Don’t forget to install InfoPath

Today’s the day when InfoPath gets it’s first official punch in the gut – Office 2016 has been released today, and as promised does not include InfoPath as part of the install.

But as we know (and will learn more about on October 10th) InfoPath ain’t dead yet.

So, after your Office 2016 install finishes, be sure to take the additional step of separately downloading the standalone InfoPath 2013 install.

Upcoming SharePoint Events–Sept & Oct 2015

I’ll be speaking at several SharePoint events over the next couple of months. More details to come, but here’s the 10,000 feet view:

Microsoft DogFood Conference 2015
(Oct 7-8, Columbus, OH) – The biggest Microsoft-focused technology conference in the region. My talks will include:

• Moving Your SharePoint Development to the Cloud
• Getting Information from SharePoint – A 365 Degree View

SharePoint Saturday Cincinnati 2015
(Oct 10, Cincinnati, OH) – This free event includes great talks from SharePoint MVPs and thought leaders from around the country. My talk will be:

• InfoPath – I Ain’t Dead Yet. Here’s Why…
  
  2015-spscincy-infopath-spcb—SharePoint Cowbell

SharePoint Roundtable Cleveland
(Sept 9, Cleveland, OH) – Bennett Adelson regularly hosts this roundtable meeting to discuss relevant and timely topics for Information Workers. Join my colleagues and I as we discuss:

• SharePoint Futures: Processing the MS Ignite Announcements

Up Up and Away at SPS Columbus 2015

As you might have guessed by now, this year’s SharePoint Saturday Columbus was super-hero themed! All the speakers were given capes, and asked to wear the T-Shirt of their favorite super hero. I decided to choose Dragon Fly Jones from the 90’s sitcom Martin. : )

In addition to the fun stuff, SPS Columbus was also packed full of great info. Notable talks included Mike Smith’s discussion regarding REST, Seb Matthews Taking Your Business to the Cloud, and Doug Hemminger with Visual Studio and the Office365 REST API.

In my session we had good conversation re: Office integration, OneNote+SharePoint, and Yammer governance. And thankfully my demo’s went very smoothly. : )

Check out the other speakers super-hero pics on the BuckeyeSPUG Facebook page. My slides can be found below, or on slideshare.

SharePoint Saturday Cincinnati 2012–Retrospective

Well, I’ve returned home from a day well-spent at the now famous event:

It was a great event filled with great speakers and good information. It was also complemented by attendees dressed in kool & unforgettable costumes, as well as other folks whose costume I’m trying to erase from my memory.

SharePoint Saturday Speaker Gear Taken to the Next Level

My talk at Louisville’s first-ever SharePoint Saturday yesterday went well – it was a very interactive group, and we had a pretty lively discussion about the opportunities and implications of Azure for SharePoint and our industry overall. (you can find the slide deck here). As a speaker in the first track of sessions, I helped kick off a full day of great speakers and topics that I’m sure added some much-appreciated SharePoint learning to the Kentucky community.

Speaking at SPS Louisville

I know how upset you were when you realized you had missed my talk at SPS Atlanta last month on SharePoint & Windows Azure integration. Oh, the tear-soaked pillows and so many boxes of Kleenex. : ) But fear not! You have another chance to hear my talk, as I’ll be speaking this month at SharePoint Saturday Louisville on July 28th.

And it gets even better! As you may have heard, some new & exciting features have been announced for Azure in the past few weeks. I will most certainly be adding some incorporation of these new features into my talk.

But wait – there’s more! In addition to my talk, you also get to check out all the other great speakers that will also be in attendance at #SPSLouisville. We’re talking about a full-day of great SharePoint content – all for free!

I hope to see you in Kentucky on July 28th. Otherwise, who knows when you might ever be able to hear the Cowbell speak on SharePoint again??? (hint – August 1st; stay tuned for more self-promoting info to come) Let the countdown begin!

