boston, seeing friends from the community and meeting new folks too! Come find me and introduce yourselves!

Categories
Community

FEDSPUG – 3 May 2012

After a quick jaunt up to New York City, Scott Hoag and I had the fortunate opportunity to present at the Federal SharePoint Users Group.  We shared insights and information on the topic of architectural design and process failures when moving to SharePoint 2010.

If you’ve been following us, we’ve been presenting quite a bit on the topic of Migration Pitfalls, this time around though from a different angle.

Overall, the presentation went well and we would like to extend our thanks once more to our hosts for allowing us the privilege to present.

If you missed the meeting and are interested in looking through slides, it can be done so below. Or if you’re like me, and you want a copy of the PowerPoint deck, you can find a link below.

Architectural Design and Process Failures – Moving to SharePoint 2010

View more PowerPoint from Dan Usher

PowerPoint 2010 Format Download

Categories
Administration Community

SharePoint Users Group of New York

This past week, Scott Hoag and I had the privilege of presenting a session to the New York SharePoint User’s Group, hosted by Microsoft at their offices there in New York City on the Avenue of the Americas. There were a few familiar faces in the crowd such as Paul Galvin, Mary Leigh Mackie, Randi Parrish, Greg Hurlman and Jeremy Thake which made the large crowd a little less intimidating (or maybe more so to have peers evaluating us right?).

Before we presented though we had a few things to explore… such as the Apple Cube on 5th Avenue
wpid-2012-05-0216.10.08-2012-05-6-16-38.jpg
I have to say that it was a pretty cool sight to see – the fact that the store is underground is in and of itself an interesting concept.

After a quick stop through we began wandering toward the Microsoft offices on foot… in the wrong direction… which got us caught up in remembering what it’s like to be a kid at FAO Schwarz… having never been inside the store I didn’t really know what to expect except for what I’d seen in the Smurfs movie that I saw last Fall… needless to say it was pretty crazy to see all of the candy and Gummi bears (oh and the nerds) as well as every popular toy that you could imagine from Star Wars apparel and masks to Thundercats action figures to even BatMan in Lego form.

All well worth the time spent in New York City, but for those that happen to be looking for a copy of our presentation, you can find it here through SlideShare.

If you need a copy to go offline with, you can grab a copy here – Avoiding Administrator Blunders in PPTX format.

SharePoint 2010 – Avoiding Administrator Blunders

View more PowerPoint from Dan Usher
Categories
Best Practices

Being on the top of your game…

More often than not as practitioners and professionals we find ourselves working across several tasks and projects, mentoring staff members and working on curriculum for training opportunities to help grow teams of individuals leaving little time for ourselves. This video reminded me that we all need to take a step back at times and realize that sometimes it’s not worth it – if we over extend ourselves then we don’t quite perform at the level of excellence that individuals may expect which in turn could lead to disasters… so bottom line, remember to breath for a moment and reflect on the important things and people in your life – focus on the things that make you happy and pursue them so that you can continue to have a buffer in your life that helps you to perform at a level of excellence like no other… and don’t let your house explode 😉

As a side note, I’m not advocating DirectTV, just reminding you of the adverse effects 😉