By Eric Harlan
Published: August 14, 2009
Updated: August 14, 2009
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SharePoint Saturday Baltimore Recap

Awesome sponsors, selfless volunteers and months of planning have appeared to have paid off.  The event went off mostly without a hitch.  Very little neutral to negative feedback so that’s always good, we did however get a lot of great tips for the next one. For example, don’t under plan coffee for technology people. Next time we’ll have a lot more coffee on hand for the very reason that it was slim pickings in way of coffee most of the day (sorry already... it won’t happen again lol).

I had a core group of outstanding volunteers that kept me sane. To that point it should never be said that SharePoint Saturday Baltimore was an Eric Harlan and Shadeed Eleazer production. That sentiment isn’t even close to the truth.  Buddy Weber, Al Duns, Mark McGovern, Kacey Harlan, Deana McNeil, Renee Crews, and Don Zielke.  All of these folks selflessly gave up time with their families and in some cases, their personal finances just to be a key piece of this SPSBmore puzzle.  To then I am eternally grateful and can only hope that when the next SharePoint Saturday comes around they would be willing to help out once again. We were organized and efficient and I think in the end as a result of the multiple conference calls and in person meetings we had a plan and we executed it.

The sponsors we had were unbelievable, all of them were great to deal with and I made sure I spent quality time with each and every one of the folks manning the booths. We got some great feedback from all of them, giving us some great ideas for improvements next time around. I said it a few times at the event but the sponsors for SPSBmore were beyond crucial.  I received tons of compliments for such a well run and upscale event.  News break, it was the sponsors that made all that happen.  Now I’m in no way peddling company’s wares, but sometimes we take for granted the role these ISV’s play in the community. These “FREE” events aren’t really all that free. A good read is a blog post by Joel Oleson: “SharePoint Partners are Part of a Symbiotic Ecosystem Not Leeches or Mice”.

We had an ALLSTAR line up of speakers that much can be said for sure. Three MVP’s, multiple community leaders and speakers that have made the speaking commitment before were all in attendance. We also had a few new to the SharePoint community speakers and from what I hear, knocked it out of the park!  Look for more from all of these folks as day’s progress. I know quite a few of them have already signed up to speaker at other upcoming events.

Lessons Learned.

Well I can say I learned a very important lesson from this event.  The drive in the Baltimore SharePoint technology community is MUCH stronger than I had expected.  I'm looking forward to seeing some of these new faces at the upcoming Baltimore SharePoint Users Group meeting in September.

Thank you all that helped make this event such a great success and I look forward to doing another SPSBmore in the upcoming months!  Check back to the SharePoint Saturdayd Baltimore Site in the next few days, we'll have all the presentations posted up. Sorry for the delay.

 

Enjoy the photos!

 

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