Webcasts – The SharePoint Interface

Kicking-Off 2012: SharePoint Style

My SharePoint community activities are off to a roaring start in 2012. In this post, I’ll be recapping a couple of events from the end of 2011, as well as covering new activities taking place during the first couple of months of 2012.

I don’t know how 2011 ended for most of you, but the year closed without much of a bang for me. I’m not complaining about that; the general slow-down gave me an opportunity to get caught up on a few things, and it was nice to spend some quality time with my friends and family.

While 2011 went out relatively quietly, 2012 seems to have arrived with a vengeance. In fact, I was doing some joking on Twitter with Brian Jackett and Rob Collie shortly after the start of the year about #NYN, or “New Year’s Nitrous.” It’s been nothing but pedal-to-the-metal and then some since the start of the year, and there’s absolutely no sign of it letting up anytime soon. I like staying busy, but in some ways I’m wondering whether or not there will be enough time to fit everything in. One day at a time …

Here’s a recap of some stuff from the tail end of 2011, as well as what I’ve got going on for the first couple of months in 2012. After February, things actually get even crazier … but I’ll save events beyond February for a later post.

SPTV

During the latter part of 2011, I had a conversation with Michael Hiles and Jon Breyfogle of DSC Consulting, a technical consulting and media services company based here in Cincinnati, Ohio. Michael and Jon had an idea: they wanted to develop a high-quality, high-production-value television program that centered on SharePoint and the larger SharePoint ecosystem/community. The initial idea was that the show would feature an interview segment, coverage of community events, SharePoint news, and some other stuff thrown in.

It was all very preliminary stuff when they initially shared the idea with me, but I told them that I thought they might be on to something. The idea of a professional show that centered on SharePoint wasn’t something that was being done, and I was really curious to see how they would do it if they elected to move forward.

Just before Christmas, Jon contacted me to let me know that they were indeed moving forward with the idea … and he asked if I’d be the show’s first SharePoint guest. I told him I’d love to help out, and so the bulk of the pilot episode was shot at the Village Tavern in Montgomery one afternoon with host Mark Tiderman and co-host Craig Pereira. Mark and I shot some pool, discussed disaster recovery, and just talked SharePoint for a fair bit. It was really a lot of fun.

The pilot isn’t yet available (publicly), but a teaser for the show is available on the SPTV web site. All in all, I think the DSC folks have done a tremendous job creating a quality, professional program. Check out the SPTV site for a taste of what’s to come!

SharePoint Saturday Columbus Kick-Off

Around the time of the SPTV shooting, the planning committee for SharePoint Saturday Columbus (Brian Jackett, Jennifer Mason, Nicola Young, and I) had a checkpoint conversation to figure out what, if anything, we were going to do about SharePoint Saturday Columbus in 2012. Were we going to try to do it again? If so, were we going to change anything? What was our plan?

Everything with SPSColumbus in 2012 is still very preliminary, of course, but I can tell you that we are looking forward to having the event once again! We expect that we’ll attempt to hold the event during roughly the same part of the year as we’ve had it in the past (i.e., late summer). As we start to nail things down and come up with concrete plans, I’ll share those. Until then, keep your eyes on the SharePoint Saturday site and the SPSColumbus account on Twitter!

SharePointCincy

Those of us who reside in and around Cincinnati, Ohio, are very fortunate when it comes to SharePoint events and opportunities. In the past we’ve had SharePoint Saturday Indianapolis just to the west of us, SharePoint Saturday Columbus to the northeast, and last year we had our first ever SharePoint Saturday Cincinnati (which was a huge success!) On top of that, last year was the first ever SharePointCincy event.

SharePointCincy was similar in some ways to a SharePoint Saturday, but it was different in others. It was a day full of SharePoint sessions, but we also had Fred Studer (the General Manager for the Information Worker product group at Microsoft) come out an speak. Kroger, a local company whose SharePoint implementation I’m very familiar with, also shared their experience with SharePoint. Rather than go into too much detail, though, I encourage you to check out the SharePointCincy site yourself to see what it was all about.

Of course, the whole reason I’m mentioning SharePointCincy is that it’s coming again in March of this year! Last year’s success (the event was attended by hundreds) pretty much guaranteed that the event would happen again.

