This past weekend, I volunteered to check-in attendees at the Atlanta SharePoint Conference. I volunteered earlier this month to help with the SQL Server Saturday also at the same location, Georgia State University at the Alpharetta campus. Last year, I volunteered as well and I am a regular attendee at the SharePoint User Group (the third Monday of the month) every month the past two years. It was much better this year than last year, which was held downtown at the main GSU campus. It was easy to park, and there were no roads blocked for road races. IT was so much easier. There were over 300 attendees this year.
I missed the headline presentation in the morning, checking in attendees. This year’s featured speaker was Andrew Connell. I was fortunate to hear his other presentation just before lunch. I will probably never use what he presented, but it was worthwhile seeing a SharePoint guru present.
I watched Cathy Dew do a presentation on branding. I am glad to say that I knew everything she presented. I have been doing SharePoint a while and sometimes we need confirmation our approaches are still relevant and valid. It was a mid-level presentation. She mentioned that when designing SharePoint designs, you need to cover everything in your office with bubble-wrap. If you are going to make sites Section 508 compliant, you will need even more bubble wrap. She mentioned that SharePoint Designer is going away. There is no plan for SharePoint Designer in SharePoint 2016. It reminds me of the fiasco of InfoPath. She also mentioned that Microsoft is steering away from using SharePoint for your Internet sites. Designing for the cloud means that you will be restricted on what customizations are permitted. Microsoft may implement changes that require designers to update their designs to accommodate.
I had a difficult time choosing between watching the second part of Laura Rogers workflow or Paul Wood’s presentation on Meta-Data navigation. I have read Laura’s books and watched her You Tube presentations for Rackspace. Paul has been a regular attendee at the SharePoint User Group, so I supported the local hero. Sorry, Laura! Paul did a very strong presentation on meta-data navigation and it reinforced what I have knew already. Maybe I should start doing presentations at SharePoint Saturday.
The last presentation was local SharePoint legend Doug Ware. He created a tool to migrate applications. He recreated the Fab 40 applications in earlier SharePoint versions for transformation into App Model and other SharePoint 2013 development patterns. I hated the Fab 40! It was always half baked ideas that never quite worked. They used the “get out of jail free card” that it was only a starting point for developing your SharePoint application. They were always short of even the most basic requirements and buggy too! Well, Doug showed the internals. My opinion from the presentation was that Microsoft was just lazy not to support the migration of Fab 40 templates. My belief that they were crap were confirmed. Looking at the web parts – there were multiple closed web parts in the Fab 40. It looked like each one was created by a completely different team, no consistency or re-use. A great example of the worst kind of development. While I may be no super programmer, I could of myself developed over 6 months a group of 40 site templates that are far better. In fact, I have. And, I only use out-of-the-box functionality!
It was a worthwhile day. A met several Site Collections Administrators (SCAs) that attended from the CDC. I went to SharePint at 5 Seasons Brewery, but ducked out shortly after arriving so I could get my 8 mile walk in before it got too late. There were 8 MVPs in attendance. Great work Dan Attis and Ron for the commitment to Atlanta SharePoint User Group.
reilingh 