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It’s that time of year again. Planning is full speed underway, speakers and sessions have been selected, the schedule is posted, sponsors are lining up and we have registration open for the next SharePoint Saturday here in the Twin Cities, MN. 

For the official event site with Session, Speaker and Sponsor information – go HERE.

For the Registration site – go HERE. 

• We’ve got some great returning speakers and some exciting new presenters
• We’ve got 8 concurrent sessions planned, including a 101 (Intro to SharePoint) track, Development, IT Pro/Admin, Information Worker track and a Hands-on Lab. 
• Good food, great networking, T-shirts, bags and other fun swag and give-aways

We’ve got 600 tickets open for the event. At a minimum we’re hoping for more than the 500 (sold out) registrations we had at the last event. I’m hoping we sell out again.

Sign up, tell your friends and co-workers and start figuring out your schedule for the day!

Well, either I missed something earlier or they changed the offering.  Either way, this is pretty cool.  I was under the impression that you had to be a Plan E (Enterprise) customer of Office 365 to be able to purchase a subscription to the Office client applications.  That is NOT the case.  You can also purchase a subscription as a Plan P user. 

There is a few dollars per user per month difference, but the key difference is that Plan E users need to purchase an annual subscription while the Plan B (Small Business) users can do a monthly subscription.  Pretty cool. 

• Plan E will pay $12/user/month – annual subscription
• Plan P will pay $15/user/month – monthly subscription

These services also enable access to the Office Web Apps as well, so they can access the web versions of the applications without needing to load the client app, or if they are on another machine view and edit documents without the client apps at all. 

For more information, check out this page:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/buy-office-professional-plus.aspx#fbid=qv4rqlTfnei

More good news for small business owners if you ask me. 

I LOVE the ability to view my SharePoint calendars in Outlook right with my Exchange calendars.  This is one of the greatest features ever in my opinion.  The problem now is that I expect to be able to do the same thing on my smartphone devices – but cannot.

Playing with the Windows Phone (pre-Mango) tonight and was hoping to be able to display a SharePoint calendar in my phone’s calendar view.  You’d think if anyone could do it, it should be the MS device but no go. 

Here’s the official post/statement:  http://community.office365.com/en-us/w/sharepoint/527.aspx

Ok.  It’s lame, but Mango isn’t that far out, so we’ll just wait and see. 

To be fair, I haven’t found a way to get this to work on the iPhone/iPad either, though there are a number of 3rd party apps available to assist with access to SharePoint sites.  On the iPad, the screen is big enough to actually navigate to the calendar site itself, which is better than nothing, but I still would like the one-stop-shop available with Outlook. 

Bamboo got close at one point – it looks like a product called MashPoint actually allowed some functionality for ‘real’ SharePoint servers for 2007, but nothing is available for 2010 or the Office 365 solution (sandbox solution).    

If Mango can pull this off – major points to them.  It still won’t solve the problem of my wife wanting to access our family SharePoint calendar on O365 though… Her employer doesn’t allow browser access to O365 – #FAIL. 

SharePoint Basics: I came across a few sites/links that I really like for explaining and demonstrating some of the basic SharePoint and SharePoint Online basics.  For the most part, much of the content will overlap with SharePoint Online as a part of Office365, though some of the site templates may be different:

Site and List Templates – Todd Baginski
http://www.toddbaginski.com/blog/archive/2009/11/20/which-sharepoint-2010-site-template-is-right-for-me.aspx

Managed Metadata – Myles Jeffery
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/mvpawardprogram/archive/2011/03/07/mvps-for-office-365-organize-your-information-better-in-sharepoint-online-office-365-with-managed-metadata.aspx?wa=wsignin1.0

And then, just some other stuff:

XMind – Mind-mapping software that I’m looking at since I’m using a iPad based tool.  I’d like something to use on the laptop as well to edit, etc…  http://www.xmind.net/

Proper Sync – I ran into these guys at the St. Louis SharePoint Saturday event last weekend and need to dig into this product to see what it really offers.  http://www.propersync.com/default.aspx

CodePlex: Sandboxed Solutions – Came up in conversation as a potential tool for printing list content.  Could be interesting.  http://sandbox.codeplex.com/

MetaVis Migration tool – Everyone and their brother was tweeting about the free offer for migrating content to 365.  Check out the details here:  http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/metavis-announces-office-365-migration-program-moving-content-sharepoint-online-1507500.htm

Mark Rackley’s Wrap up from St. Louis: Presenting on jQuery
http://www.sharepointhillbilly.com/archive/2011/05/02/sharepoint-saturday-st.-louis-wrap-up.aspx

I recently attended a conference session about resources and tools available for new business owners.  While a lot of the conversation what about raising seed and venture money, one topic was about the tools and services that are essential to a new business. 