I’m part of a planning team that includes Geoff Smith, Steve Caravajal of Microsoft, Mike Smith from MAX Technical Training, and the infamous Shane Young of SharePoint911 (which, in case you didn’t know it, is based here in Cincinnati). Four of the five of us met last Friday for a kick-off meeting and to discuss how the event might go this year. It was a good breakfast and a productive meeting. I don’t have much more to share at this point (other than the fact that, “yes, it’s happening”), but I will share information as it becomes available. Stay tuned!

Secrets of SharePoint Webcast

It’s been a few months since my last webcast on SharePoint caching, so my co-workers at Idera approached me about doing another webcast. I guess I was due.

On this Wednesday, January 18th, I’ll be delivering a Secrets of SharePoint webcast titled “The Essentials of SharePoint Disaster Recovery.” Here’s the abstract:

“Are my nightly SQL Server backups good enough?” “Do I need an off-site disaster recovery facility?” “How do I even start the process of disaster recovery planning?” These are just a few of the more common questions that arise when the topic of SharePoint disaster recovery comes up. As with most things SharePoint, the real answer to each question is oftentimes “it depends…”

In this business and process-centric session, we will be taking a look at the topic of SharePoint disaster recovery from multiple perspectives: business continuity planner, technical architect, platform owner, and others. Critical concepts and terms will be explained and defined, and an effective process for analyzing and formulating a disaster recovery plan will be discussed. We’ll also highlight some common mistakes that take place when working to build a disaster recovery strategy and how you can avoid them. By the end of this session, you will be armed with the knowledge needed to plan or review a disaster recovery strategy for your SharePoint environment.

For those of you who have heard me speak and/or attended my webcasts in the past, you’ll probably find this session to be a bit different than ones you’ve seen or heard. The main reason I say that is because the content is primarily business-centric rather than nuts-and-bolts admin content.

That doesn’t mean that SharePoint administrators shouldn’t attend, though; on the contrary, the webcast includes a number of very important messages for admins (e.g., why DR must be driven from the business angle rather than the technical/admin angle) that could really help them in their jobs. The session expands the scope of the DR discussion, though, to include the business aspects that are so tremendously important during the DR planning process.

If what I’ve shared sounds interesting, please sign-up! The webcast is free, and I’ll be doing Q&A after the session.

SharePoint Saturday Austin

This upcoming weekend, I’ll be heading down to Austin, Texas, for the first SharePoint Saturday Austin event! The event is taking place on January 21st, and it is being coordinated by Jim Bob Howard (of Juniper Strategy) and Matthew Lathrop (of Rackspace). Boy oh boy – do they have an amazing line-up of speakers and contributors. It’s quite impressive; check out the site to see what I mean.

The guys are giving me the opportunity to present “The Essentials of SharePoint Disaster Recovery” session, and I’m looking forward to it. I’m also looking forward to catching up with many of my friends … and some of my Idera co-workers (who will be coming in from Houston, Texas).

If you’re in the Austin area and looking for something to do this upcoming Saturday, come to the event. It’s free, and it’s a great chance to take in some phenomenal sessions, win some prizes, and be a part of the larger SharePoint community!

SharePoint Pro Demo Booth Session

On Monday, February 20th at 12pm EST, I’m going to be doing a “demo booth” session through SharePoint Pro Magazine. The demo booth is titled “Backup Basics: SharePoint’s Backup and Restore Capabilities and Beyond.” Here’s the description for the demo booth:

SharePoint ships with a number of tools and capabilities that are geared toward protecting content and configuration. These tools provide basic coverage for your SharePoint environment and the content it contains, but they can quickly become cumbersome in real world scenarios. In this session, we will look at SharePoint’s backup and restore capabilities, discuss how they work, and identify where they fall short in common usage scenarios. We will also highlight how Idera’s SharePoint backup solution picks up where the SharePoint platform tools leave off in order to provide complete protection that is cost-effective and easy to use.

The “demo booth” concept is something new for me; it’s part “platform education” (which is where I normally spend the majority of my time and energy) and part “product education” – in this case, education about Idera’s SharePoint backup product. Being both the product manager for Idera SharePoint backup and a co-author for the SharePoint 2010 Disaster Recovery Guide leaves me in something of a unique position to talk about SharePoint’s built-in backup/restore capabilities, where gaps exist, and how Idera SharePoint backup can pick up where the SharePoint platform tools leave off.

If you’re interested in learning more about Idera’s SharePoint backup product and/or how far you can reasonably push SharePoint’s built-in capabilities, check out the demo booth.

