We are extremely happy to announce that we have now finalised the dates and details for the first ever New Zealand SharePoint Conference.

Dates: 2nd and 3rd July 2009

Venue: Duxton - Hotel, Wellington (New Zealand's beautiful capital city!)

Registrations are now open via the main conference web site which is at http://www.sharepointconference.co.nz

Speaker Lineup

International Speakers

The amount of interest shown by International speakers have been tremendous and we are very happy to announce the following International renowned speakers who are among the best of the best.

• Joel Oleson (Key Note Speaker) - http://www.sharepointjoel.com - In the year 2000, Joel Oleson, a Sr. Web Engineer was brought in to Microsoft IT design the first Microsoft global deployment of SharePoint. Later he would design the extranet, and hosted SharePoint deployments at Microsoft. Not less than a year later he was sharing these experiences at internal MGB, TechReady, and later to customers at Microsoft Tech Ed and IT Forum conferences globally. On the SharePoint team as Sr. Technical Product Manager for IT Professionals, leading up to and at the release of SharePoint Server 2007, he helped various customers to get the critical governance information, upgrade, achieve scale, and get the essential best practices that they needed. After managing the critical SP1 and Windows Server 2008 launches, Joel started an external SharePoint blog where he would share his decks, best practices, lessons, and joined the field to share his experiences. As trainer, blogger, evangelist, sr. consultant and architect, he continues to gain valuable experience and share it with the SharePoint community on his blog, at major technical conferences, and local SharePoint user groups around the globe.
  
• Steve Smith - Steve Smith ( MVP-SharePoint Server ) is the owner of Combined Knowledge in the UK and Combined Knowledge Asia Pacific providing Microsoft SharePoint Technical Training courses and Consultancy.
  Steve is well travelled spending most of last 20 years travelling in the US and South Asia for the companies he owned and worked with including achieving his first qualification with Microsoft technologies on NT 4 and IIS 3 in New Delhi India in 1998 whilst based there for 3 years.
  
• Paul Stork - http://sharepoint.mindsharpblogs.com/Paul/ Paul is a SharePoint MVP who has specialized in Microsoft products since the mid-1990s. As a Jack of all Trades he has developed expertise as a network administrator, developer, and DBA. Paul works as a consultant/trainer for Mindsharp where his breadth of knowledge makes him ideally suited to combine Administrative, Development, and SharePoint Designer topics.  His 20+ years of experience and broad background make Paul a much sought after resource for SharePoint questions that cross traditional boundaries. Paul is a contributing author to the Developer's Guide to Windows SharePoint Services v3 Platform and the SharePoint Server 2007 Deployment Best Practices books.
  
• Paul Culmsee - http://www.cleverworkarounds.com - Paul Culmsee, MCSE (NT4/W2K), CISSP, MCT, MCTS and former CCNP, is a native of Perth, Western Australia and has worked in IT for 20 years in a wide variety of roles and organisations. Paul is the director of Seven Sigma Business Solutions - a consulting practice specialising in SharePoint advisory, training and solution development, as well as enterprise infrastructure monitoring, IT security and group facilitation. Describes himself as a tech-geek finally out of rehab. Paul is the author of the popular SharePoint blog CleverWorkarounds.com and is a contributing author for SharePointMagazine.net and EnduserSharepoint.com. He is also a competent application developer, having authored the freeware application EZ-Rent - a property tax and cash flow analyser for Australian property investors
  
• Erica Toelle - Erica Toelle is a digital native with a business consulting background currently working at 3Sharp, LLC as a Business Analyst. Erica has been helping companies be successful with SharePoint since 2004, by creating holistic business solutions revolving around Enterprise Information Management and Collaboration. She has written several Enterprise Content Management whitepapers for Microsoft explaining SharePoint’s features and how to leverage them in a business context. Erica understands how to communicate about SharePoint to a non-technical audience to foster shared understanding among everyone involved with a project.
  