They listed a lot of the things that you would expect: A phone number, a good place to get business cards and a business address (see below). Being in the technology field, I was thinking along different lines. They didn’t mention a domain name, email and a website, though I hope it was just assumed.

I would argue that with the release of Office 365, this is also going to be a small business essential tool.  Office 365 is going to be a simple, inexpensive tool that can meet the core email and website needs while being chock full of so much more potential. 

1. Sign up for Office 365
2. Get yourself a domain name and configure your Office 365 account to use it for email and public-facing site. You may need some guidance or assistance with this, but it’s a lot less than setting up your own servers and there are a LOT of resources to help – online and other. 
3. Build your public-facing site.  This can be as simple or complex as you’d like to make it, but with the template and tools available, you can be up in minutes. 
4. Now, go about your business.
5. In the meantime, start to look at all the other capabilities you have:
1. Lync Online – Conduct your online meetings without needing another services like GoToMeeting, etc…
2. SharePoint Online – Store and share your documents and other content.  MUCH more later as you learn about SharePoint’s capabilities…
3. Exchange Online – Primarily your email, but so much more than the basic accounts you had in the past. Manage your calendar and resources and sync them from multiple devices. 
4. and so, much more…

To be fair, during the session they did also mentioned DropBox, and GoToMeeting. Dropbox may still be a useful tool, depending on the devices you’re using, though Office 365 is going to fill a lot of that capability as well.  GoToMeeting is fully surpassed by the Lync Online capabilities and integration that Office 365 offers. 

So, if you ask me – I wouldn’t start a business without spinning up a Office 365 site as one of the first things. 

Notes and References:

• The conference I was attending was the MHTA Spring Conference.  They did a fantastic job.  If you’re in the Minneapolis, MN area and can attend I highly recommend it.  MHTA is the Minnesota High Tech Association. 
• Grasshopper Virtual Phone System – This could be useful as an alternative to giving out your cell number to anyone.
• GotPrint.com – Yep, you need to have business cards and these are certainly inexpensive.
• A P.O. box – Don’t want to be using your home address, but I prefer the UPS box option that allows for a real address with no ‘P.O.’ and notification when stuff arrives.

SharePoint ShopTalk is yet another (free) community resource out there that I don’t think is getting as much press or exposure as it should.  It happens every Thursday at 11:30 AM Central Time. 

Sponsored and hosted by Arcovis out of New York, the ShopTalk is a Live meeting and Voice-conference call where a panel of experts are available to respond to questions submitted to the group prior to the meeting, and live as time allows. 

Sometimes there is a presentation or demo, other times we’re just taking questions and having conversation. 

For more information, check out the blog site:  http://sharepointshoptalk.blogspot.com

You can also follow and submit questions via the Twitter tag: @spshoptalk

There are a lot of great folks online on a regular basis including, but not limited to:

• Natalya Voskresenskaya
• Laura Rogers
• Chris Poteet
• Ed Musters
• John Holliday
• Ivan Sanders
• Jeremy Thake
• and now me too…   

See you there…

There are a handful of things happening in the next day or so that might be interesting to folks in the SharePoint space:

• Wednesday 4/20 8:00 AM – Michael Gannotti’s Coffee Talk will be taking place. His talks include:
  • Microsoft Productivity News
  • Productivity Customer Onsite Experience
  • Special Guests
  • Tips and Tricks
  • Gadget of the week
  • Live Audience Q&A
• Wednesday 4/20 11:00 AM – Q&A with the SharePoint MVP Experts.  Access the event by checking out the MSDN Events and Webcasts page.
• Wednesday 4/20 6:00 PM – Microsoft Store at the Mall of America.  From 6:00 – 8;00 there is a Special Event for Business solutions.  They’ll be covering Microsoft Signature Pro and Microsoft Office 365 – Cloud versions of Microsoft’s communications and collaboration (yep – SharePoint) products.  Oh, and did I mention a 15% store discount during the event?
• Thursday 4/21 11:25 AM – SharePoint ShopTalk
  Register for this week’s event.

Hope to see you there!

Today the public beta for Office365 opened up.  (Happy Tax Day).  So, what does this mean?  And where do you get started? 