SPTechCon 2012 San Francisco

February comes to close with a big bang when SPTechCon rolls into San Francisco for the first of two stops in 2012. For those of you who check my blog now and again, you may have noticed the SPTechCon “I’ll be speaking at” badge and link on the right-hand side of the page. Yes, that means I’ll be delivering a session at the event! The BZ Media folks always put on a great show, and I’m certainly proud to be a part of SPTechCon and presenting again this time around.

At this point, I know that I’ll be presenting “The Essentials of SharePoint Disaster Recovery.” I think I’m also going to be doing another lightning talk; I need to check up on that, though, to confirm it.

I also found out that John Ferringer (my co-author and partner-in-crime) and I are also going to have the opportunity to do an SPTechCon-sponsored book signing (for our SharePoint 2010 Disaster Recovery Guide) on the morning of Wednesday the 29th.

If you’re at SPTechCon, please swing by to say hello – either at my session, at the Idera booth, the book signing, or wherever you see me!

Additional Reading and Resources

Blog: Brian Jackett’s Frog Pond of Technology
Blog: Rob Collie’s PowerPivotPro
Company: DSC Consulting
Site: SPTV
LinkedIn: Mark Tiderman
LinkedIn: Craig Pereira
Event: SharePoint Saturday Columbus
Blog: Jennifer Mason
Twitter: Nicola Young
Site: SharePoint Saturday
Twitter: SharePoint Saturday Columbus
Event: SharePoint Saturday Cincinnati
Event: SharePointCincy
LinkedIn: Geoff Smith
Blog: Steve Caravajal’s Ramblings
Blog: Mike Smith’s Tech Training Notes
Company: MAX Technical Training
Blog: Shane Young’s SharePoint Farmer’s Almanac
Company: SharePoint911
Webcast: “Caching-In” for SharePoint Performance
Site: Secrets of SharePoint
Webcast: The Essentials of SharePoint Disaster Recovery
Event: SharePoint Saturday Austin
Blog: Jim Bob Howard
Company: Juniper Strategy
LinkedIn: Matthew Lathrop
Company: Rackspace
Company: Idera
Event: SharePoint Pro Demo Booth Session
Site: SharePoint Pro Magazine
Product: Idera SharePoint backup
Book: SharePoint 2010 Disaster Recovery Guide
Event: SPTechCon 2012 San Francisco
Company: BZ Media
Blog: John Ferringer’s My Central Admin

Wrapping Up 2011

After some time away, I’m getting back to blogging with a recap of the last several months’ worth of events. I cover a couple of SharePoint Saturdays, a webcast, my new whitepaper, and a new CodePlex project for SharePoint administrators.

Over the last several months, I haven’t been blogging as much as I’d hoped to; in reality, I haven’t blogged at all. There are a couple of reasons for that: one of them was our recent house move (and the aftermath), and the other was a little more personal. Without going into too much detail: we were contending with a very serious health issue in our family, and that took top priority.

The good news is that the clouds are finally parting, and I’m heading into the close of 2011 on a much better note (and with more time) than I’ve spent the last several months. To get back into some blogging, I figured I’d wrap-up the last several months’ worth of activities that took place since SharePoint Saturday Columbus.

Secrets of SharePoint (SoS) Webcast

A lot of things started coming together towards the end of October, and the first of those was another webcast that I did for Idera titled “’Caching-In’ for SharePoint Performance.” The webcast covered each of SharePoint’s built-in caching mechanisms (object caching, BLOB caching, and page output caching) as well as the Office Web Applications’ cache. I provided a rundown on each mechanism, how it worked, how it could be leveraged, and some watch-outs that came with its use.

The webcast was basically a lightweight version (40 minutes or so) of the longer (75 minute) presentation I like to present at SharePoint Saturday events. It was something of a challenge to squeeze all of the regular session’s content into 40 minutes, and I had to cut some of the material I would have liked to have kept in … but the final result turned-out pretty well.

If you’re interested in seeing the webcast, you can watch it on-demand from the SoS webcast archive. I also posted the slides in the Resources section of this blog.

SharePoint Saturday Cincinnati

On Saturday October 29th, Cincinnati had its first-ever SharePoint Saturday Cincinnati event. The event took place at the Kingsgate Marriott on Goodman Drive (near University Hospital), and it was very well attended – so much so that Stacy Deere and the other folks who organized the event are planning to do so again next year!