• Adam Cogan - Adam Cogan is the Chief Architect at SSW, a Microsoft Certified Gold Partner specializing in custom .NET, SharePoint and Business Intelligence solutions. At SSW, Adam has been developing custom solutions for businesses across a range of industries such as Government, banking, insurance and manufacturing since 1990 for clients such as Microsoft, Quicken, and the Fisheries Research and Development Corporation.
  
• Brendan Law - Brendan Law is a SharePoint Technical Specialist and Solutions Architect currently working for Thomas Duryea Consulting in Melbourne, Australia.  Brendan has deep technical knowledge of SharePoint from solution design through to implementation and maintenance.  Recently, Brendan has designed a global collaboration platform for Lonely Planet and implemented a proof of concept for an Enterprise Search solution for a large engineering firm based in Australia and New Zealand.  In support of various SharePoint development teams, Brendan has also designed and built re-usable SharePoint development Virtual Machines to ensure consistency and efficiency of development effort.  MCSE, MCTS (All SharePoint exams, Server 2008)

New Zealand Speakers

We wanted to make sure that this conference would provide the best of local experience in SharePoint. So we are extremely happy to announce the following speakers from New Zealand.

• Mark Orange (MVP) - Intergen - Mark is the Practice Principle for the Portal, Content and Collaboration Practice at Intergen. He has been working in the web content and collaboration space for 8 years and has been recognised by Microsoft as a SharePoint MVP for his community work and expertise with SharePoint 2007.
  Mark is an experienced speaker having presented at TechED and other industry conferences and groups in NZ over the last 5 years.
  
• Zac Smith (MVP) - SharePoint Depot - Zac Smith is an experienced .NET developer with an interest in developing robust, manageable web solutions with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server. He is passionate about SharePoint and works hard to stay on the cutting edge of Microsoft technologies. In April of 2008 Zac was awarded the MVP award for his community efforts in SharePoint Server.
  
• Debbie Ireland (MVP) - EnvisionIT - Debbie Ireland is a SharePoint MVP and has been working with MOSS and WSS since 2005. Debbie has 15 years experience in managing IT projects across a number of industries and has realised many of SharePoint’s benefits as a project management tool. Debbie has experience in Information Architecture and planning for SharePoint implementations, along with related governance and training strategies.
  
• Alex Dean - Knowledge Cue -  Alex has over ten years of experience in commercial software architecture design and development. After studying Business Information Technology in London he spent the next ten years developing and architecting information systems in London, Spain and Switzerland and got heavily involved with MOSS 2007 while it was still in its infant beta stages. When he moved to New Zealand in 2007 he embarked on an exciting career as Microsoft Certified Trainer and had the opportunity to create new SharePoint courses, talks and workshops while at ACE Training. His current projects include working for Knowledge Cue as Senior SharePoint Architect and as Editor for Jigsaw Magazine, a free monthly events magazine in Wellington
  
• Michael Sampson - http://www.michaelsampson.net - Michael Sampson is an Industry Analyst and Consultant focused on improving the performance of distributed teams. Michael helps end user organizations understand the collaboration landscape through independent analysis and briefings. His research as an Industry Analyst is presented at conferences around the world. Michael is the author of Seamless Teamwork: Using Microsoft SharePoint Technologies to Collaborate, Innovate, and Drive Business in New Ways, published by Microsoft Press (2009). Michael holds an MCom with first class honors in telecommunications-based IT, from the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, and is currently working on his doctorate in collaboration and virtual teams.
  
• Steve Letford - Microsoft (NZ) - Steve has been working at Microsoft since March 2008 as a technical specialist on SharePoint. Steve has been in the IT industry for 11 years and prior to working at Microsoft had several different roles including Platform Development Manager of SharePoint, BI Manager, Applications Manager and developer. Steve has been involved in both the management and development of large multi-tiered projects within New Zealand and the UK.
  
• Jonathan Stuckey - Microsoft (NZ) - Solutions specialist with Microsoft for 9yrs, Jonathan’s experience working in Financial Services and Public Sector has had a focus with customer engagements supporting Compliance, Content Management and Business process efficiency requirements, using Office System and SharePoint technologies.
  