Well, there are a TON of resources out there for you to learn about Office365, how to get involved and what it can mean for your organization.  For starters:

• The Microsoft press release
• The official Microsoft site (go here to sign up for the Beta)
• The Office365 Community Site
• And yes, even the Office365 Facebook page
• And don’t forget Twitter: @Office365
• Office365 Marketplace

So, what is this and why should you care? Office 365 is the newest version of Microsoft’s online (aka ‘cloud’) application offerings. This includes (depending on the version and licensing):

• SharePoint Online
• Exchange Online
• Lync Online
• Microsoft Office Professional Plus

The big picture is that you can use these services without installing, configuring and managing the hardware and core software stuff – a big load off for many organizations.  You do still need someone that can configure and manage the service for your organization. But it’s a lot less work and hassle than managing an on-site set of servers.

More importantly, you need someone to define *how* your organization is going to use these services and how it fits with the organization’s goals and technology roadmaps – which is where people like me come in.   

The short story is that it’s a lot of bang for your buck.  The next batch of questions now become:

• Is Office365 a good fit for your organization?
• What is the best way to use Office365 in your organization?
• How will it work with your organization’s existing capabilities?

Office365 has a lot of potential to improve the productivity of users and organizations, but it also has the potential to add to the clutter of tools and systems that are out there – just as any platform used poorly can do. 

So, check it out, allow yourself to get excited by the potential, but then slow down and put some time into planning so you can be successful down the road. 

I recently saw a post about a Microsoft-hosted event called the 2011 U.S. Innovative Education Forum, which reminded me of something I’ve been meaning to post – a request to Microsoft:

Please add mind-mapping functionality to OneNote. 

That’s it. 

It really should be there – here’s why:

• Kids are using it – It just makes sense to them because it’s the way we all think.  My second grader came home from school and showed me his ‘research paper’ that included what he called a ‘web’. It was a mind-map. Kids are already being trained to use this method for learning, organizing their thoughts and working from them. Fantastic. 
  Now, bear in mind that our kids to to a STEM school, so all public schools might not be using mind-maps yet, but they should. They used a tool called Kidspiration / Inspiration.  They weren’t sure which one. 
  I picked up the Home and Student version of Microsoft Office 2010 which includes OneNote and the kids are all over it – they love it.  Adding the mind-mapping capability just seems to be the next step. 
  Kids today are the future of your software market.  Yea, I know it’s a cliché, but it’s true and there are more of them than there are of us – so it’s a good investment.      
• College age students would use it too – I can’t imagine how different my note-taking would have been with a mind-mapping tool and the right hardware that’s available now. 
• Adults are using it – More and more I’m seeing people in meetings using some sort of mind-mapping software to take notes, which I think is fantastic.  I use a tool on my iPad right now called iThoughtsHD which is pretty good and is supposed to sync with client apps, though I don’t have one yet. In the meantime I just use the e-mail method which sends a list view of the content along with an image of the map. 
  For the same reason that it works for kids, it works for adults too – it’s a tool that’s consistent with the way we think. 
• It makes sense and is an extension of the other note-taking that people want to do.  Let’s get it in the right tool.  If you step back and think about it, the core functionality seems to align with what’s already available in Visio for managing shapes and relationships, but the user scenarios are more aligned with OneNote.  Students and kids aren’t going to buy Visio. 
• Once it’s built into OneNote, let me have the other Office integration features that we’re used to: create tasks that link to Outlook and SharePoint.
• Let me add people as nodes – people pulling from my Outlook, the SharePoint Profile Store or Exchange.  
• While you’re putting that together – make an iPhone and iPad version of it that syncs to the Cloud…   

Please. 

Oh, and meanwhile, Kid #1 comes up to me one morning and asks “How can I get access to my OneNote at school?”.  Smart little bugger. Now I need to get them set up on Live…

Thanks for listening. 

The latest SharePoint Saturday event in the Twin Cities was a huge success!  Some of the numbers:

• Registered to attend: 430+
• Actual attendees: 260+ (smashed the old record!)
• Vendors/sponsors: 16
• Speakers: 19
• Sessions: 22

The new location worked out very well – holding everyone without too much crowding (other than a few really popular sessions), with free parking and wireless access available.  A nice upgrade from our previous digs.  We also had a Kinect play area during the day.   

Presentations are now available on the site for download. 

Keep an eye on the official site for updates and news about the fall “ScarePoint Saturday” event – tentatively scheduled for October 29th.

A big thanks to Sarah Haase for overseeing the organization of the event, as well as to all the sponsors, volunteers, and attendees. 

See you in the fall!