SharePoint Conference 2012 Sessions Review

I have been to the last three SharePoint Conferences. For the 2011 one, I was actually a speaker for my role as the Sr Architect at eBay. You can find the complete post of eval results from that conference here:

https://blogs.architectingconnectedsystems.com/blogs/cjg/archive/2011/10/26/Top-SharePoint-Conference-2011-Sessions-and-Stats.aspx

But since I wasn't a speaker this year (because I have been buried in Government contractor/agency stuff for the past year) I couldn't talk about any of the cool things I have been doing publicly and nor could I post the speaker results to help people find the good sessions. Somewhat bummed about that, but I will have a ton to talk about at the next one!

I recently was reviewing the session PPTs and found some to be not so great, others wonderful and some AMAZING. I love giving credit where credit is due, and pointing out where their can be improvements. This blog post will stay with that common theme. Here's my review of all the SPC12 sessions with a CJG rank from 1-5. 5 being the best. A couple of notes, the rank gives higher weight to things that interest me and are new, the rank gives higher weight for powerpoints that could stand alone and weren't totally reliant on the "video". It is in my opinion that slides should be able to stand on their own! For developer sessions, unfortunately, I was especially hard being that I am from the dev side of the house (so…upfront…sorry if you are on the dev side for low ranking).

Some things I noticed as I reviewed the materials:

Shupps just flat out rocks when it comes to creativity!
The
Product group and the community speakers need to integrate a bit more
of what each person is going to talk about. There was so much overlap
in the sessions that I feel we wasted valuable time slots that could
have focused in on other topics. Apps for SharePoint was the worse
offender. OAuth 2.0 was second, BI was 3rd.
There were some interesting product announcements in the slides that I am looking forward to checking out:

GeoFlow
ACM Server 2013

Even
though I'm not a big branding person (totally functional thinking
only), those were some of the top sessions…maybe an outlier with Ross
and Drisgill though, but definitely not intentional
BI is HOT!
There are more sessions focused on this than anything else…if you
aren't on the train…buy a ticket now, because you have but a few
months left to get on it!
Customer stories really interested
me the most, and if they interest me, they have to interest everyone
else too! We need more of these and less of the PMs doing odd presos
that overlap community MVPs and MCMs that know it better than they do…
Apps
seemed to be pushed a bit much, I like Apps, their is money to be made,
but wow, why so much focus without showing us the why? I think a
classic movie pegs it right on…"Show me the money". Help me, help you
Microsoft….resolve our security concerns, make it personal, then you
will get what you want.

Hope you enjoy the review, it was enlightening for me, hope it is the same for you! As you can see, out of the 240 sessions, there are only 50 (20%) or so that I gave top honors that you should check out no matter what. Out of those, there are 8 that stand out as OUTSTANDING!

Top ranked sessions (in order of my favorite – notice Shupps wins again this year):

SPC006 – Shupps – A Real World Help Desk App End to End – CJG RANK 5 of 5 (Possibly a 6?)
SPC142 – Crockett – Making Fast Sites Faster in SharePoint 2013 – CJG RANK 5 of 5 (Possibly a 6?)
SPC073 – Cohen – Deep Dive on Information Rights Management and SharePoint – CJG RANK 5 of 5 (Possibly a 6?)
SPC172 – Waldbaum – Capacity Planning, Sizing and High Availability for Search in SharePoint 2013 – CJG RANK 5 of 5 (Possibly a 6?)
SPC154 – Groom – Migration Strategies for Search in SharePoint 2013 – CJG RANK 5 of 5 (Possibly a 6?)
SPC119 – Walker – Designing Your SharePoint Server 2013 Enterprise Deployment – CJG RANK 5 of 5 (Possible a 6?)
SPC153 – Vega – Migrating Internet Sites to SP2013 – CJG RANK 5 of 5 (Possibly a 6?)
SPC101- Harbridge – The Keys To A Sustainable SharePoint Strategy – CJG RANK 5 of 5 (Possibly a 6?)
SPC137 – Brandenburg – Certified Records Management in the Cloud – CJG RANK 5 of 5
SPC258 – Ruble – GeoFlow for Microsoft Excel 2013 – CJG RANK 5 of 5
SPC151 – Shupps – Migrating Legacy On-Premise Solutions to SharePoint Online and Windows Azure – CJG RANK 5 of 5
SPC121 – Bar-Caspi – How We Do It: Building & Managing SharePoint Online – CJG RANK 5 of 5
SPC156 – Bischoff – Strategies for Adopting Social Computing Technologies – CJG RANK 5 of 5
SPC120 – Goulet – Windows Azure Media Services – CJG RANK 5 of 5
SPC049 – Larsson – Security Trimming for Search in SharePoint 2013 – CJG RANK 5 of 5
SPC036 – Sanders & Stubbs – Windows Azure IaaS Deep Dive for SharePoint IT Professionals – CJG RANK 5 of 5
SPC080 – Stubbs – Deploying SharePoint Farms on Windows Azure Virtual Machines – CJG RANK 5 of 5
SPC271 – Harbar – Request Management in SharePoint 2013 – CJG RANK 5 of 5
SPC269 – Pisoni – Yammer’s Secret Sauce – CJG RANK 5 of 5
SPC015 – Ross & Drisgill – Creating Well Designed Intranet Sites in SharePoint Online – CJG RANK 5 of 5
SPC047 – Ross & Drisgill – Creating Your Brand in SharePoint 2013 On-Premises or In the Cloud – CJG RANK 5 of 5
SPC155 – Underwood – Mobile Business Intelligence – CJG RANK 5 of 5
SPC104 – Bhargava – Transforming business with SharePoint through role-based productivity & insights – CJG RANK 5 of 5
SPC259 – Aykan – What’s New in Search for SharePoint 2013 – CJG RANK 5 of 5
SPC260 – Kraynak – What's New in Spreadsheet Management for Office and SharePoint – CJG RANK 5 of 5
SPC136 – Hillier – JavaScript Bets Practices for Developing Apps – CJG RANK 5 of 5
SPC095 – Allred – Effective Search Deployment and Operations in SharePoint 2013 – CJG RANK 5 of 5
SPC194 – Edge – Planning for the Lifecycle of Your SharePoint 2013 Website – CJG RANK 5 of 5
SPC118 -Swan – How to write a cloud-hosted app for SharePoint with Ruby on Rails – CJG RANK 5 of 5
SPC094 – Mahabala – Ecommerce solutions with Dynamics for Retail and SharePoint 2013 – CJG RANK 5 of 5
SPC065 – Robinson – Customizing the way SharePoint 2013 looks – CJG RANK 5 of 5
SPC267 – Adenouga – Working with User Profiles in SharePoint Server 2013 – CJG RANK 5 of 5
SPC195 – Roth – PowerShell 3.0 Administration – CJG RANK 5 of 5
SPC252 – Banerjee – What's New for BCS and Duet in SharePoint Server 2013 – CJG RANK 5 of 5
SPC067 – Barvo – Deep Dive on building apps like a SharePoint ECM dev – CJG RANK 5 of 5
SPC020 – Jamison – Best Practices for Records Management with SharePoint – CJG RANK 5 of 5
SPC098 – Sy – Fast Track Your PMO withProject Online – CJG RANK 5 of 5
SPC261 – Mamidipaka – What’s new in Visio 2013 – CJG RANK 5 of 5
SPC254 – Boyd – What's New for Developers in Project 2013 – CJG RANK 5 of 5
SPC043 – Wang – Configuring and Managing Access Services in SharePoint 2013 – CJG RANK 5 of 5
SPC082 – Holme – SharePoint 2013 Installation Tips, Tricks and Scripts – CJG RANK 5 of 5
SPC246 – Gur-esh – Using jQuery and Display Templates to create modern Web Sites – CJG RANK 5 of 5
SPC052 – Prussak – Upgrading Revlon to SharePoint and Project Server 2013 – CJG RANK 5 of 5
SPC056 – Adams – Next Gen Public Sites – Jones Lang LaSalle – CJG RANK 5 of 5
SPC058 – Beresford – NASDAQ OMX Directors Desk and SharePoint Integration – CJG RANK 5 of 5
SPC074 – Wisnowski – Implementing security for your BI applications – CJG RANK 5 of 5
SPC083 – Zlot – Designing & Building Your Yammer Community – CJG RANK 5 of 5
SPC034 – Gatimu – Building Windows Phone Apps with SharePoint – CJG RANK 5 of 5
SPC096 – Baginski – Enhancing Reach and Accessibility with New Mobility Features in SharePoint 2013 – CJG RANK 5 of 5
SPC086 – Hopkins – Developing Advanced BI Visualizations with Visio & SharePoint in Office 365 with Azure – CJG RANK 5 of 5
****SPC088 – Howard – Developing Hybrid apps for SharePoint – CJG RANK 5 of 5

All the sessions reviewed:

SPC001 – Nakashima (MSFT) – 0 to 60 with apps for Office and SharePoint using Napa and Visual Studio 2012 – CJG Rank 2 of 5

Half of the presentation is about Office App development the other half SharePoint App Development. I'm not sure that after looking at the slides I could honestly say we'd be going 60MPH after goign through them. I'd more say we might have made it to 35MPH? But then again, it could have been in Kilometers? It was a very intro slide deck to Apps and the graphical content could have used a lot more ummpff. You would have to watch the video to get more context as to the what and why of the slides. The demos were really simple and again, only scratched the surface of what you can really do with the App Model.