Many people from the local SharePoint community came out to support the event, and we had a number of folks from out of town come rolling in as well to help ensure that the event was a big success. I ended up delivering two sessions: my “’Caching-In’ for SharePoint Performance” session and my “SharePoint 2010 Disaster Recovery: New Capabilities, New Possibilities!”

I had a great time at the event, and I’m hoping I’ll be fortunate enough to participate again on the next go ‘round!

New Disaster Recovery WhitePaper

My co-author and good friend John Ferringer and I were hard at work throughout the summer and early Fall putting together a new disaster recovery whitepaper for Idera. The whitepaper is titled “New Features in SharePoint 2010: A Disaster Recovery Love Story,” and it’s a bromance novel that only a couple of goofballs like John and I could actually write …

Okay, there’s actually no romance in it whatsoever (thank heavens for prospective readers – no one needs us doing that to them), but there is a solid chunk of coverage on SharePoint 2010’s new platform capabilities pertaining to disaster recovery. We also review some disaster recovery basics in the whitepaper, cover things that have changed since SharePoint 2007, and identify some new watch-out areas in SharePoint 2010 that could have an impact on your disaster recovery planning.

The whitepaper is pretty substantial at 13 pages, but it’s a good read if you want to understand your platform-level disaster recovery options in SharePoint 2010. It’s a free download, so please grab a copy if it sounds interesting. John and I would certainly love to hear your feedback, as well.

SharePoint Backup Augmentation Cmdlets (SharePointBAC)

Many of my friends in the SharePoint community have heard me talk about some of the projects I’ve wanted to undertake to extend the SharePoint platform. I’m particularly sensitive to the plight of the administrator who is constrained (typically due to lack of resources) to use only the out-of-the-box (OOTB) tools that are available for data protection. While I think the OOTB tools do a solid job in most small and mid-size farms scenarios, there are some clear gaps that need to be addressed.

Since I’d been big on promises and short on delivery in helping these administrators, I finally started on a project to address some of the backup and restore gaps I see in the SharePoint platform. The evolving and still-under-development result is my SharePoint Backup Augmentation Cmdlets (SharePointBAC) project that is available on CodePlex.

With the PowerShell cmdlets that I’m developing for SharePoint 2010, I’m trying to introduce some new capabilities that SharePoint administrators need in order to make backup scripting with the OOTB tools a simpler and more straightforward experience. For example, one big gap that exists with the OOTB tools is that there is no way to groom a backup set. Each backup you create using Backup-SPFarm, for instance, adds to the backups that existed before it. There’s no way to groom (or remove) older backups you no longer want to keep, so disk consumption grows unless manual steps are taken to do something about it. That’s where my cmdlets come in. With Remove-SPBackupCatalog, for example, you could trim backups to retain only a certain number of them; you could also trim backups to ensure that they consume no more disk space (e.g., 100GB) than you’d like.

The CodePlex project is in alpha form right now (it’s brand spankin’ new), and it’s far from complete. I’ve already gotten some great suggestions for what I could do to continue development, though. When I combine those ideas with the ones I already had, I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to shape the project into something truly useful for SharePoint administrators.

If you or someone you know is a SharePoint administrator using the OOTB tools for backup scripting, please check out the project. I’d really love to hear from you!

SharePoint Saturday Denver

As I type this, I’m in Colorado at the close of the third (annual) SharePoint Saturday Denver event. This year’s event was phenomenal – a full two days of SharePoint goodness! Held on Friday November 11th and Saturday November 12th at the Colorado Convention Center, this year’s event was capped at 350 participants for Saturday. A full 350 people signed-up, and the event even had a wait list.

On the first day of the event, I delivered a brand new session that I put together (in Prezi format) titled The Essentials of SharePoint Disaster Recovery. Here’s the amended abstract (and I’ll explain why it’s amended in a second) for the session:

“Are my nightly SQL Server backups good enough?” “Do I need an off-site disaster recovery facility?” “How do I even start the process of disaster recovery planning?” These are just a few of the more common questions that arise when the topic of SharePoint disaster recovery comes up. As with most things SharePoint, the real answer to each question is oftentimes “it depends.” In this business and process-centric session, we will be taking a look at the topic of SharePoint disaster recovery from multiple perspectives: business continuity planner, technical architect, platform owner, and others. Critical concepts and terms will be explained and defined, and an effective process for analyzing and formulating a disaster recovery plan will be discussed. We’ll also highlight some common mistakes that take place when working to build a disaster recovery strategy and how you can avoid them. By the end of this session, you will be armed with the knowledge needed to plan or review a disaster recovery strategy for your SharePoint environment.

