Rix Bits

This past week I attended the Best Practices Conference (BPC) for SharePoint in La Jolla, California. This is a 3-day conference that discusses not only “how'” to do things in SharePoint, but also asks the question “should you”.

It’s that very question – “should you” – that I think makes this particular conference so important.  As more organizations ‘implement’ (there’s a loaded word) SharePoint in their environment, there is a danger of falling into the belief that a Click Next wizard and knowing how to get to Site Actions means you’re good-to-go.  In fact, there are a ton of questions along each step of the way that we need to ask in order to discover how best to use & configure SharePoint for our particular needs, while leveraging and complementing the functionality that SharePoint was meant to provide.  Each presentation in the BPC was meant to try to give a small slice of that answer, centered around audiences ranging from End Users to Developers.

In addition, the newly published book “Designing Solutions for Microsoft SharePoint 2010”, which was given away at the conference, is one that I think encapsulates the core of what the BPC tries to provide, and is also a must-read.  And of course, I have my own copy signed by Robert Bogue himself at the conference!  (are you jealous?) : )  #GeekEnvy

For those that use Twitter, I created a Twitter list of all the Tweeps who spoke at this year’s conference.  And of course, there’s the official hashtag conference conversation that you can access here.

Look for future posts where I discuss some of the things I learned at the conference, as well as some HP Slate 500 posts where I talk about how my tablet PC performed in its first 3-day conference (spoiler alert: it performed like a champ!).