BTW - The SPS Louisville committee made these kool ‘badges’ for the speakers, so we can add to them to our email sigs and what-not – so I’m going to add mine right here. : )

SharePoint Saturday Dayton Retrospective

I had the pleasure of representing Improving Enterprises (Silver Sponsor) this weekend at SPS Dayton. I was thinking back on the great sessions I attended, and I realized that this time instead of taking copious notes on my tablet, I opted to take quick small notes on my phone using Evernote.

Here’s a list of some of the ideas, web links, and references that I jotted down this weekend, which I’ll be sure to research more over the coming weeks:

SharePoint Saturday Atlanta–Medley, Marketing, and… Murder???

This weekend I completed one of my two speaking commitments for this month by presenting at SharePoint Saturday Atlanta on the topic of SharePoint & Azure integration (slides below). Overall, I thought the event was great because it had a good combination of all the right ingredients – a medley of sessions to attend, a great marketing campaign, and… a mystery murder!

SharePoint Speaking in June

Next month is starting to fill up with SharePoint activity – here’s some info on two events I’ll be speaking at in June:

SharePoint & Windows Azure Integration - Practical Ways to Make Your Project More Agile
(SharePoint Saturday Atlanta – June 2nd)

Abstract: More organizations today are embracing Agile principles when completing their software projects. SharePoint projects can also benefit from an Agile methodology, and when combined with Windows Azure, they can provide value in areas like rapid prototyping, good architectural design, and speed to market. In this session, we'll see the different ways that Windows Azure and SharePoint can be integrated, and we'll demo some specific scenarios to show how effectively a SharePoint/Azure project can be implemented. (300-Level)

 

InfoPath 2010: Your Path to the Smart Side - Leveraging the Powerful Forces of InfoPath
(Dayton SharePoint User Group – June 12th)

Abstract: InfoPath allows powers users and developers to create rich UI smart forms, and includes features that allow form designers to enforce business rules and integrate line-of-business data into their forms. Combined with SharePoint Form Services, users can create powerful no-code composite applications. This presentation examines best practices for creating and enhancing InfoPath forms. We’ll explore the basics of how InfoPath interacts with SharePoint lists and workflow, touch on some advanced features, and discuss the pros and cons of InfoPath compared to other data entry technologies. Demos will be included. (100-Level)

Hope to see you there!

3 Reasons Why Los Angeles InfoPath-Lovers are Awesome

This past Saturday Improving Enterprises sent me to the West Coast to meet with a couple of our clients, but primarily to speak at SharePoint Saturday Los Angeles on the topic of InfoPath 2010. I had a full room (sorry to the folks that had to stand), and a very lively and interactive group of folks who were all very interested in learning more about InfoPath. In fact, I enjoyed our time together so much, I thought I’d share with everyone at least 3 reasons why Los Angeles InfoPath-lovers are so awesome!:

SharePoint Saturday Los Angeles

Next Saturday, April 14th, the Cowbell will be in Long Beach, California speaking at SharePoint Saturday Los Angeles on the topic of InfoPath & SharePoint. I’m looking forward to doing some demos to show attendees how easy it is to create powerful smart forms and pseudo-applications using InfoPath (don’t let me down, virtual Cloudshare environment!) : )

Check out the other great speakers that will be sharing their expertise at this event as well. Also, if you attend my session, you’ll have a chance to take home some swag that my company (Improving Enterprises) will be giving away! See ya there!

SharePoint Saturday–Columbus 2011

Ask anyone, and they’ll tell you that SharePoint Saturday Columbus 2011 was a great success.  A great list of speakers and topics, and oh, yeah – great food too!   Nice raffle prizes for lucky winners, including a brand new Kindle, free consulting services, and even a great SharePoint 2010 book giveaway from ICC (my employer, and a platinum sponsor of the event).

And oh yeah – in case you’re wondering, the SharePoint Cowbell was on display!