The reason I amended the abstract is because the previous abstract for the session didn’t do enough to call out the fact that the presentation is primarily business-centric rather than technically focused. Many of the folks who initially came to the session were SharePoint IT pros and administrators looking for information on backup/restore, mirroring, configuration, etc. Although I cover those items at a high level in this new talk, they’re only a small part of what I discuss during the session.

On Saturday, I delivered my “’Caching-In’ for SharePoint Performance” talk during the first slot of the day. I really enjoy delivering the session; it’s probably my favorite one. I had a solid turn-out, and I had some good discussions with folks both during and after the presentation.

As I mentioned, this year’s event was a two day event. That’s a little unusual, but multi-day SharePoint Saturday events appear to be getting some traction in the community – starting with SharePoint Saturday The Conference a few months back. Some folks in the community don’t care much for this style of event, probably because there’s some nominal cost that participants typically bear for the extra day of sessions. I expect that we’ll probably continue to see more hybrid events, though, because I think they meet an unaddressed need that falls somewhere between “give up my Saturday for free training” and “pay a lot of money for a multi-day weekday conference.” Only time will tell, though.

On the Horizon

Event though 2011 isn’t over yet, I’m slowing down on some of my activities save for SharePointBAC (my new extracurricular pastime). 2012 is already looking like it’s going to be a big year for SharePoint community activities. In January I’ll be heading down to Texas for SharePoint Saturday Austin, and in February I’ll be heading to San Francisco for SPTechCon. I’ll certainly cover those activities (and others) as we approach 2012.

Additional Reading and Resources

Event: SharePoint Saturday Columbus
Company: Idera
Webcast: “Caching-In” for SharePoint Performance
Webcast Slides: “Caching-In” for SharePoint Performance
Location: My blog’s Resources section
Event: SharePoint Saturday Cincinnati
Blog: Stacy Deere and Stephanie Donahue’s “Not Just SharePoint”
SPS Cincinnati Slides: “Caching-In” for SharePoint Performance
SPS Cincinnati Slides: SharePoint 2010 Disaster Recovery: New Capabilities, New Possibilities!
Blog: John Ferringer’s “My Central Admin”
Whitepaper: New Features in SharePoint 2010: A Disaster Recovery Love Story
CodePlex: SharePoint Backup Augmentation Cmdlets (SharePointBAC)
Event: SharePoint Saturday Denver
Tool: Prezi
SPS Denver Slides: The Essentials of SharePoint Disaster Recovery
SPS Denver Slides: “Caching-In” for SharePoint Performance
Event: SharePoint Saturday The Conference
Event: SharePoint Saturday Austin
Event: SPTechCon 2012 San Francisco

The SharePoint Summer Whirlwind Tour

The rest of this summer is a busy one for me, and it is chock-full of SharePoint presentation events. In this blog post, I discuss my upcoming SharePoint Saturday event schedule as well as a webcast I’ll be delivering in the middle of August.

I just finished writing the conclusion for the SharePoint 2010 Disaster Recovery Guide, so it’s safe to say that the marathon writing and revising sessions are nearing an end. Book writing is one of those things that most people don’t do, so it’s hard to describe the feeling that comes when you truly internalize the realization that the light at the end of the tunnel isn’t another oncoming train. To me, it means that I may once again have some free time to spend time with my family, play videogames, take care of some much-needed home network maintenance, and actually work on some cool SharePoint projects.

The end of the book couldn’t have come a moment sooner, either, because it seems that I’m about to launch into what I’m starting to jokingly call my “SharePoint Summer Whirlwind Tour.”

SharePoint Saturday New York

The first stop on my tour is the Big Apple. SharePoint Saturday New York will be held on Saturday, July 31st, at the Microsoft office in Manhattan. The event “sold-out” in almost no time at all, and it is currently wait-listed about 80 people deep based on what I saw from some recent tweets on Twitter.

The event is scheduled with a whopping nine concurrent tracks, so there will be plenty of SharePoint goodness for everyone in attendance. I’ll be presenting on SharePoint disaster recovery for both SharePoint 2007 and SharePoint 2010 with “Saving SharePoint,” so stop in to see me if you want to talk about DR!