SPC002 – Chou – 10 Tips for Building Great Apps – CJG Rank 3 of 5

A high level look at Apps for SharePoint and althought it says "10", they try to give "20", but I don't really few them all as very valuable tips so they really did 10 or less.

SPC004 – Ray (MSFT) – From adoption to business value with SharePoint 2013 – CJG Rank 4 of 5

Geez…information overload? Lots of slides,lots of information, not easily digestible. Still, the information is valuable for those looking to make a case for moving to SP2013 on-premise or online.

SPC005 – Hillier – A Primer in HTML5 and JavaScript – CJG Rank 4 of 5

You just can't get enough JavaScript these days, combined with HTML5, this is great stuff. Although a bit basic, it did cover some very important parts of the latest versions and features of JavaScript. Combined with the App Model and Client Side librariesREST, this is the development path of the future (whether on premise or in the cloud). I would have liked to have seen some references to supplemental materials to show examples of each (or a link to his examples), but he did a lot in the demos that you don't get to see in the PPTs.

SPC006 – Shupps – A Real World Help Desk App End to End – CJG RANK 5 of 5

Shupps humor stands out immediately. It is always awesome to work in some fun elements to a session, this, he did. Although not overly technical, it did break the points up of App development and deployment into very awesome images with a "Yoda" like phrase on every make a point slide. This is what presenting should be! Great Job Shupps!

SPC007 – Charran – SharePoint 2013 Product Line Architecture and Strategy – CJG RANK 4 of 5

This session is all about the up coming SharePoint online experience called PLA (ref slide 32) . It is supposedly the "perfect balance between scalability, reliability, and security" (ref slide 35). For me, its about the big accounts, the ones that have company proprietary data or classified (secret op secret) that cannot be left to leave the building or network. A SharePoint Online or PLA will very rarely be used in these scenarios. For the small mom and pops that don't have the tech resources to make SharePoint.NET scream with profits, this is great, but that's not my focus and that's not where money is at for consultants like myself. That being said, it is full of interesting tidbits about SharePoint at a marketplace level that are good fillers for our own PPTs. It would have caught my attention if they could help alleviate my fears around security so it only gets a 4.

SPC009 – Donovan – SharePointBI – CJG RANK 3 of 5

This was a session that covered some of the new items in the Microsoft BI Stack. I have to say it does have some pretty sweet tidbits in it (slides 11-13). I didn't like the overlap with session SPC001, another high level…hey look at Office Apps type of content. No need for this. The demos were neat, but the "Dashboard in the Cloud" was a bit over the top. For data that you may want to reference that isn't all that important internally, you can put it in Azure (or whereever), but again, I just don't see people putting these crazy super sensitive company proprietary data on SQL Azure and referencing it from PowerPivot spreadsheets on an internal SharePoint server (at least IBM won't do it anyway or any corporations that have Petabytes of data that they consume and build massive DW with several levels of granularity or cubes on). I did however like the facts on slide #3

SPC010 – Arenas – SharePoint hosted apps – CJG RANK 3 of 5

Another session on Apps for SharePoint, only this was focused on the "SharePoint" Hosted option. Again lots of overlap with content of all the other Apps for SharePoint sessions (Client and REST APIs). The only notable difference was there was some interesting coverage of the UX experience on slides 21-24.

SPC011 – Petrosky – Assessing Customer Environments: Preparing to Upgrade or Migrate to SharePoint 2010/SharePoint 2013 – CJG RANK 4 of 5

Since upgrades and migration is one of my core specialties, I can appreciate what Petrosky was doing with these slides. They were very well thought out! I had similar content in the eBay presentation last year and the only reason I didn't get it 5 of 5 was that I felt it could have gone a bit deeper into some of the areas that were brought up. Overall, very nice!

SPC012 – Lukawiecki – Attractive Business Intelligence – CJG RANK 2 of 5

Well, not sure what to say about this one. Vendor presentation with "check out the videos" and some discount codes. Then lots of demos that I'm sure showed some neat stuff, but when you just look at the PPTs…well…not great. Put some facts about the demo you are going to show in the PPT!

SPC013 – Holme – Automating SharePoint Governance and Management – CJG RANK 4 of 5

Even thought it didn't have much from a technical standpoint, the robust coverage of governance from the definition and abstractness was well played in the slides. They stand on their own and provide you just a couple of thoughts towards the end of technical implementation examples. Since I have locked down many a SharePoint server from a technical standpoint, I would have liked to have seen more of the "automation" part of the title. But great content none-the-less!

SPC014 – Fitzmaurice – Nintex: Workflow for Everyone in the SharePoint 2013 Era – CJG RANK 3 of 5

Really liked the opening slides of what's not in 2010, then showing same slide of what's not in 2013, then showing whats in 2013, that was VERY slick. After that, the slides went all over. Even though I know they can have a raging party, still gotta only give em a 3 for that. Again, PPTs that are more stand alone in their information will help drive sales!

SPC015 – Ross & Drisgill – Creating Well Designed Intranet Sites in SharePoint Online – CJG RANK 5 of 5

The PPTs were mostly well thought out and the pictures drove some of the points home. There were a few random slides that lacked the opening gumption, and could have been rounded out more, but overall. This presentation rocked! It's funny…slide 31 didn't make it into the thoughts of SharePoint product teams members…3-click rule…or better yet <3-click rule that was implemented in 2010 but lost in 2013

SPC016 – Gideon – Deep Dive – Social Architecture – CJG RANK 5 of 5

It started off slow, and I didn't get the warm fuzzies, but then it sped up REALLY fast. Wow, lots of great content and info on the new architecture of MySites. It amazing mimics the design of the guys from Arrini.com, who I gave a top recommendation of product vendors from the Conference.

SPC017 – Fourrage – Best Practices for using SharePoint and Media to Connect Knowledge and Communities within your Organization – CJG RANK ? of 5

Hmm, whatever this was, it looks cool and someone is sure proud of it, but I can't decipher enough about it from the PPTs to give it any type of score…too bad…

SPC018 – Harmetz & Rosenfeld – Best Practices for ECM in the Cloud – CJG RANK 4 of 5

I really liked the tidbits on the SharePoint Online limits, there were two slides that covered this and they were great! I'm sure the demo was great for Demo Trend 1&2 and the last demo trend would be interesting also. Still, the PPTs alone though can't stand by themselves. So even though I like where they went with this, they don't get a 5…

SPC019 – Levitz – Best Practices for Designing Websites with SharePoint 2013 – CJG RANK 2 of 5

Just when I thought the slides were getting good, they jumped to reference other sessions. The mobile story is great in SharePoint 2013, I have tons of labs on it (even though you need RemoteFX to do most of them) and they should have went into more depth on this (and maybe they did in the videodemos). There were a few slides that were easily debatable from an experience standpoint (like slide 3). The best slide in the deck is slide 6. The rest…well made my brain wonder where I was half the time, that's why it gets a 2.

SPC020 – Jamison – Best Practices for Records Management with SharePoint – CJG RANK 5 of 5

Creative…very creative, I love Bob. Full of information, lots of good tidbits. Slides can live on their own, even does a good job at promoting Jornata…without promoting Jornata. Excellent presentation!

SPC022 – Keyes – Better Brand Management through SharePoint 2010 – CJG RANK 5 of 5

I LOVE customer references, espcially the big customers like KRAFT. I thoroughly enjoyed how they branded each of the product lines. This is a similar approach to what we did a eBay with the differenet divisions like ebay, PayPal, XCommerence…etc. Branding people…eat your hearts out!

SPC025 – Roth – Bringing SharePoint to the Desktop – CJG RANK 3 of 5

There was a lot of information here. Tons actually! The only thing missing was details for each bullet point. When I look at the slides I can decipher the information and make the connections, but when someone with less knowledge browses the PPTs later, its hard to see what the bullets means without looking up more detailed information on technet or google. I'd also like to see some more "fun" incorporated into the slides (ref. shupps and Jamison), otherwise, I'm thinking death by powerpoint maybe? Again, great, wonderful content that has lots of value!

SPC026 – Greenberg (MSFT) – Apps for SharePoint in 60s – CJG RANK 2 of 5

Hmm, not exactly sure what these slides were supposed to accomplish. I know it was for Access Services, but if it was a single table with firstname, lastname to show how the UI builds the insert, modify, delete and search forms. I may have to scream. Isn't the session supposed to be at least 60 minutes? Why build an app in 60s? Room for improvement here me thinks.

SPC028 – Campbell – Building apps with the SharePoint 2013 UX platform – CJG RANK 5 of 5

Highly technical, very dev…very cool!

