Hi friends.

Tuesday, second Session day! This is the first full day with only sessions, not counting the party in the evening.

Today I had a full Schedule, I guess that I am one of the few who really wants to make tis stay Count and go to all the sessions I can.
Since it is really late when I’m Writing this and I want to get some rest until tomorrow, I’ll keep this rather short but effective….

Overview of the new SharePoint Online
(SPC186)
First session, Mark Kashman talks a bit about SharePoint online.
THis was a really good session, Mark answered a lot of questions from the audience and it was really good. If i just list a few good things mentioned:
Project server in the cloud.
PowerPivot/PowerView
Guest Links
Hybrid Search
NAPA (Visual Studio Light – in the browser)
SkyDrive pro when released, will have 7GB of storage
PowerSHell support in the clound, I ould say it’s just basic support and there is a lot to wish for, but better than nothing. (I emailed Mark asking for when PowerShell will be fully supported)

Wish I’d have known that sooner! SharePoint 2013 demystified
(SPC266) Dan Holme and Jeremy Thake
Second session, a lot of good stuff on the things lots of people ask for but that is not really in the documentation…kind of…
The best part of this session was about RBS and Shredded Storage, read up on it…RNS can allow you to take advantage of the new WIndows Server 2012 features such as Deduplicated Data. Thus saving on storage space, that and a lot more has been done on saving data and data across the network.
Unfortunately they spent a lot of time on apps, even though it was a IT PRO session. Well, most of it was good and I gave them straight 5s in the survey.

We had a normal Conference lunch with meat, Ceasar sallad and a potatosdallad that was actually really god. We finnished it all off with selected pastries and coffee…

Overview of search driven Web Sites and Cross Site Publishing.
(SPC180) Daniel Cogan.
This session was about how to use search to get the content that you show in a page, making it dynamic and content driven.
Really good stuff, if you can get your ands on the slide/presentation, Watch it.

Claims based authentication – migrating to the new SharePoint 2013 Identity model.
(SPC039) Israel Vega jr och Nathan Miller
This was al about upgrading and what to do with Authentication.
One big thing I have learned here in Vegas, is that CLassic auth is more or less unsupported now with 2013. It can still work, it can be created using PowerShell but that is only for temporary use.
A lot more is to be said in this, but this is the key:
Use Windows Claims authentication if you can!

Last session for today:

SharePoint 2013 Identity and Authenticat ion Smackdown.
(SPC209)
This was supposed to be held by Steve Paschke who was sick. Israel Vega jr and one more great speaker jumped in to save the day.
Much was the same as the previous…a lot about upgrading Classic and Windows auth to claims.
This session was interupted by a false fire alarm, but it stopped eventually efter about 180 times…then they told us 30 times that there was no danger…

Last topic of the day, Jon Bon Jovi party at Mandalay Bech resort…! Need I say more..? Free good food, free beer, free wine and free drinks even.
Unfortunately it was a cold november day and we ended up thinking it was cold, we left the party Before it was over and headed back to our rooms.

A gret day all in all, but jesus, I am tired…

I’ll try to keep reporting to all off you directly each and every day during the conference in order to share some parts of the great experience…

Stay tuned, this me, signing out, from day two of my SharePoint conference experience.

Part 1 of this report
Part 2 of this report
Part 3 of this report

_________________________________________________________

Enjoy!

Regards

Twitter | Technet Profile | LinkedIn

Hi friends.

Monday, first Session day!