Since Idera is sponsoring the event, I’ll also be in and around the Idera booth answering questions, showing off our backup tools, and hopefully meeting some of the local SharePoint community. It should be a lot of fun!

SharePoint Saturday Denver

The week after SharePoint Saturday New York is SharePoint Saturday Denver in (surprise) Denver, Colorado, on August 7th. The folks organizing SharePoint Saturday Denver have planned for six tracks: two for architecture, two for development, one for admins/IT pros, and one for end users/decision makers. I feel fortunate in that I’ll be delivering two presentations in the admin/IT pro track. The first is “Saving SharePoint” (on SharePoint disaster recovery), and the second is titled “’Caching-In’ for SharePoint Performance.”

“’Caching-In for SharePoint Performance” is a relatively new session that I put together a while ago based on a lot of the experience I gained while consulting for a “particular” client, and it dives into the platform caching mechanisms that are built into SharePoint. The abstract sums it up pretty well.

Caching is a critical variable in the SharePoint scalability and performance equation, but it’s one that’s oftentimes misunderstood or dismissed as being needed only in Internet-facing scenarios. In this session, we’ll build an understanding of the caching options that exist within the SharePoint platform and how they can be leveraged to inject some pep into most SharePoint sites. We’ll also cover some sample scenarios, caching pitfalls, and watch-outs that every administrator should know.

Quite a few folks from Idera will be present at the event, and since we’re a sponsor, we’ll have a booth. In between sessions, I’m sure I’ll be milling around in and around the booth if I’m not in another session.

I’m particularly excited about the Denver event because it represents a chance to interact with a portion of the SharePoint community I don’t see or talk to very often. The folks putting on the event are a top-notch group in my mind, and many of the speakers are folks I’ve wanted to meet for some time.

SharePoint Saturday Columbus

The SharePoint Saturday tour concludes for a while (for me, anyway) with SharePoint Saturday Columbus on August 14th, 2010, in Columbus, Ohio. This particular SharePoint Saturday is special to me because I’m a member of the committee that is currently working to put the event together.

We have some fantastic sessions lined up, and I’ll be delivering “Saving SharePoint” in one of the IT pro session slots throughout the day. For those of you who are in and around the Cincinnati, Columbus, and Cleveland areas, I hope you’ll show up for a great day of SharePoint sessions and community connection building! You can sign up for the event with this Eventbrite link.

Idera is a sponsor for the event and will have a booth. I’m sure I’ll be in and around the booth, but being both a speaker and an organizer means that I’ll probably be doing quite a bit of extra running around, too.

Secrets of SharePoint Webcast

“But wait, there’s more!” I’m imagining one of those old made-for-TV gadget commercials from many years ago as I typed that …

The Wednesday after SharePoint Saturday Columbus (August 18th), I’ll be delivering a webcast for Idera as part of their Secrets of SharePoint series. Idera regularly seeks the help of SharePoint community members to give webcasts, and John Ferringer and I actually delivered one of these titled “SharePoint Disaster Recovery Essential Guidelines” back in 2009.

On August 18th, though, I’ll be delivering a new webcast titled “SharePoint 2010 and Your DR Plan: New Capabilities, New Possibilities!” The webcast will focus on new and improved elements in the SharePoint 2010 platform that either simplify or extend disaster recovery planning and implementation options. Here’s the abstract for the webcast:

SharePoint 2010 is here, and many organizations are hard at work building their implementation roadmap. Some organizations are starting fresh with SharePoint 2010 while many others are contemplating a migration strategy from SharePoint 2007. Regardless of how an organization arrives at SharePoint 2010, disaster recovery planning for their SharePoint environment is something that must be included to ensure the protection of their data and the continuity of business operations.

Microsoft made significant enhancements to the disaster recovery landscape with SharePoint 2010, and in this webcast we’ll be taking a good look at many of those of new features. We’ll dive inside enhancements to the existing backup and restore capabilities that were present in the SharePoint 2007 platform to see what has changed and been enhanced. We’ll also look at many of the exciting new capabilities that have been integrated into the SharePoint 2010 platform, such as unattended content database recoveries, SQL Server snapshot integration, and configuration-only backup and restore. By the time we’re done, you will possess a solid understanding of how the disaster recovery landscape has changed for the better with SharePoint 2010.