SPC029 – Miller – Building Autohosted Apps for SharePoint 2013 – CJG RANK 4 of 5

And just when I thought things would die down, another awesome dev session. This is probably one of the best session on App Development that I have seen. They discuss the SharePoint Store app for recognition and how it was built. I really wish someone would do a presentation on how to build an on-premise OAuth application that integrates with SharePoint and has nothing to do with the cloud.

SPC030 – Baginski – Building Cloud hosted apps for SharePoint with PHP and node.JS – CJG RANK 5 of 5

I'm thinking this is the one and only session that shows how to do non-cloud hosted apps (even though his example is cloud hosted) of building an application that can make OAuth calls to a SharePoint server. The thing is, I still haven't seen a simple on-premise OAuth application with NO ACS involved. Why is this so hard or forbidden to do? Despite my "confusion" around this, Todd jammed on the content and the slides. He lays the framework for what I am trying to do. But BCS is still….well…you know what…

SPC031 – Follette – Building end-to-end apps for SharePoint with Windows Azure and Windows 8 – CJG RANK 4 of 5

This was kind of a hodge-podge of development topics. Guess that why the topic was end to end. It had elements of Apps, Mobile push notification, windows 8, REST, and a couple of other things. It definitely accomplished the end to end at a high level, but I don't see how you can go very deep with all those topics in such a short time. Overall, to do this session you must know a a lot, to digest it…you must also know a lot!

SPC032 – Chou (MSFT) – Building Out a Great App UX – CJG RANK 4 of 5

This was a unique take on Office Apps that I didn't see in any of the other sessions. Much more in-depth detail about the UX design of an App. Even though I don't ever see myself building an Office App, for those that will, this is a great session.

SPC033 – Summers – Search-Driven Windows 8 Apps with SharePoint 2013 – CJG RANK 4 of 5

I'm not sure why the "Windows 8" part was on the title. This should have been more like developing SharePoint Search applications (no matter what the client is). Pretty sure the Windows 8 was added as marketing fluff. Overall the coverage of the search REST api was well done. You can reference my REST blog post to view the architecture of how the development team did REST, and I'm sure there will be more API endpoint exposed in future cumulative updatesservice packs.

SPC034 – Bhardvaj – Building Windows Phone Apps with SharePoint – CJG RANK 5 of 5

GREAT
presentation. Having built several mobile labs for the ACS development
course I can tell you that this session covers all the basics.
Wonderful session!

SPC035 – Gatimu – How Office 365 Can Help Transform Your Business – CJG RANK 2 of 5

Not really sure where these PPTs were going or where they took me. I saw a lot of SharePoint marketing, but not anything about Office 365?

SPC036 – Sanders & Stubbs – Windows Azure IaaS Deep Dive for SharePoint IT Professionals – CJG RANK 5 of 5

Very well laid out set of slides that does an excellent job of describing the services provided by Microsoft Azure. Although it is more expensive, it has done a great job of catching up with Amazon and I'm confident it will pass Amazon in features someday (but they will be in a following type of position rather than leading – have you seen the Amazon tabs lately?).

SPC037 – Jaminson – Charting Your SharePoint 2013 Journey: Leverage your existing SharePoint investment – CJG RANK 4 of 5

Another set of cool powerpoints. Although once you have seen Bob, you don't think he as funny the second time 🙂 Still good content, good organization!

SPC038 – Crane (MSFT) – Choosing the Right Project Management Solution for Today and the Future – CJG RANK 2 of 5

Another set of…what was I supposed to get from these PPTs set of PPTs. I didn't see any take home value in these PPTs. Possibly the video was better?

SPC039 – Vega – Claims Based Authentication – Migrating to the new SharePoint 2013 Identity Model – CJG RANK 5 of 5

Umm…can you say…AWESOME? Yeah, this session rocks! All about how to migrate to 2013 claims from 2010 windows classic auth. Very nice!

SPC040 – Evans – Client Side Rendering in SharePoint Server 2013 – CJG RANK ? of 5 (but likely 4+)

Well…in typical Kirk fashion…didn't give us any slides to go off of…I did hear good things about this session from quite a few people…and given that he gives me such a hard time on twitter, I'm pretty sure he did great.

SPC041 – Caplinger – KnowledgeLake: ECM on SharePoint 2013 – 13 Ways to Make it Rock! – CJG RANK 3 of 5

I wasn't really sure where I was going with these PPTs, until the very last one. Slide 18 is a good guiding slide, even if the rest derailed me.

SPC042 – Muti – Compelling Data Visualization with Power View in Office and SharePoint – CJG RANK 3 of 5

The PPTs don't give PowerView justice. I'm sure the session was good with the demos, but with just the slides, not a homerun.

SPC043 – Wang – Configuring and Managing Access Services in SharePoint 2013 – CJG RANK 5 of 5

This was actually a very nice session on Access Services. It started off slow, but then really started dropping in some good content tidbits. I especially liked the Installing and Configuring part, priceless!

SPC044 – Raghavan – Crawl and Index all Enterprise Content with SharePoint 2013 Search – CJG RANK 4 of 5

This was good content, nothing I hadn't seen already, but good none-the-less. I would have liked to seen more references for building the custom connectors or even some best practices around that. But I'm sure that in itself is a complete session.

SPC045 – Kim – Custom Workflow Activities& Actions for SharePoint 2013 – CJG RANK 4 of 5

I think this topic has been beaten to death over the years (I should know, I was the first to build an encryption and decryption activity using Enterprise Library back in SP2007), but the new WF4.0 framework does add some extra steps into the equation that were discussion in slide 14. Also like that Kim put references at the end of the slides…good job!

SPC046 – Jimenez – Creating apps for Excel, Word and PowerPoint – CJG RANK ? of 5

Wait…weren't we at a SharePoint conference (oh…right..SharePoint is under the Office group)? Didn't even bother…

SPC047 – Ross & Drisgill – Creating Your Brand in SharePoint 2013 On-Premises or In the Cloud – CJG RANK 5 of 5

So how is is that Ross and Drisgill get all the cool topics? Wow…all I can say is WOW…great job!

SPC048 – Halstead – CRM BI and Workflow tracking with Microsoft Visio – CJG RANK 3 of 5

I'm sure the demos had to have been great, on simply the merits of the PPTs, not much here for me. Maybe for you?

SPC049 – Larsson – Security Trimming for Search in SharePoint 2013 – CJG RANK 5 of 5

Umm…can you say "SUPER-CAN-YOU-SHOW-ME-SOME-MORE-FREAKIN-COOLNESS"??? Oh yeah, this will be huge for 2013. This was possible in FAST Search, but the JAVA API was such a pain in the ass…

SPC052 – Prussak – Upgrading Revlon to SharePoint and Project Server 2013 – CJG RANK 5 of 5

Did I say I LOVE customer sessions? No? I LOVE CUSTOMER SESSIONS! I understand MSFT takes some risk on if the presenter will be good or not, but come on, real world beats theory any day! Wait did they put a picture of Vanialla Ice slide 21? Yeah…yeah they did. ==>CJG Fun Fact: I have done 12 migrations (project server 2003, 2007×2, 2010, SP2003, SP2007x3, SP2010, Oracle, PHPx2) for one customer in the last year…that's one per month! I love upgradingmigrating…

SPC053 – Smith – Case Study: Booz Allen – CJG RANK 4 of 5

Wait…didn't we do this one already? Oh this is about how they use Yammer now…the screen shots do look seriously cool, be sure to check them out. I am impressed they are managing to keep in front of the bell curve.

SPC054 – Mobasseri – How eBay built one integrated social network on SharePoint – CJG RANK 4 of 5

Great stats about eBay. Definitely things you wouldn't have gotten in public if Ramin wasn't at the conference. Ramin has always been a very forward thinker and his slides show it. I'd like to have seen more examples of the implemented parts in the slides, but I know how difficult it is to get legal sign of on those things. I will say…eBay was one of the first Yammer customers and had a big role in exposing Yammer to Microsoft (before the acquisition). So similar to Booz Allen, you'll get info on working with Yammer.

SPC055 – Hoehn – How Fresenius Medical Care migrated Dashboards to 2013 – CJG RANK 4 of 5

Oh yeah…something very close to me at the moment. Dashboards in SharePoint! I'm moving lots of workbooks into SharePoint to implement CMMI Level 5 at the moment…its hard! As far as the session, pay particular attention to slide 11, you'll need it later! Slide 13 is an awesome comparison of how dashboards render on mobile devices. Notice slide 17, last bullet point…good info.

SPC056 – Adams – Next Gen Public Sites – Jones Lang LaSalle – CJG RANK 5 of 5

Wow, very well thought out and presented set of slides. Excellent in all respects!

SPC058 – Beresford – NASDAQ OMX Directors Desk and SharePoint Integration – CJG RANK 5 of 5

Again…how can you go wrong with real customer stories of things they have done and are doing? How SharePoint automated one of their work processes…sweet

SPC060 – Wilson – How United uses taxonomy to drive procurement – CJG RANK 5 of 5

Another awesome customer story! Very innovative way of building a procurement application in SharePoint.

