Well the photos are in, unusually I didn't take too many pictures of the SPSDc event. I think I was too busy twittering and streaming the live webcast. Sorry, it wont happen again. So now that Mark Miller over at EndUserSharePoint.com finally got off his tail and went to get a new cable for this camera (haha) I can post up some of the great shots he took.
Of course you can always go to www.sharepointsaturday.org/dc and see most of the pictures already along with some webcast's that were done prior to the event as well as some of the twitter feeds that were going on.
Overall the event was just great. Bunch of great speakers and a bunch of lively people. It was a stacked event, with sessions through lunch, so everyone got their money's worth (the event is free). The thing I like most about these events is that they are FREE. Training companies should charge for training, but you shouldn't charge for community events. In a way I hope that SharePoint Saturdays, will start to weed out some of the more minor paid events. Granted I still there is a place for the larger conventions and such but the mere fact that some org's charge for discussing a product that is in it self collaboration and has "SHARE" as the root word always urks me.
Ok I'll get off my soap box now. I sat in on quite a few sessions this time around and in some cases jumped from session to session to aborb as much as humanly possible. I still missed 2-3 sessions that i REALLY wanted to sit in on. For example John Stovers (@stovereffect) session on JQuery I heard was just awesome. As well as @Michaellotter 's session.
Sessions I sat in on:
1) Federated Search given by Eric Harlan @ericharlan ... well i guess i had to be there for that one (download the deck below)
2) Mark Millers @eusp discussion on Mind manager and resources for site/taxonomy planning. Really cool presentation, i'll have to figure out a way to utilize his templates. Maybe Sogeti has mind manager licenses.
3) Becky Isserman's @mosslover session on Visually developing custom web parts. I was streaming this event so when it came time for the demo, being as though I was in the back of a PACKED room, I migrated over to
4) Shadeed Eleazer's @mrshadeed session on redefining SharePoint administration. It was a good perspect that I never really viewed things as. Shadeed did a great job delivering!
5) NS Rana's session on Fast search. The demo was light because of some of the NDA's that are still in place but Fast is looking to be pretty powerful, can't wait to work with it more.
6) Joel Oleson's @joeloleson Session on Twitter and SharePoint Admin fundamentals. It was a lot of fun watching this session from the back of the room. Half of the room said they use twitter the other half said they didn't. Well almost right away the half that did, pulled out the phones and were live twittering the event along with Joel. If you go back and look at the #spsdc stream you can see a flurry of tweets during that session. It was a lot of fun. Btw what is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?
7) Dan Usher "user" @usher and Joel Ward @joelsef session on SmartCard authentication. Lot of fun to finally catch up to one of Usher's sessions. I'm looking forward to him speaking at BSPUG this month!
So here are a few photos of the event, some of the little moments that you had to be there to really experience. You know like Dan lewis @danlewisnet almost getting arrested. Or the somber strolls through the Korean War memorial. Long gazes over the Gettesburg address at the Linchon Memorial, picture ninja behind @ricknology and @gbglass , Random Iphone light saber fights with strangers and fake 20 dollar scavenger hunts lol. Its those times that make the lasting memories that and the rain holding off until we're 40 yards from the cars. I'm glad you talked me into going @danlewis and @joeloleson.