My company HQ recently contracted with Microsoft to run a three day training course for a bunch of people on SharePoint. We're actually flying people in from India, China, and Korea for this. I haven't seen the full training syllabus, yet, so I hope this is worth it. They recently ran it in the US, though, and I heard from a few people that is was pretty good. If I learn any new tricks, I'll add them to my site.
Speaking of techno tricks, I've redesigned my www.sbworks.com site to list my posts in rough categories. It's a bit sparse right now but I'm going to try and add more things there, including script samples. Keep an eye on in the future as I'll try to add more.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Monday, October 27, 2008
Halloween
Halloween is slowly, slowly trickling into Japan. It looks like some of the schools and stores in Makuhari decided to have a tick or treat time over the weekend. At the office, we're doing a "geeks night out" at a restaurant in Odaiba.
Found a couple of interesting blogs
I'm sure everyone has thier own favorites but I think I found a couple of good IT related blogs that I've been reading. They seem to post pretty slow (almost as slow as me):
Bruce F. Webster - Seems to be a real long-term IT programmer and project manager and his posts seem to be pretty good for big picture management stuff. His posts on Baseline are pretty decent, even if you have wade through a bunch of ads to see the content.
Ken Sharpe - Another big-picture writer, mainly about the politics of IT management but still a good read.
Bruce F. Webster - Seems to be a real long-term IT programmer and project manager and his posts seem to be pretty good for big picture management stuff. His posts on Baseline are pretty decent, even if you have wade through a bunch of ads to see the content.
Ken Sharpe - Another big-picture writer, mainly about the politics of IT management but still a good read.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Finally found a useful SharePoint book
I've been buying a lot of books lately looking for good, solid advice on how to manage SharePoint and I've found a lot of fluff. There are a lot of books that talk about install and configure details, a good dozen books that talk about possible big-picture scenarios, but I hadn't found a single book giving advice about to really use SharePoint in a company. A book of what works and what doesn't not what you "could" do or "might" do.
I found one that is relatively small, well written, and packed with useful information: Real World SharePoint 2007: Indispensable Experiences From 16 MOSS and WSS MVPs (Programmer to Programmer) (Paperback). ISBN-10: 0470168358, ISBN-13: 978-0470168356.
The title says "programmer to programmer" but could really be labeled "techie to techie" because it does a good job of distilling information about the decisions you need to make and presenting them in a clear fashion. The chapter on branding a SharePoint site is a perfect example of this. It walks through the four or five options and tells you how much effort it takes for each option and what situations make sense to use each option. As a consultant or project manager, this will give you the information you need to really start planning and testing.
I found one that is relatively small, well written, and packed with useful information: Real World SharePoint 2007: Indispensable Experiences From 16 MOSS and WSS MVPs (Programmer to Programmer) (Paperback). ISBN-10: 0470168358, ISBN-13: 978-0470168356.
The title says "programmer to programmer" but could really be labeled "techie to techie" because it does a good job of distilling information about the decisions you need to make and presenting them in a clear fashion. The chapter on branding a SharePoint site is a perfect example of this. It walks through the four or five options and tells you how much effort it takes for each option and what situations make sense to use each option. As a consultant or project manager, this will give you the information you need to really start planning and testing.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
SharePoint - the Second Commandment
II. Thou shalt learn the Publishing Feature
The Publishing Feature in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 is the best part of the whole damn package. Publishing is a the system that allows you create web pages on the fly instead of using SharePoint as a web based file system. If you combine it with Dynamic Content Web Parts, you can create site that shows links, a nice roll up icon, with a nice look and feel.
If you deploy a site collection with the Enterprise Publishing Portal template, you get all kinds of useful workflows, document libraries, and tools that really quite useful. You can still use document libraries and things to your hearts content but if you turn on publishing first, you will make your life a lot easier.
The Publishing Feature in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 is the best part of the whole damn package. Publishing is a the system that allows you create web pages on the fly instead of using SharePoint as a web based file system. If you combine it with Dynamic Content Web Parts, you can create site that shows links, a nice roll up icon, with a nice look and feel.
If you deploy a site collection with the Enterprise Publishing Portal template, you get all kinds of useful workflows, document libraries, and tools that really quite useful. You can still use document libraries and things to your hearts content but if you turn on publishing first, you will make your life a lot easier.
Oops - 2+ weeks
So much for trying to keeping things up to date. I could claim that I was busy (which I was) but I should have taken the time anyway. I've finalized my trip to Las Vegas for the Devconnections training seminar. I will be leaving Japan on November 7th, I will be in Las Vegas through the morning of November 14th, and then be in Seattle from November 14th through the 20th. My connecting flight is Narita - Vancouver BC - Las Vegas so I am just adding a layover in BC and driving down to Seattle.
As a side note, I finally got around to recreating my SBWorks website. I'll try to build that up some more, too.
As a side note, I finally got around to recreating my SBWorks website. I'll try to build that up some more, too.
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