SPC061 – Benjamin – Kroger Launches Business Social Networking with Yammer and SharePoint 2010 – CJG RANK 5 of 5

Kroger's social journey with Yammer. There was some pretty juicy slides (7-9) in here!

SPC063 – Yuceturk – Customizing Search Experiences in SP2013 – CJG RANK 5 of 5

Can you say "Display Templates" and "Result Types"? Oh yeah, these rock! Great coverage of a great new feature in SharePoint Search.

SPC064 – Preston – Customizing Sites and Pages in SharePoint 2013 – CJG RANK 4 of 5

Can you say client side rendering (CSR)? If you can't, then you will after reviewing this session. CSR has some amazing possibilities as demoed in Wes's session. It is a must learn for devs! Could have used some more work on the PPTs, but the info was awesome.

SPC065 – Robinson – Customizing the way SharePoint 2013 looks – CJG RANK 5 of 5

The most through coverage of the new theming architecture for SharePoint sites I have seen! PPTs rock!

SPC066 – Myers – Data Modeling and Reporting for the Business User with Excel and SharePoint – CJG RANK 4 of 5

All about PowerPivot and PowerView. There are some really good pieces of information in here that you won't see in other sessions!

SPC067 – Barvo – Deep Dive on building apps like a SharePoint ECM dev – CJG RANK 5 of 5

Yet another Apps presentation…but…perhaps this one goes a bit farther than the others. There is coverage of Remote Event Receivers, however it is somewhat misleading in their "use". You can use these on-premise to make remote calls to other applications that implement the interface. You just need to remove the TokenManager part and forget about any OAuth. This session may just have cleared up the pieces I was missing when doing on-premise OAuth (using the appregnew.aspx page). For that, it ranks high in my list of SharePoint App sessions!

SPC068 – Gonzalez – Deep Dive on Integrating SharePoint Metadata with other Metadata Stores – CJG RANK 4 of 5

If you don't have much experience with Managing Managed Metadata Terms from a Dev standpoint, this session shows you both the server and client object model calls you can use to both populate, sync and tag items in libraries. Great intro, with some more advanced "think-about-gotchas" when working with the term store.

SPC069 – Summers – Making Your Search Social with SharePoint 2013 – CJG RANK 3 of 5

Well, definitely cool search topics, but way too high level and somewhat fragmented. Would have preferred to learn how Search uses the social aspects of following objects to enhance the search experience.

SPC070 – Bortlik – Deep Dive on Managing Enterprise Content Types At Scale – CJG RANK 4 of 5

This was a great to the point, well laid out session about content types. Perfect for any beginner that has never had to deal with managing content types in the past. Very well though out slides. Jornata guys are one fire!

SPC071 – Lindhorst – Building Apps for SharePoint with Access 2013: A deeper dive – CJG RANK 3 of 5

This session didn't need to exist. It had some good content and not sure it was really a dev session…it really could have been rolled up with the other Access Services session SPC043 and call it "Business".

SPC072 – Stickler – Deep Dive on the Capabilities of SharePoint Online's New Public Website – CJG RANK ? of 5

Not really enough content in the slides to judge whether they did a good job showing off the public website aspects. There was one slide that had some good info (#5)

SPC073 – Cohen – Deep Dive on Information Rights Management and SharePoint – CJG RANK 5 of 5 (Possibly a 6?)

I think I was just sold on SharePoint Online, just with this session alone! IRM in the cloud? For free? Simple to setup? Simple to use? Wha??? Are you kidding me? This has to be one of the by far coolest features EVER. Ivan Sanders mentioned this to me a few weeks ago, but I was a bit skeptical…now I see the light! WoW!

SPC074 – Wisnowski – Implementing security for your BI applications – CJG RANK 5 of 5

A-w-e-s-o-m-e. Very informative information on the new security model of SSRS and SharePoint 2013. The changes are welcomed! If you are doing BI, this is a MUST ATTENDREAD session!

SPC076 – Mikalsen – Deliver Adaptive and Personalized Experiences with SharePoint 2013 – CJG RANK 3 of 5

I have always loved the concept of using search and analytics together, ever since it was patented by Amazon by the way. But you can see it everywhere now. eBay uses it to suggest other items you might be interested in. I see the high level topics are discussed here, but I didn't see any specifics about how to do it technically using the out of the box components. That really would have made the presentation stellar!

SPC077 – Richard – Customer Showcase: Deliver Australia Pty Ltd- CJG RANK 4 of 5

How one customer used Visio, SharePoint Online and Azure to implement a business process. Always have to love customer stories!

SPC078 – Heide – Delivering Winning Projects in SharePoint With Microsoft Project – CJG RANK 3 of 5

Not a lot of meat in these slides. You'd have to watch the session video I guess…I'm thinking from the slides you can decipher what you will get though. Maybe stick with Dux sessions?

SPC079 – Holm – Demo Extravaganza: Internet sites with SharePoint 2013 – CJG RANK 4 of 5

Very cool examples of public internet sites running SharePoint 2013! They only bad part about them is that most of these sites also expose the /_vti_bin/lists.asmx end point. This is bad people!

SPC080 – Stubbs – Deploying SharePoint Farms on Windows Azure Virtual Machines – CJG RANK 5 of 5

I'm going to crown Paul Stubbs the king of SharePoint in Azure…umm…yeah…just did. He did two killer Azure sessions and they were not simple load a VM and off you go type of thing. Well played!

SPC081 – Gideon – Deploying Social in the Enterprise – CJG RANK 4 of 5

This was a very nice overview of the My SiteSocial pieces of SharePoint 2013. Not too high level, didn't get too deep, but had juuussstt enough! Not sure the title matches the content, but their were some nice tidbits in slides 28 & 29

SPC082 – Holme – SharePoint 2013 Installation Tips, Tricks and Scripts – CJG RANK 5 of 5

Dan always does a good job on his slides. Very methodical he is! I did love the addition of the SPEnterpriseAdmin account. The "God" account. That was a new slide. But Dan also worked in some new content around multiple farms (dev, qa, prod, etc). I use this in every customer I go consult for, it is dead on! He nailed the buggy-ness in the install pre-reqs…that is a pain. There is one area where I think he gave out his production SharePoint 2013 key…try it and see??? I especially like the shout out on slide 105 🙂

SPC083 – Zlot – Designing & Building Your Yammer Community – CJG RANK 5 of 5

Wow…my favorite quote from the slides…"Its Yammertime". Coors really loves yammer…see why in their slides! Slide 32 is awesome…"The role of a community manager". Yammer and beer…hmm…guess you can't say anything bad about that!

SPC084 – Raja – Developer's Guide to Integrating Microsoft Dynamics CRM & SharePoint 2013 – CJG RANK ? of 5

Don't know enough about Dynamics CRM and SharePoint to be able to confidently judge these slides. So, judge for yourself!

SPC086 – Hopkins – Developing Advanced BI Visualizations with Visio & SharePoint in Office 365 with Azure – CJG RANK 5 of 5

Wow, the title is a mouthful…and that's not something Stacy Draper said! This slide got me really excited about Visio Services, more so than any other session PPTs. The slides can stand by themselves and makes you want to click the links to learn more. Very well done!

SPC087 – Delano – Developing and Managing a BI Semantic Model – CJG RANK ? of 5

Ummm…another one of those…I have only 5 slides everything will be demos type of sessions. Not a fan, but maybe the session is good?

SPC088 – Howard – Developing Hybrid apps for SharePoint – CJG RANK 5 of 5

This session is exactly what I was hoping I would not see when it comes to Apps for SharePoint in an on-premise fashion It validated everything I knew to be true in my previous blog posts. Only S2S is supported on-premise and even then the bearer header in the HTTP is large than the NTLM header would be. What is the point of this? Seriously? This pissed me off more than anything…however…technically, these slides are great, information is solid and it told me what I didn't want to hear. I can't ding the presenter for presenting on something dumb and since it told me what I needed…I guess it gets a 5 (although the content behind it deserves a 1). A conversation with Howard is on the top on my list now!

SPC089 – Chung – Developing SharePoint Workflows with SharePoint Designer 2013 and Visio Pro 2013 – CJG RANK 4 of 5

Slide 12 and 13…enough said

SPC090 – McCarthy – Building Yammer Solutions in SharePoint and Yammer – CJG RANK 4 of 5

Not sure what's up with the title, why Yammer twice? The content was interesting. Never realized that Yammer has an app model of its own. It makes me wonder whats going to happen to those apps moving forward?

SPC092 – vanWyk – K2 and SharePoint 2013 – CJG RANK 4 of 5

Lots of customer references about K2 and how it decreases the time for a particular process.

SPC093 – Krippner – Document Management and Collaboration – CJG RANK 3 of 5

I thought the slides were light, however there was one good one (#5).

SPC094 – Mahabala – Ecommerce solutions with Dynamics for Retail and SharePoint 2013 – CJG RANK 5 of 5

DAMN…if I was an investor in MSFT stock, this slide would make me buy more. This is an insane tribute to how Microsoft has (over a long period of time), really started to integrate the products they have acquired and make them have an insane amount of value OOB. These are the slides that Ballmer should be presenting…the integration strategy across product lines and how it will make you money! Outstanding session.