First out efter we had breakfast was the Keynote, this time same as last year with Jared Spataro (Senior Director Product Management) and Jeff Teper (Corporate Vice President of Microsoft’s Office Business Platform)
One of the first things that Jared said during his talk, was this: ’It’s not just a product, it’s a way of life’…I agree, to a certain degree you have to be ‘special’ to like this Product…
Next he told us that we were over 10.000 participants from over 85 different countries…the event has over 200 sponsors and it is getting to be a big deal. Similar event are held in smaller scale all over the globe, but there is only one ‘real’ SharePoint Conference…
It was a bit of a prep talk and that is Always nice…next Jared presented the next speaker, Jeff Teper, the ‘Father of SharePoint’ who has been with the product since the very beginning.
Jeff talked a bit about the 3 legs, or layers that they had in mind during the development of the Product.
– Experiences
– Innovation
– Ecosystem
The thought behind this was that this was what was needed in order to really take Another step from SharePoint 2010 without changing it all.
– Experiences is all about the user experience, this has gitten a huge lift, in terms of gui but also performance and usability.
The SHarePoint interface can now more than ever be percieved as a windows application, this since SHarePoint now dont repload the entire page whatever you click at, but only reloads the parts of the screen that is needed. This improves performance but also enhances the overall user experience a lot. Behind this is a new structure, for instance the image compression is hugely enhanced, the ribbon that Before in 2010 took 400KB to load, now only takes 100KB over the network.
All in all, the page dataload has been decreased with 40%.
Jeff demoed a lot in SHarePoint Online, and Everything Went as smooth as an onprem solution, later he told us that he was running SharePoint online against the datacenter in Europé, Amsterdam, this to show all of us that performance would not be an issue. If the performance when fully released is what it was today, I will never again complain about it, but we will have to see if that will be true when generally available.
One ore thing is that you only load delta data from content that has been changed. A Word file of 10MB does not have to be loaded again over the net because 1MB of content has been added, it only loads the new 1MB and that is also all that is saved to the database.

He also showed us drag and drop of files into the browser, this is also supported on all supported browsers, no more Active X controles…
You can now easily see exactly who has access to your site or document.
Search has been thry a major improvement, this time, FAST has been integrated into SharePoint search and that gives us a lot of new features.
Preview of documents in search results is something that will be easily liked by customers.
One less fantastic thing during Jeffs session was that they spent about one hour on Yammer. As I see it, Yammer is still not part of SharePoint and should not have a Place at the SharePoint Conference keynote. I can see why Microsoft would want to promote it, but as long as it is its own Product, I’m having a hard time seeing why we should spend a lot of time on it. That can be done by the Yammer Techs…

Scott Guthrie came out and showed a lot about the Ecosystem, thats the new CLoud app model and that was really interesting. He showed us how easy it was to develop an application in VS, test it locally and then deploy it to SharePoint. You could also easily put the code parts in Azure and same thing, deploy directly from Visual Studio. Neat!

After the Keynote I got to see Three different session, all were very good and held a high quality.

SPC219 SharePoint 2013, Whats new for IT professional
Bill Baer, Product Manager SharePoint, told us at a very high pace about the news in 2013.
A lot has happened after all and the biggest applause was for the promise, that this time, the UPS will work configured from the Central Administration GUI as it should 🙂

SPC083 Deployment wizard: SharePoint 2013 Installation, tips, tricks ans scripts
MVP Dan Holme talked about deployment in 2013 compared to 2010. He showed the small differences and what is missing.
The main takeaway that I allready knew, setup is pretty much the same as in 2010…

SPC119 Designing your SharePoint 2013 Enterprise deployment
Based on SharePoint online experiences, they showed how a Enterprise farm Environment should be designed.

We finnished the day with some snacks and a few beers, compliments of Microsoft Sweden that was so kind to treat all of us Swedes here to a pre-evening at the ‘Something’ Grill. Very nice and Amazing how many Swedish participents there are! I would guess over 200.

I met a few old collegues from Microsoft Sweden and when the free beer stopped coming, we Went on, to the House of Blues one more and then the day was over for me.

After a very interesting and inspiring day, I have to do some work and then rest, a new day will come tomorrow, with even more Technical sessions…

I’ll try to keep reporting to all off you directly each and every day during the conference in order to share some parts of the great experience…

Stay tuned, this me, signing out, from day two of my SharePoint conference experience.

Part 1 of this report
Part 2 of this report

_________________________________________________________

Enjoy!

Regards

Twitter | Technet Profile | LinkedIn

Hi friends.

Last ‘free’ day Before the real action starts.
http://www.mssharepointconference.com (adding Pictures later on when I get them uploaded)
Today was registration day, after saying hello to a few extremely relaxed ‘guards’ that were positioned to show us all the way forward…we found the registration boths, new this year was the selfservice checkin, using your ID used to register, you printed your own badge and then simply picked it up. We all got a backpack complements of HP and with it a lot of information and the most important thing of all, the wristband for the Bon Jovi party later in the week.