(Ricardo Wilkins speaking on SharePoint 2010 Dev at SharePoint Saturday Columbus 2011; photo credit – Brian Jackett)

A Few More Happy SharePoint Developers in Washington, DC!

Yesterday marked the completion of a successful 3-day SharePoint Saturday conference in Washington, DC. If you missed it and want to get a taste of the experience, check out the activity in the different social media streams that attendees engaged in.

I was honored to be among the 195 SharePoint thought leaders who spoke at the conference (my slide deck can be found below). I spoke on SharePoint Development, and why SharePoint 2010 makes developers like myself so happy! :) I think my audience agreed with me. They also asked some very interesting questions, a few of which I’d like to comment on:

August Speaking Gigs–Chicago, DC, and Columbus

For me, August is a busy SharePoint month due to the three speaking engagements I’ve got lined up. Check out the details here:

I just got back from Chicago where I spoke at the National BDPA Conference 2011 on the topic of SharePoint as a game-changer for business. In addition to giving an overview of SharePoint’s features, I spent some time discussing the value of Office365 and SharePoint Online as well.  In addition to my talk, Microsoft reps also gave their own SharePoint presentation at the conference, discussing SharePoint as the collaboration platform for the Enterprise. This event was also particularly exciting for me, as I watched the high school students that I’ve been coaching the past few months win 3rd Place in the national computer competition, earning each of them a scholarship stipend!  SharePoint and Scholarships – it doesn’t get much better than that. : )

This is a unique SharePoint Saturday event in that, instead of one Saturday, this event will last 3 days (thus the addition of “The Conference”). And check out these stats – 279 sessions! 196 speakers! 22 SharePoint MVPs! 2 SharePoint Masters! And over 3,000 expected attendees! (okay, that’s too many exclamation points for one blog post)  My session will be in the IT Pro/Developer Track.  I’m pretty excited about this.  Just imagine what the SharePint event will be like – oh, the anticipation!

This will be my second consecutive year speaking at SharePoint Saturday Columbus. Last year I spoke on Document Management to more of an End-User crowd.  This year my talk will be Developer/Dev Manager focused.  This event is already sold out (way to go, Columbus!), but I’d advise you sign up anyway if interested, in case they kick in the waiting list.

So, we’ve got plenty of SharePoint goodness going on this month.  Be sure to look me up if you attend any of these events – I’ll be the one carrying the cowbell!  (thanx SharePointRyan for letting me borrow yours)

Presentation from BDPA National Conference 2011

SharePoint Saturday India

I just finished presenting my SharePoint Dev presentation for SharePoint Saturday India. (my first presentation that I’ve had to deliver at 3:30AM EST – yes, I said AM)   This is a presentation I originally presented for a local conference back in February, so I’ve referenced my original slide deck posting above.

I think it’s very kool that I was able to participate in an international event like this one. In my session I know that at least a few countries (India, Australia, South Africa) were represented.

I hope the attendees were able to get value out of my content, and hopefully were also able to appreciate my use of Transformers in my slide deck (with $700 million in worldwide movie sales, I suspect India knows about Transformers as well).

Recordings of the sessions should be available in a few weeks – I’ll let you know how to get them once they’re published.  Kudos to the organizers like Alpesh Nakar, and kudos to Live Meeting for hanging in there and delivering my presentation live out to the world. : )

Document Management Using SharePoint – SharePoint Saturday slides posted

Saturday’s SharePoint event here in Columbus, Ohio was great.  I give kudos to the folks that worked hard to put it together, and who pulled off bringing together such a great lineup of speakers.  If you’re a SharePoint junkie in Central Ohio and you missed the event, I now shed a tear for you. (wiping away fake tear) 

The only consolation I can give you is that you can scroll down a little to see the slides from my presentation.  Although it doesn’t include the live demos I ran during my talk, it at least gives you a peek at what I think are some of the main points of interest as it relates to document management in SharePoint 2007 and 2010.
There – don’t you feel better now? :)