SPC095 – Allred – Effective Search Deployment and Operations in SharePoint 2013 – CJG RANK 5 of 5

This has to be the BEST set of slides on managing SharePoint 2013 search I have seen to date. Very informative, easy to follow. It has it all. I have to admit, there were a few things I will take from this and roll into the upcoming MSPress books!

SPC096 – Baginski – Enhancing Reach and Accessibility with New Mobility Features in SharePoint 2013 – CJG RANK 5 of 5

If their had to be a winner of session around mobility. Todd took it. Lots of information at both a high and low level. Well thought out and organized. Very nice session. Good job Todd!

SPC097 – Morton – Developing apps for SharePoint 2013 with Visual Studio 2012 – CJG RANK 3 of 5

Another Apps for SharePoint session. This one was too high level for me and the topics were covered in other sessions. I can see the value if the other session were during more important and high value speaker times and they just needed another one to help bring people up to speed. I wouldn't have attended this.

SPC098 – Sy – Fast Track Your PMO withProject Online – CJG RANK 5 of 5

Slide 22 is priceless!!! I can say that Dux only knows a couple of things. 1) How to dress like Psy…but maybe not dance like him 2) How to run a project like an Intel CPU knows how to run assembly code!!! The slides have high level valuable information on running projects and making fun of the status quo. He has made a name for himself and it is his right to do so when it comes to Project Management.

SPC099 – Devendorf – Moving Legacy Data/Systems to SharePoint/SQL Azure with Access 2013 (Lotus Notes/MDB/Excel etc…) – CJG RANK 3 of 5

There were a lot of Access Services sessions. Access has been filled with a new life force…if only we could get Shupps to promote it with his #SPYoda karma then it would really grow wings. Possible they need a lot of Red Bull? The only interesting slides here were the ones on Lotus Notes migration. Yeah, you can move the data over, but the Lotus script around the data makes it much more difficult than what is conveyed. I have to give a shout out to @pistachioApps here…why migrate to Access when you can leave it where it is and still work with it? BCS…you have a problem…

SPC101- Harbridge – The Keys To A Sustainable SharePoint Strategy – CJG RANK 5 of 5 (possible a 6)

Oh yeah…#shareBeiber…I have to say…when it comes to AIIM stuff, he has to be one of the more passionate people I know. But make it Selena Gomez and I'm sure he'd forget about it in a second (think he implied this in slide 5)! But then to be serious for a moment…you see some of his humor on slide 27. Pay attention to slide 29…this happens everywhere and is the first time I have seen someone put it in a slide! Point made on slide 33. Then you see Richard throw down one of the basic principles in teaching…tell them once, them tell them twice…then tell them a third time. He does this in such a masterful way and each time it is the same, but yet a tad bit different…#sharebeiber…you outdid yourself on this one!

SPC102 – Bray – Gathering Requirements: Asking the Right Questions for Building a SharePoint 2013 Environment – CJG RANK 4 of 5

Shannon holds true to his title. He has so many valuable questions that you should ask yourself before upgradingmigrating to SharePoint 2013. If you can't answer all these questions, then you need to put your upgrademigration on hold! Would like to have seen more "answers" to the questions that were posed in the slides (I'm sure he covered them in the video)…and he will definitely cover them in his upcoming book!

SPC103 – Bortlik – Get Started with Social Adoption using SharePoint 2013's Cross Farm Services – CJG RANK 4 of 5

Oh my…I learned something I didn't know in slide 21 and 22 of this session. Check it out. And you should learn this because Shannon Bray will drill you on it!!!

SPC104 – Bhargava – Transforming business with SharePoint through role-based productivity & insights – CJG RANK 5 of 5

This is a CEOCIO level session. It really hits home to those abstract ideas of what drives a manufacturing company. I really liked that WindChill was brought up in one of the slides at the top level. This was one of the most realistic PPT slides I reviewed out of all of them. This was focused at a high level business drivers level. For any C-level, they would say this session was the best of them all at SPC. It had nothing technical, but it hit home with me as I'm at a government contractor that manufactures "gadgets" for the US Government. Wonderful presentation!

SPC105 – Mazner – Getting the Most out of SharePoint for Small Businesses and Professionals – CJG RANK 2 of 5

What in the world was this session all about??? I have no clue…

SPC107 – Studer – Making SharePoint Part of your Enterprise Information Infrastructure – CJG RANK 3 of 5

A typical vendor presentation…not like Jornata's. I'm sure they have a great solution.

SPC108 – Epstein (MSFT) – Governance for SharePoint 2013 Customizations – CJG RANK 1 of 5

I did not see the point of this session given the other sessions. Not impressed. No constructive criticism for this one other than it should never have happened…

SPC110 – Holm – Grow your Business Online with SharePoint's Adaptive Experiences – CJG RANK 2 of 5

Ok…not sure what happened…two bad ones in a row. Not as bad as the last one…but damn.

SPC111 – Baer – High Availability Solutions with SharePoint Server 2013 – CJG RANK 4 of 5

What can you say about Bill other than he is the "future" of SharePoint? We can say so much about the past, but Bill is the center of the universe when it comes to Microsoft and SharePoint. He is one of the most helpful, genuine people you will ever meet. And on top of it…he knows his stuff more than anyone else! Bill did the keynote last year around high-availability and I would have loved to see more of those types of things in his PPTs.

SPC112 – Winterbottom – Customer Showcase: How Clifford Chance, one of the world's largest law firms, has bet its ECM strategy on SharePoint – CJG RANK ? of 5

Another customer session. Not much in the PPTs so you would have to watch the video to really get anything out of it

SPC113 – Homann – How SharePoint 2013 and Dynamics for Retail Play Together to Deliver Unique Business Value – CJG RANK 2 of 5

Seems like a very dumbed down version of the awesome SPC094 session…why two?

SPC115 – Salamatov – Building Apps for Outlook – CJG RANK 2 of 5

Office? Grr…I want SharePoint

SPC116 – Stallo – Building Modern Business Applications for SharePoint 2013 with LightSwitch – CJG RANK ? of 5

Nothing in the slides…you have to watch the video.

SPC117 – Allred & Molnar – How to Manage and Troubleshoot Search : A Practical Guide – CJG RANK 4 of 5

It has the basic points, not sure I would be confident as a beginner that I would be able to troubleshoot Search after the session.

SPC118 -Swan – How to write a cloud-hosted app for SharePoint with Ruby on Rails – CJG RANK 5 of 5

Nick was bold for taking on such a touch topic…he did a great job! His slides weren't full of all of content, but it had just enough. You really do have to watch the video on this one!

SPC119 – Walker – Designing Your SharePoint Server 2013 Enterprise Deployment – CJG RANK 5 of 5 (Possible a 6?)

Probably the most thorough coverage of how to architect a farmfarms. The licensing part at the end was a MAJOR bonus.

SPC120 – Goulet – Windows Azure Media Services – CJG RANK 5 of 5

Oh my…if you have anything to do with distributing media to your customers, you HAVE to check out all the features in Azure Media Services! I was also very impressed to see the list of partners that are providing value add!

SPC121 – Bar-Caspi – How We Do It: Building & Managing SharePoint Online – CJG RANK 5 of 5

This session made every single on-premise installation look like some kids play toy. The amount of supporting code and tools written to manage SharePoint Online is MASSIVE and mind boggling. If you want to get a peek into how they are managing, provisioning and upgrading older client to 2013, this is the session for you!

SPC122 – Canning – – CJG RANK 4 of 5

Another session on how SharePoint Online is run everyday. Good stuff.

SPC125 – Stevenson – Hybrid and Search in the Cloud – CJG RANK 4 of 5

Very interesting session on hybrid search scenarios. It presented some interesting questions and use cases that make a hybrid solution a little more complex than it would seem.

SPC126 – Fried – Creating a Unified View of Business Critical Information with SharePoint and Search – CJG RANK 4 of 5

Jeff has been at the front of search technologies for the past few years, and I don't see that changing anytime soon. I will say that the federated search support in SharePoint is very lacking. Not to the fault of Microsoft, its hard to combine results when the relevance ranking scores are different or don't exist at all. I did like the slides that showed their solution for combining federated results into a single result feed, that has been needed for a while.

SPC127 – Fox – I Want to be a SharePoint Developer But Don’t Know Where to Start – CJG RANK 4 of 5

Good intro for people with no sharepoint dev at all.

SPC128 – Bray – Implementing Federated Services in SharePoint 2013 – CJG RANK 4 of 5

Nice coverage of cross farm services, especially the 2013 to 2010 supported options. Would have liked to see more reasons as to "why" one would implement cross farm services.

SPC129 – Stickler – Multi-language websites with SharePoint 2013 – CJG RANK x of 5

Great coverage of Varations in 2013. Really liked the information on the Xiff pacakages.