Me and my Conference buddy from back home had planned to rent a car, then go to Grand Canyon and the Hoover dam, then spend the rest of the day at one of the large Outlets in Vegas. The plan however had flaws…
After having a good US breakfast at the Luxor Pramid cafe, we ran into some hurdles…getting a car was not that easy, especially when youre on a budget, we ended up beeing 2 hours late and paying more than we planned to. If we only had made reservations from back home…
.Then, once on the road we noticed that it was farther away then we forst had thought. I would say about 60 miles and 10 of them on gravel. But, we got there…West Grand Canyon. We had not expected the admission fee (including a lot of Native Indian perks) of $44…

At least the 44 included a hop on/hop off bus tour that took us to Three different view sites, the Grand Canyon was spectacular!! If you ever come to Vegas, see it!

When we got going again it was getting late, the sun were setting and we started to worry about making the Welcome reception.

Since my buddy had not seen the Hoover Dam Before, we had to make a Quick stop there as well on the way back, it was dark when we got there but it was still a good experience. Perhaps even better in the dark, you tell me?

Next this was that we had to fill the car up with gas and, the difficult thing, we had to wash the car from driving on the gravel, if you did not, you got a fine of $40…it took us more than an hour driving all across Las Vegas looking for the carwash Place…when we finally found it, got he car cleaned up and parked back at Mandalay Bay, it was too late for the Welcome Reception…I got to drive a lot of car though…

A quick fast food dinner and we diceded to skip the chance of getting 5 minutes at the reception and instead, gather our strength for tomorrow instead, breakfast at 7:30 and then its time for the first starting keynote. I can’t wait.

I’ll try to keep reporting to all off you directly each and every day during the conference in order to share some parts of the great experience…

Stay tuned, this me, signing out, from day two of my SharePoint conference experience.

Part 1 of this report
Part 3 of this report

_________________________________________________________

Enjoy!

Regards

Twitter | Technet Profile | LinkedIn

Hi friends.

Next week is Sharepoint conference week, it starts Monday, not a big deal for most of you, but for us going…what a great time to look forward to.
http://www.mssharepointconference.com

This is my second consecutive SharePoint Conference and this year we have a new version out, which means it will be a little bit extra. All the new features, the new ways of doing things, the new experiences and even the new ways to license…its all new and that has got t be exciting!

I have been to quite a few of these Microsoft events in the US, perhaps around 10 over the years, internal and external like this time, and I have to tell you, Microsoft are good at throwing these things.
I have heard that Microsoft this year expects around 10.000 attendees to show up, and the simple challenge of managing all of them is no small feat. However, I feel certain that it will all be world class as usual.

Last year was great, it was in Anaheim California and it was all about the experiences people had had with 2010, this time its a little bit different, its Las Vegas and its going to be all about the news in 2013…
What can we do now that we couldn’t before, what has been removed and what has been learned from 2010 and incorporated into this version 2013?

Vegas will require some attention to be sure, but the Conferences Sessions will be winning my attention. Call me a geek but I’m so looking forward to the learning part, to the part where I get new ideas, where i discover new things in SharePont. No offense LasVegas, but what you have to offer doesn’t stand a chance…(to me, but I’m guessing a lot of the 10.000 will think and act differently) I’ve been to Vegas once before, 15 years ago, same time as the premiere of Star Wars I…same time as the Matrix came out…

We came to Vegas a friend and I, in a rented Mustang convertable from San Fransisco…we came at night and Vegas was all open 24/7…after spending 5 nights during which we tried most of what Vegas had to offer (thats legal), I never thought I would want to come back, or that I would ever find a reason good enough…but trust me, right now while writing this post, sitting on a plane, 4 hours into a 20 hour trip, I cant wait to see Vegas once again and more specifically, to go to the conference!

I’ll report to all off you directly each and every day during the conference, for those of you who can’t be with us onsite, i’ll try to share some parts of the great experience…

Stay tuned, this me, signing out, from day one of the SharePoint conference experience.

_________________________________________________________

Enjoy!

Regards

Twitter | Technet Profile | LinkedIn