Webworld Technologies

Federal SharePoint Users Group at Microsoft, originally uploaded by Webworld Technologies.

Our meeting with the Federal SharePoint Users Group will be at the Microsoft Friendship Heights location at 2pm on 12/3. Hope to join many of you there!

www.webworldtech.com/blog/see-inside-look-us-nrc-sharepoi…

There were two mind-bogglingly cool features that stood out for me in @venkyv’s great talk today at the SharePoint 2009 conference, on the social networking & MySite features of SharePoint 2010. 

One of those is this:  An experimental feature of SharePoint 2010 is integrating in data from your source control repository into MySite.  Meaning, instead of just “friending” other employees, one could be a “friend” of source files or projects, so that if files change in those projects, that you can be notified, can discuss them, etc.

I don’t know about you, but SVN has saved my butt more times than I can count.  However, unfortunately, many of those “save my butt” moments has happened way after the fact – where a silly change was published that broke everything, or where someone mistakenly commits a change that breaks something, and then the files are then published a month later and everyone looks around in bewilderment as “I haven’t touched the site in months!!”. 

Well, if you were to integrate social alerts & discussion into your SVN or other version control system, you could then nip these problems in the bud – big time.  One could get an instant alert when a change is made to a project you’re working on, and then could discuss this with the person if there was inadequate information in their commit log.

Or, how about taking the concept MUCH bigger, and using SharePoint for external sites, and using it to manage major open-source projects with an open-access SVN repo.  Brilliant!

In talking with @venkyv after the talk, he said that the feature is still in initial work & testing, but by all means – it has my vote, and I hope it makes it into the RTM version of SharePoint 2010! 

* Whoa – SP2010 can be used as a drop-in replacement for social media measurement and handling using tag-based social bookmarking combined with workflow

Thankfully enough, I decided to take off from my hotel at 9am and get down to the SharePoint 2009 conference and sign in early.   After getting past the video wall (which if you look, moves the little SharePoint logos out of the way as you walk your shadow past them), I snaked my way up to sign in.

The sign-in process was actually remarkably streamlined.  Even though there was a good bit of foot traffic, I was in and out of the sign-in process in 3 minutes flat, including getting my nifty sign-in swag:

Probably the best thing I can point out in their workflow, though, was the line of people that they had briefing you about the sign-in process along the way.  As anyone who’s been to Vegas knows, hotels are designed to lead you to the Casino, and then if you try to escape, they lead you back to the casino.  So, having some people all along the way to show you where to go, guide you to where you need to get to, and get you through, was most helpful.

Looking forward now to the Reception, which is the first official event on the agenda – which is about to begin!

Last-Minute Uploads, originally uploaded by Webworld Technologies.

Firing off some last-minute files before getting on a plane for SharePoint Conference 2009. That’s why what iPhone tethering is all about!  Luckily the plane was boarding early, so I convinced the gate attendant to give me until the last minute so I could upload some files & finish some work before getting cut off.

Can’t wait for SharePoint 2009 to get underway.