SPC130 – Collie – Industrial-Strength Results Meet Spreadsheet Agility: The Dramatic Reality of PowerPivot – CJG RANK 5 of 5

I think one could call Rob the "Father" of PowerPivot. His domain knowledge is close to unrivled when it comes to using PowerPivot for data analysis! Really have to watch the video on this one.

SPC131 – Fiessinger – Introducing Project Online, a new Office 365 service – CJG RANK 4 of 5

Overview session of Project Online.

SPC132 – Schackow – Developing for Windows Azure Web Sites and SharePoint Online – CJG RANK 3 of 5

Given all the other Apps for SharePoint sessions, not sure this one was necessary. Lots of overlapping information with the other ones.

SPC133 – Newton – Introduction to the Cloud App Model for Office and SharePoint 2013 – Part 1 – CJG RANK 4 of 5

If we were to just have one set of Apps for SharePoint sessions, this series would be the one to rule them all.

SPC134 – Newton – Introduction to the Cloud App Model for Office and SharePoint 2013 – Part 2 – CJG RANK 4 of 5

If we were to just have one set of Apps for SharePoint sessions, this series would be the one to rule them all.

SPC135 – Russinovich – Windows Azure – CJG RANK 3 of 5

Mark has to be one of the more dynamic speakers of our time. Definitely a genius, but unfortunately in this instance, Paul Stubbs had much better content around Azure and SharePoint.

SPC136 – Hillier – JavaScript Bets Practices for Developing Apps – CJG RANK 5 of 5

Scott just rocks when it comes to development sessions. This is no exception…great Javascript content and topics!

SPC137 – Brandenburg – Certified Records Management in the Cloud – CJG RANK 5 of 5

This was a VERY interesting session. It was somewhat StarTrek like via "Resistence is futile" when it comes to moving companies to the cloud. And after seeing their slides, it makes sense. CEO's don't want to hear excuses from IT about "this system went down because of xyz". They don't want to have to rely on local IT resources to pick the wrong solutions and then manage them wrong. In reality, IT will be a cost with risk. The cloud will keep the "cost" part of the equation, but the "risk" part will slowly disappear. As agent Smith would say…"it is inevitable". I especially likes slides 14 and 20, they are the closest to convincing me the cloud is a viable option for corporations.

SPC140 – Mani – Deep dive on server-to-server identity platform – CJG RANK 5 of 5

S2S is a new auth model in SharePoint. It was added to the OAuth 2.0 spec (much to the disliking of several people). I'm not a fan as it has more overhead in the HTTP headers via the bearer token than it we had just did NTLM auth calls. I can see the value if we were in a non-Microsoft world and needed to make these types of calls, but MS to MS, I don't really see the value. Still, it is nice to have options when doing auth in SharePoint.

SPC141 – Miller – Lighting up SharePoint 2013 Extranets with BI – CJG RANK 5 of 5

It started off slow, but then the cool slides started rolling in at the end. Wonderful set of tidbits for anyone thinking of doing an extranet facing BI portal.

SPC142 – Crockett – Making Fast Sites Faster in SharePoint 2013 – CJG RANK 5 of 5 (Possibly a 6?)

Woah…one of the best sessions of the Conference! You have to see this to believe it. Lots of crazy awesome points about making you SharePoint sites blaze!

SPC143 – DeRose – Build Smarter Search Experienceswith Result Sources and Query Rules – CJG RANK 5 of 5

Very unique session on creating search verticals in SP2013. Cool stuff!

SPC144 – Lelic – Using Visio for High-End Business Process Consulting Services – CJG RANK ? of 5

This was so on another level it is scary. This one I'll leave for the masses to decide.

SPC145 – Bergseth – Optimize Search Relevance in SharePoint 2013 – CJG RANK 5 of 5

A wonderful coverage of the technical tools you have in SharePoint (both old and news ones) to modify relevance to help your users find what they are looking for.

SPC146 – Shah – SharePoint Store Opportunity – CJG RANK 4 of 5

Intro to building apps for the SharePoint Store. Would have liked more info on the current vendors selling apps and any lessons they have learned by publishing to the AppStore.

SPC149 – Jayakar – Meeting Today’s Business Needs with Yammer – CJG RANK 4 of 5

68.57% of all stats are made up. Not sure where that number came from, but someone told it too me. There are alot of stats in these slides. They DO make you realize you need to adopt social or you will be left behind. Just not sure where the stats came from..

SPC150 – Almaguer – Microsoft IT Early Learning: Moving Search to O365 and Building a Hybrid Experience – CJG RANK 4 of 5

Some great lessons learned in these slides if you are planning on moving from FAST to SharePoint Online.

SPC151 – Shupps – Migrating Legacy On-Premise Solutions to SharePoint Online and Windows Azure – CJG RANK 5 of 5

What can we say other than Shupps just ROCKS.

SPC152 – Cohen – Migrating to SharePoint Online in Office 365 – Strategy and Best Practices – CJG RANK 4 of 5

Not sure this was specifically targeted at SP Online and O365 migration. More of a set of general concepts for any migration. All valid and good stuff though.

SPC153 – Vega – Migrating Internet Sites to SP2013 – CJG RANK 5 of 5 (Possibly a 6?)

Awesome set of upgrade tips here. A MUST read for those of you moving from 2010 to 2013.

SPC154 – Groom – Migration Strategies for Search in SharePoint 2013 – CJG RANK 5 of 5 (Possibly a 6?)

Superb coverage of migration SP2010FS4SP to SharePoint 2013 search. Must read!

SPC155 – Underwood – Mobile Business Intelligence – CJG RANK 5 of 5

Excellent coverage of Microsoft's Mobile device strategy around BI concepts. Lots of tidbits of info here!

SPC156 – Bischoff – Strategies for Adopting Social Computing Technologies – CJG RANK 5 of 5

The first 5 step process of how to adopt Social Computing in the enterprise. For you execs, these are the slides you have been looking for all your life!

SPC157 – Levithan – Achieving Organizational Buy-in to Transform Your Enterprise – CJG RANK 4 of 5

Combined with SPC156, you have everything you need to make the case for Social

SPC158 – Walker – How Microsoft IT Migrated to the SharePoint 2013 Cloud – CJG RANK 5 of 5

Wow…talk about a shout out to Quest Software (which is now Dell). A great customer reference (even if it is internal MS IT). What does it say about Microsoft's IT not wanting to deal with SharePoint and letting the Cloud team do it?

SPC159 – Seacrist – WebTrends: Measuring and Optimizing the Social Enterprise – CJG RANK 4 of 5

Measure everything! That's the jist of this session. But WebTrends will have to keep on Newsgator to keep innovating with SP2013 and Yammer now in the picture or their might not be a partnership in the future.

SPC160 – Linster – HP: Performance of SharePoint 2010 and SQL 2012 with HP Gen8 – In the lab and in the Real World – CJG RANK x of 5

LoadRunner has been a staple of the IT community. It has a new competitor in Visual Studio Ultimate (which is why I was surprised to see it in the slides). I'd love to see other server solutions and how they perform (like IBM, Dell, etc). They did give some great tidbits of info despite the underlying technology (on slides 31-32).

SPC161 – Forss – Office 365 Deployment and Migration – CJG RANK 4 of 5

Nice overview of important consideration before migrating your O365.

SPC162 – Simons – Office Web Apps – CJG RANK 4 of 5

Good overview of Office Web Apps. Would have been nice to see more info on the new features.

SPC163 – Kim – Laserfiche: Step-by-Step: Building a Case Management Composite Application – CJG RANK 3 of 5

Product vendor presentation. Guessing they compete against KnowledgeLake et all? Didn't get the jist of their product from the slides.

SPC164 – Lowell – Prepare for SharePoint on Mobile – CJG RANK 5 of 5

Very nice presentation on how authentication works with mobile devices. Really liked the coverage of IDCRL.

SPC165 – White – Configuring your SharePoint farm for Business Intelligence – CJG RANK 3 of 5

I would have preferred most of the slides focus on BI in SP2013. Most of them were targeted at SP2010.

SPC166 – Carter – Optimizing SharePoint 2013 for WAN Environments – CJG RANK 4 of 5

I don't think there was any remote configurations that were missed in this session (minus SPOnline hybrid approaches anyway). It would be nice to see something like this only focused at SharePoint Online.

SPC167 – Dillon – Overview of Application Development on Yammer – CJG RANK 3 of 5

Even though the title has "Development" in it…I didn't see any dev topics in here.

SPC168 – Kalis – Featured Apps for Project & Project Online – CJG RANK 4 of 5

Very interesting overview of some of the Apps that have been built for Project and Project Online. I'm not sure one should trust Microsoft just yet in publishing Apps. Who's to say they won't take the idea and work it into the product in the future. They certainly have more resources than you do. Only expect your product to make you money until the next version comes out.

SPC169 – Pruitt – Vibrant Communities – CJG RANK 5 of 5

The most complete coverage of the Community site template and its features of all the sessions!

SPC170 – Rhee – Overview of Microsoft BI – CJG RANK ? of 5

You have to watch the video to know if this is good or not.

SPC171 – Lavinsky – Real World Reporting: Project Server BI Overview – CJG RANK 4 of 5

An interesting session on how to gain access to Project Server data and do reporting on it.