If you’re free at 1pm EDT (12pm CDT) on August 18th, I encourage you to sign up and listen. Just like the SharePoint Saturday events, there is no charge to attend the webcast. Just sign up and you’re ready to go!

And After That?

After that, I’ll be cooling my jets for a while and taking a much-needed break to remind my kids of what their father looks like. There are many backlogged blog posts I’ve been planning to write, though, so hopefully I’ll be able to start sharing more soon!

Additional Resources and References

Book: SharePoint 2010 Disaster Recovery Guide
Event: SharePoint Saturday New York
Presentation: Saving SharePoint (at SPS NY)
Company: Idera
Event: SharePoint Saturday Denver
Event: SharePoint Saturday Columbus
Sign-up: Eventbrite link for SharePoint Saturday Columbus
Webcast: SharePoint Disaster Recovery Essential Guidelines
Webcast: SharePoint 2010 and Your DR Plan: New Capabilities, New Possibilities!

Upcoming SharePoint Activities (November 2009)

In this post, I discuss events that I’ll be participating in during the month of November. Events include a SharePoint Conference recap presentation for Microsoft, SharePoint Saturday Cleveland, and a webcast for Idera on SharePoint disaster recovery.

November was looking like a pretty busy month for me before this year’s SharePoint Conference (SPC) in Las Vegas, but the excitement about SharePoint 2010 both in and around the conference seems to have ratcheted things up a notch. Here’s where I’ll be and what I’ll be doing (in “order of appearance”) in the month of November:

Microsoft “Best of SPC 2009” Event

Many of the folks who wanted to attend the Microsoft SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas this year weren’t able to so for a variety of reasons. To “share the love” a bit, Microsoft is holding a series of one-day events that brings select sessions from the SPC to cities around the country … or at least around the state of Ohio. Yes, I’m extrapolating a bit with “around the country,” but it’s an educated guess :-)

In any case, I’ll be delivering a session titled What’s New for SharePoint 2010 Administration and Governance to the crowd that will be attending the event at the Microsoft office in Columbus, Ohio, on November 10th. The abstract for the session reads as follows:

SharePoint 2010 includes many new and improved tools for providing a flexible and controlled environment and this session will provide an overview of those innovations.

I caught this session while I was at the SPC, and I found it to be good, solid information for IT professionals. I’m very much looking forward to delivering the content myself!

SharePoint Saturday Cleveland

SharePoint Saturday finally makes its way to Ohio! SharePoint Saturday Cleveland will be held on Saturday, November 14th, at the Embassy Suites on Rockside Woods Blvd. in Independence, Ohio.

John Ferringer and I will be delivering our SharePoint disaster recovery (DR) talk titled “Saving SharePoint.” It will differ a bit from previous presentations on the topic in that we can now include SharePoint 2010 content. After the talk, I’ll be sure to post our slide deck here on my blog.

SPS Cleveland is less than two weeks away, but there are still seats open. As with all SPS events, there’s no charge for those in attendance – all you need to do is show up and take it all in!

“SharePoint Disaster Recovery Essential Guidelines” Webcast

The “week of whirlwind activity” (roughly speaking) will conclude with a webcast for Idera. John and I will be presenting SharePoint Disaster Recovery Essential Guidelines on Wednesday, November 18th, and it will be similar to the SharePoint Saturday presentation we’ve given in the past (and will have given a few days earlier at SPS Cleveland).

Todd Klindt recently presented a DR webcast with Idera; if you saw it, you might be asking “do I really need another DR webcast?” Probably the biggest differences between Todd’s webcast and ours are scope and target audience. I caught Todd’s presentation, and his webcast was aimed more at the solidly SharePoint admin/IT pro crowd. John and I include some of the same content and focus, but our webcast is packaged with more of a lean towards classic DR concepts (RTO, RPO, BCPs, etc.). I would also say that our webcast targets IT decision makers and DR planners as much as it does IT pros, though I feel that both groups will find something of interest in what we have to say.

If our webcast sounds like it would be of interest to you, hop over to Idera’s site and sign up!

Additional Reading and References

Events: Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2009
Events: SharePoint Saturday Cleveland
Company: Idera
Blog: Todd Klindt’s SharePoint Admin Blog
Events: SharePoint Disaster Recovery Essential Guidelines webcast

Tag: Webcasts

Kicking-Off 2012: SharePoint Style