It’s been a while since my last post and some of you may have thought that I’ve given up on the blog. No I haven’t and I really should not be making any excuses. On reflection last year 2009 has been a blast with some great events that occurred in my personal life and also my professional life (obviously SharePoint related) Looking ahead at 2010 there are many events that will make 2010 a fantastic year. Just on reflection working on our company Knowledge Cue since 2008 has taught me a lot about work life balance and have provided opportunities which I never thought possible. You can follow Knowledge Cue happenings on our company blog. I use this (my personal) blog to engage with the wider local and international SharePoint community to share my knowledge. This year I will be attending and in some cases presenting about SharePoint i ...[Read More]

TechED NZ is officially kicks off today. This is my Seventh year attending and my fourth year speaking! If you are looking for SharePoint content you will not be disappointed. Here is a list of all the SharePoint Sessions that’s on at TechED! Watch Darryl Burling’s blog for some great news for SharePoint training. OFC201 SharePoint and Business Intelligence Presenter: Steve Letford (MSFT NZ) Mon 9/14 | 12:05-13:20 | Ballroom 2 The front end of Business Intelligence - Office 2007. Excel, Excel Services, PerformancePoint Services, SharePoint and accessing SQL data in Office OFC202 The Value of SharePoint and Office in your Enterprise Presenter: Ian Morrish (MSFT NZ) Mon 9/14 | 10:40-11:55 | Ballroom 2 Are you getting the most out of your SharePoint investment? SharePoint products and Technologies is more than just a web server, ...[Read More]

We recently announced to all our registered delegates about the “Ask the Experts” Keynote panel that will be held at NZSPC on Friday, July 03, 2009 starting at 11:15 AM to 12:15 PM (New Zealand Time) in the Duxton Ballroom. You can now post your questions on the user group site. So far we have received the following questions. We’ll take the best one’s and answer these at the conference. I will also post answers on my blog for some of these. Questions so far.. User Adoption - There are lots of books about SharePoint on the market. If we customise our SharePoint user interface will these books still be useful to my users? Web Content Management - I know there is the reusable snippets library which is great for small pieces of content. But how can I reuse whole pages so they appear in different parts of my website without sending the ...[Read More]

End User Adoption Framework Demonstration by Steve Smith (MVP) Come and see Steve Smith owner of Combined Knowledge and SharePoint MVP demonstrate the brand new End User Adoption software from Combined Knowledge. After a year of development this framework solution is designed to fill a very big hole in any SharePoint deployment - User Adoption. Key points this product solves and covered in the demonstration include : Why companies don't get the most out of SharePoint once deployed Increasing ROI across the business Users having a structured learning and help mechanism without needing to call IT Support A central page to get access to all content available Joining the dots with How to video's , CBT , labs and step and step. Searchable help system structured by category and keyword Measured statistics Scorm 1.2 Compliant for ...[Read More]

As one of the official organisers of the New Zealand Community SharePoint conference it is my job to ensure that all conference related activities and events are posted online. If you are a speaker or a delegate you would have already received an email with some instructions. In case you haven’t go this email or want an easy online reference my blog will provide general information and sub events. For event updates please check my blog or follow the NZ SharePoint twitter channel.   General Information for Delegates and Speakers The conference is being held at the Duxton Hotel in Wellington at 170 Wakefield Street. Parking is available at James Smith Car Park next to the Hotel. Registration desk will be open from 5.30pm till 7.30pm on Wednesday 1st July at the Duxton. The registration desk will again open at 7.00am to 8.30am on Thu ...[Read More]

Microsoft recently made available in New Zealand the following online services to all partners and clients under the BPOS banner (Business Productivity Online Services). This offering has some real value if your organisation is a small business who do not need to worry too much about managing your IT infrastructure on premise. MS has made available SharePoint, MS Exchange and Office Communications and Live Meeting which you can pay as you go for a fraction of the cost of hosting and managing your own infrastructure.   The registration process was very straightforward and I was able to get up and running within 10 minutes of going through the online sign on process. From a cost point of view a single mailbox for Exchange start at $17 or so. Check out the online calculator.   You can trial the “Business Productivity Online Standard S ...[Read More]

Just to warm your socks in this cold weather we are having two “hot” sessions coming up this month! We have Alex Dean SharePoint extraordinaire talking about SharePoint development and Internationally renowned speaker, writer and consultant Michael Sampson visiting Wellington for a session to talk about his latest book "Seamless Teamwork". Note that one session is for a developer audience and the second one is geared towards a business audience. Wednesday 27th of May 2009 - SharePoint Developer Session Using the AJAX Controls Toolbox in SharePoint – Wednesday 27th of May 2009 AJAX for SharePoint can seem quite a daunting task, especially when stumbling across endless blog posts which are completely out of date and are giving wrong or misleading advice. With SP1 for SharePoint Microsoft fixed a few internal glitches in r ...[Read More]

Via Andrew Coates and Paul Quirk The Tech•Ed 2009 season has kicked off in LA, and the show comes to Australia and New Zealand in mid-September. We’ve just opened the Call for Content tool so now’s the time to submit that great idea for a session. Details about how to submit are at the bottom of this post. Here are the rules for submitting content and what we’ll cover/not cover if the track owners select your session(s). All the way through the process you’ll be able to review your submission and track its status. This is the first time we’ve opened up the Call for Content publically like this and we’re likely to receive many more proposals than we’ve got slots to fill, so please don’t be disappointed if your submission isn’t selected. Tips for Successful Submissions Write a descriptive, fun and enticing title Target 300-400 ...[Read More]