SPC172 – Waldbaum – Capacity Planning, Sizing and High Availability for Search in SharePoint 2013 – CJG RANK 5 of 5 (Possibly a 6?)

Best architecture review of SharePoint Search in the entire SPC!

SPC173 – Harmetz – Overview of ECM for teams with Site Mailboxes – CJG RANK 5 of 5

Great review of Site Mailboxes with some handy slides at the end

SPC174 – Christensen – Overview of eDiscovery across the Office platform – CJG RANK 3 of 5

Maybe a little too "Overview"? Could have had a lot more details about how things work with eDiscovery (one of my favorite features in SP2013).

SPC175 – Stone – Overview of Enterprise Social – CJG RANK 4 of 5

Combine this with the SPC156 and you have everything you need to make your Execs say…"when can we get social up and running?"

SPC176 – Bogue – Using TypeScript to Build Apps for Office and SharePoint – CJG RANK 4 of 5

Good review of TypeScript.

SPC177 – O'Donald – Overview of Office 365 – CJG RANK 4 of 5

A look at some of the highlighted features of Office 365. Is also covered in other presentations.

SPC178 – Burns – Work Management – CJG RANK 3 of 5

A somewhat abstract high-level look at the Work Management Service, no low level details.

SPC179 – Fiessigner – Overview of Project Portfolio Management Using Project Online & Project Server – CJG RANK ? of 5

Have to watch the video to get anything from this.

SPC180 – Kogan – Overview of Search Driven Web Sites and Cross Site Publishing in Depth – CJG RANK 4 of 5

Definitley an overview, there were other sessions that go into much more depth on these topics. However they are spread out across multiple sessions.

SPC181 – Parihar – SharePoint 2013 Licensing – CJG RANK 4 of 5

A great review of the feature comparison of the SharePoint SKUs. it didn't discuss the ability to have both standard and enterprise users in the same farm….weird?

SPC182 – Kashman – Overview of SharePoint Mobile and the New SharePoint apps – CJG RANK 2 of 5

Didn't get anything out of these slides. Not sure what the session's value was given all the other great sessions above…

SPC183 – Doshi – Overview of Sharing in SharePoint 2013 and SharePoint Online – CJG RANK 4 of 5

I would have said boring, except the "Guest Links" and admin settings were very interesting for sharing content.

SPC184 – Sgro – Overview of SkyDrive Pro – CJG RANK 3 of 5

A simple look at SkyDrive Pro (aka…your document library on your my site). This could have been more indepth with coverage of the Shell integration etc.

SPC185 – Pennington – Overview of Social CRM – CJG RANK 4 of 5

There are a lot of social sessions, this one was worth it to learn about FUSE labs.

SPC186 – Kashman – Overview of the New SharePoint Online – CJG RANK 3 of 5

Probably best slide was number 9, that is all.

SPC187 – Wilde – An overview of the personalized SharePoint 2013 social experience – CJG RANK 3 of 5

An entire session dedicated to the privacy settings on SharePoint Social, not sure this was really needed, could have been rolled into another social session.

SPC188 – Bortlik – Overview of the Top 10 Ways that SharePoint Will Help Drive End User Adoption – CJG RANK 3 of 5

Do you agree with the top 10? Maybe we should take the word "top" out and just say "10".

SPC189 – Morein – How Yammer and SharePoint are Approaching Social – CJG RANK 3 of 5

Another set of slides on how all the new features will make your end users happy. I think other slides help with the socal story more than these do.

SPC190 – Gur-esh – Overview of Website Architecture in SharePoint 2013 – CJG RANK 3 of 5

Most of this content is in other sessions. The only difference was the CDN content, that was fresh and new, but everything else put me to sleep.

SPC191 – Khan – People Search & Extensibility in SharePoint 2013 – CJG RANK 3 of 5

You have to watch the video to get the points of slide 7.

SPC192 – Uluderya – SharePoint 2013 Performance And Capacity Management – CJG RANK 4 of 5

Very nice set of slides on the new changes that affect performance in SP2013

SPC193 – Greenburg – Access Databases: Taming the Beast – CJG RANK 3 of 5

A simple session on why you should get your databases under control. Think we all already know that by now.

SPC194 – Edge – Planning for the Lifecycle of Your SharePoint 2013 Website – CJG RANK 5 of 5

This was very well thought out and displayed. Well Done!

SPC195 – Roth – PowerShell 3.0 Administration – CJG RANK 5 of 5

Sweet, coverage of the new powershell cmdlets in SP2013 and how to provision service applications and working with SharePoint Online.

SPC197 – Wasner – Business Document Management with SharePoint – CJG RANK 2 of 5

Just a replay of KnowledgeLake solutions from 2 years ago? Why have slides on creating a content type? Think we have that figured out by now.

SPC198 – Olenick – Reducing organizational risk through effective information-management – CJG RANK 3 of 5

And how does this have anything to do with SharePoint again? One slide on eDiscovery? Don't get me wrong, lots of good process and food for thought slides, but where the "SharePoint"? Show me the SharePoint!

SPC199 – Muti – Running Reporting Services in SharePoint Integrated Mode: How and Why – CJG RANK 3 of 5

This same content was covered in another session. Why two?

SPC201 – McNulty – Future-proof your SharePoint solutions – A case study and upgrade demo – CJG RANK ? of 5

This session was in two parts. A case-study in the front and upgrade specifics in the second. I'm not sure how the two related from the slides, but if you watch the video, maybe it will come together. Their was content on upgrades in other sessions and this one supplemented them with some commands and references the others didn't provide. Without watching the video, I can't really judge if the two parts were brought together properly.

SPC202 – Molback – Search Architecture in SharePoint 2013 – CJG RANK 3 of 5

Same content as other slides, this session could have been cut. Not that the content was bad, but the product team could have partnered with one of the other presenters and done a better job.

SPC203 – Connell & Robb – Beyond the Boundary: Mashing up Azure, Internal Data and Office 365 – CJG RANK ? of 5

You have to watch the video to gain any insight, nothing in the PPTs

SPC204 – Pattison – Securing SharePoint Apps using OAuth in Office 365 – CJG RANK 5 of 5

Awesome, just plain awesome. Ted always does such a good job bringing method to the madness.

SPC205 – Pattison – Securing SharePoint Apps using S2S High Trust in On-Premise Farms – CJG RANK 5 of 5

Again, a very nice and simple take on building S2S apps. Even though they aren't my favorite, I'd still like to do simple OAuth on-premise without ACS.

SPC206 – Unkorth – Self-Service Business Intelligence Governance – CJG RANK 4 of 5

I was expecting some kind of technical controls around the topic, but it was more of best practices to not let SSBI get out of control.

SPC207 – Rackley – SharePoint 2013 – Fun with SharePoint Social, CSOM and Windows 8 – CJG RANK 4 of 5

Someone needed to cover the RESTful services API of the Social features. It was only fitting that Mark get this. It was interesting to see that the SCOM worked fine on WinRT, if they didn't then you'd have to guess they support basic HTTP calls to REST anyway, even if you can't run all your other Windows apps on it.

SPC208 – Whitehead – SharePoint 2013 Backup and Recovery with DPM 2012 – CJG RANK 5 of 5

DPM just keeps getting better…now if we can just get people to stop using Symantec NetBackup…with the all the pushing to SharePoint Online, how long will this be a viable product?

SPC209 – Wisnowski – SharePoint 2013 Identity and Authentication – CJG RANK 3 of 5

The title slide was hilarious! However, this was another repeat session and Ted Pattision's was much better.

SPC210 – Livingston – SharePoint 2013 Upgrade Deep Dive – CJG RANK 4 of 5

This had a lot of tidbits of info you didn't see on any other upgrade session slides. Definitely worth checking out!

SPC211 – Livingston – SharePoint 2013 Upgrade Overview – CJG RANK 4 of 5

Again, lots of tidbits of information valuable to anyone doing an upgrade

SPC212 – McConnel – SharePoint 2013 Workflow Development with Visual Studio 2012 – CJG RANK ? of 5

You'd have to watch the video to get any value from the slides.

SPC213 – Ordonez – SharePoint 2013 Workflow: Architecture and Configuration – CJG RANK 4 of 5

A good coverage of the new SP workflow architecture. The title didn't say "installing", but I didn't see that anywhere, so I think someone should have covered it…this would have been the logical place.

SPC214 – Woodward – SharePoint Centre of Excellence – CJG RANK x of 5

Never heard of SharePoint Center of Excellence. Not a good description of it…whether it is Microsoft invention or 21Apps invention or where it is or how one participates. Not sure if this was just some generic take on community like SharePoint Saturday…left with more questions than answers after looking at the slides. Check out the video???

SPC215 – Cleary – Data Security and Compliance – CJG RANK 3 of 5

I would have taken this session in a different direction. Start with examples of compliance issues, how people didn't do them, what happened, then how to mitigate
esolve. The Authentication and Authorization has been covered many many times. A session like this needs to go beyond the basic definitions and into more practical implementation (based on compliance laws).