• Brendon Ford - Provoke Solutions
  
• Chakkaradeep Chandran - Intergen - Chakkaradeep works extensively in Microsoft platform. His knowledge covers various Microsoft Technologies like WCF, SharePoint, Windows Azure.
  
• Robert Stewart - Intergen
  
• Mark Carroll - Microsoft (NZ) - Since 2004 Mark has been the Architect for Microsoft’s Developer and Platform Strategy group here in New Zealand. He has been in the IT industry for over 30 Years working first as a developer, then as a development team leader followed by ten years in a mix of Project Managing, Architect and Technology directional lead roles. He holds a New Zealand Institute of Management (NZIM) Diploma of Business Management and a Bachelor of Business Studies (BBS) degree majoring in Management. His technology selection and architectural approaches are focused on understanding the mix of business drivers affecting their suitability for a particular organisation in addition to their relative technical merits as potential contributors to the functionality required by the organisation to meet its goals.
  
• Lulu Pachuau - Lushai.com - Lulu Pachuau is the lead interaction designer at Lushai Ltd, experience strategy and interaction design firm in Wellington. She has been in the user experience field for over 9 years, wearing different hats as interaction designer, information architect and a design strategist. She helps clients as a facilitator, researcher and communicator through prototypes and conceptual models.
  She has architected information models for large organisations and complex systems for various industries including government, power, utilities, banking and telecommunications sectors where she designs solutions for websites, e-commerce, intranets, desktop and web applications.
  
• Patrick VanRinsvelt - Patrick manages application development strategy, implementation, and maintenance at the Bay of Plenty Polytechnic in sunny Tauranga. With over 20 years in the information technology field, his focus is on using technology to enhance daily business operations and service with an eye on analysis, usability, integration, and flexibility.
  
• Pete Smith - eSpatial - Pete Smith is a Spatial Solutions Architect for e-Spatial Limited in New Zealand. After a career as a developer, analyst, project lead and systems integrator of spatially-enabled systems, he has a solid knowledge of Geographical Information Systems design and development. He is passionate about integrating spatial data into the wider enterprise architecture, and using pervasive technologies such as Sharepoint to achieve it.
  
• Peter Sayers - Peter Sayers-BSC (that's Bronze Swimming Certificate) Born in the UK, but lived here for most of his life. He confesses to being lazy and has never applied for Citizenship. Peter's been in Local Government for 13 years around the Information, Business Analyst and IT activities. Working for two Councils has proven, two- things: one - in Local Government each Council does things it's own way (usually the right way) and two: leaning on on your shovel is no longer an accepted practice in Council.
  
• Sarah Heal - Information Leadership - Sarah Heal has been an information manager for over ten years. Starting at Archives New Zealand, she moved into local government policy analysis and corporate planning. Sarah then became Information Manager for the Dunedin City Council - responsible for GIS, Document Management, Web, Core Data, LIM management and setting organisation-wide goals and standards. She also led the successful implementation of DataWorks as the DCC’s electronic document management system. More recently, Sarah revitalised document management at Christchurch City Council, including the implementation of TRIM Context.
  
• Mike Riversdale - Knowledge Cue - Mike Riversdale, a man for all seasons but certainly not a man of mystery living his electronic life on-line since 2002 generating a large on-line presence.
  Mike (aka Miramar Mike) has over twenty years experience as an advocate and catalyst for organisational change whilst working in, with and against IT Departments from all types of organisations in all parts of the world. Following his passion of connecting people to people with usable information, clear communication and on-line collaboration he uses Agile project and development management to complement his key skills.
  
• Hendrik Venter - K2 - Hendrik is the distributor for K2 in New Zealand and is focussed on helping customers and partners realise the benefits of their Microsoft investment through the power of workflow and BPM

With over 35 sessions covering Business, Technical and Real World Case Studies from Customers and Partners we hope to give you the best of the best in terms of deployment and guidance for SharePoint. You will have the opportunity to network with your peers and colleagues from across New Zealand. So we hope to see you all there!

You can also follow New Zealand SharePoint Events via twitter! http://twitter.com/NZSharePoint