SPC216 – Veeraraghavan – SPO Sign-in experience – CJG RANK 4 of 5

This was a fresh look at the Auth process that no one else presented. Good set of facts and suggestions.

SPC217 – Kostersitz – SharePoint Online and Office 365 Security, Trust & Privacy – CJG RANK 4 of 5

Wow, someone actually trying to tackle the security issue with Cloud computing. Bold. I'd like references to the 3rd party evaluations please (slide 23). You also still have a few certifications to get before you can get other people to sign off on moving to the cloud.

SPC218 – Banerjee – SharePoint Online Hybrid: Configuring BCS and Duet Online – CJG RANK 5 of 5

Wow, this was quite the set of scenarios, especially how S2S was being used in it. For some reason, I still don't get the warm fuzzies about opening the firewall to external access entities.

SPC219 – Baer – SharePoint Server 2013: What’s new for IT Professionals – CJG RANK 5 of 5

It was true to its title.

SPC221 – DeSilva – Showcase of Microsoft's 200TB Records Management Solution – CJG RANK 4 of 5

Case study of Microsoft's Records Management strategy.

SPC223 – Harmetz – CMIS and SharePoint 2013 – CJG RANK 4 of 5

Very nice coverage of CMIS and where SharePoint is going with supporting it.

SPC224 – Giardino – Using Windows Azure Storage with SharePoint for Document Management – CJG RANK 4 of 5

A great review of all the services provided by Azure. If you are curious how the urls are done for the PPTs and Videos in the script I provided to download them. Check out slides 52-55. This session had nothing to do with SharePoint…

SPC225 – Berry – Building Adaptive Companion Apps for Devices using SharePoint 2013 – CJG RANK 4 of 5

Possibly just call this session "How to use Search and Navigation REST APIs in Applications". The REST navigation coverage was outstanding!

SPC227 – Harris – Extending Social – CJG RANK 3 of 5

When I saw the word "Extending" I got excited…then I saw the PPTs and realized it was just showing off how to make calls to the ClientREST OM to do "things" with social. Not what I would call "extending"

SPC228 – Robinson – Getting started with sites – CJG RANK 4 of 5

I wouldn't call this an IT Pro session. It was an End UserBusiness Session. Despite that, it held true to its title.

SPC229 – Wilde – Breaking Down the SharePoint 2013 Newsfeed – CJG RANK 5 of 5

Very creative and informative set of slides. Well put together (mostly) and had a great flow to it.

SPC230 – Hillier – Step by Step: Building Search-Driven Applications in SharePoint 2013 – CJG RANK 3 of 5

The core of this session was slides 26-31. The "rest" could have been omitted.

SPC231 – Wardly – Search Development in SP2013 – CJG RANK 4 of 5

The info about the new types of refiners and the HoverPanel was stuff not covered anywhere else. The remaining content got covered in other sessions…

SPC233 – Chong – SharePoint On-premise and Online Implementations & Key Success Factors – CJG RANK 5 of 5

Toyota's take on hybrid models. Great set of slides for any Portal, IT Manager or CTO that is looking at the why and how of a hybrid model.

SPC234 – Edge – The Road to Cloud ROI with SharePoint Online – CJG RANK 5 of 5

Great set of slides on the ROI of using cloud based solutions.

SPC235 – Harbridge – SharePoint Success In Seven Steps – CJG RANK 5 of 5

Richard just has a way with getting the point across. I highly suggest reviewing both of his sessions…top notch!

SPC236 – Brinkman – The value of an ECM platform for the business – CJG RANK 4 of 5

Another C-Level focused presentation.

SPC238 – Woodgate – SharePoint Extranets: Approach, Options and Benefits – CJG RANK 4 of 5

Very nice take on building extranets in SharePoint

SPC239 – Bremer – Understanding 2013 Tools and Best Practices for Creating Enterprise Forms in SharePoint 2013 – CJG RANK 4 of 5

Good review of Microsoft forms tools

SPC240 – Whitehead – Understanding and Maintaining SharePoint Apps for IT Pros – CJG RANK 5 of 5

This was one of the best straightfoward set of slides on Apps for SharePoint of the entire SPC. Well done!

SPC241 – Howard – Understanding authentication for apps for SharePoint – CJG RANK 4 of 5

Don't understand why we had so many sessions on this. Don't we only need one? I thought Ted P's sessions were just fine, and the other 2 sessions that covered it.

SPC242 – Pattison – Understanding OAuth, REST and OData – CJG RANK 4 of 5

A good basic coverage of the REST and OData implementation in SharePoint. If you want a deeper dive into how SharePoint REST is implemented architectually, you can check out my REST blog post

SPC243 – Stevenson – Hybrid Overview: Connecting SharePoint 2013 On-premises to SharePoint Online in Office 365 – CJG RANK 4 of 5

Another session on planning for a hybrid model.

SPC244 – Hanley – Unlocking the Secrets of User Adoption Success – CJG RANK 5 of 5

Susan's 12 secrets to end user adoption success.

SPC245 – Harbar – User Profile Synchronization Best Practices in SharePoint Server 2013 – CJG RANK 5 of 5

A complete coverage of some common tasks one must plan and prepare for when working with the UPS and syncing with Active Directory.

SPC246 – Gur-esh – Using jQuery and Display Templates to create modern Web Sites – CJG RANK 5 of 5

Just another session to tell you you have to have JavaScript skills to do real development in SharePoint 2013

SPC248 – Amiri – Workflow Design and Managing Work Requests – CJG RANK 4 of 5

Interesting usage of Project and Designer to build workflows and create Project sites

SPC249 – Boyd – What's New for IT Professionals in Project Server 2013 – CJG RANK 4 of 5

A great review of Project Server 2013 on-premise and online.

SPC250 – Cohen – Videos in Sharepoint 2013 – CJG RANK 4 of 5

Learn how SharePoint handles videos.

SPC251 – Newman – What’s new in Managing SharePoint Online – CJG RANK 5 of 5

Really loved the difference between a on-premise admin and SPO admin slide. It was also cool to see how MS IT uses their own tools to make calls to SPO APIs to create sites.

SPC252 – Banerjee – What's New for BCS and Duet in SharePoint Server 2013 – CJG RANK 5 of 5

Very nice review of the new features of BCS and Duet.

SPC253 – Newton – What’s New for Developers in Office and SharePoint 2013? – CJG RANK 3 of 5

Very high level into to "some" new things in SP2013 then went into just another apps for sharepoint session. Way too many of sessions covered this already.

SPC254 – Boyd – What's New for Developers in Project 2013 – CJG RANK 5 of 5

This was a breath of fresh air. Project Server has always been behind when it came to development features as compared to the main SharePoint branch. Project Server 2013 catches up and is now in-line with all development features. I really like the CSOM for project server and the features on slide 9.

SPC255 – Gylterud – What’s new for WCM and Internet Sites in SharePoint 2013 – CJG RANK 4 of 5

Good review of new features.

SPC256 – Rhee – What’s New for BI in Office and SharePoint 2013 – CJG RANK ? of 5

Nothing in the PPTs, you have to watch the video.

SPC257 – Campbell – What's New in Excel, Excel Services 2013 and Excel Web App – CJG RANK 4 of 5

Great review of new features in Excel and Excel Services.

SPC258 – Ruble – GeoFlow for Microsoft Excel 2013 – CJG RANK 5 of 5

Wow…this looks like another cool add in for Excel. Too bad we have to wait until Spring 2013.

SPC259 – Aykan – What’s New in Search for SharePoint 2013 – CJG RANK 5 of 5

The topics were discussed in more detail in other sessions, but this overview did a really good job and had some good demos, you should watch the video.

SPC260 – Kraynak – What's New in Spreadsheet Management for Office and SharePoint – CJG RANK 5 of 5

Oh wow…this is a total game changer for Excel. ACM Server 2013 is available in 1st half of 2013. Audit and track all changes in Excel and Access files.

SPC261 – Mamidipaka – What’s new in Visio 2013 – CJG RANK 5 of 5

A great review of some of the cool new features in Visio. Support for BPMN 2.0 and UML 2.4 is pretty cool.

SPC262 – Mehta – What’s New with Enterprise Content Management in SharePoint 2013 – CJG RANK 4 of 5

Kinda boring set of main slides that just referenced all the other sessions. There are a set of slides after the main slides that have some great annotations on them.

SPC263 – Klindt – What's New with Service Applications in SharePoint Server 2013 – CJG RANK 4 of 5

A good overview of the changes in Service Applications from IT Pro standpoint. Kinda basic information that most people know already, but for brand new people, this works.

SPC264 – Choudhury – Customer Story: Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals, U.K. – CJG RANK ? of 5

You'd have to watch the video to get anything out of this one. It is focused on how SharePoint was used in a healthcare facility for patient handover.

SPC265 – Russinovich – Windows Azure IaaS Virtual Machines and Virtual Networks – CJG RANK 4 of 5

This session has nothing to do with SharePoint, but is a good review of IaaS and PaaS. If you are interested in hosting your VMs on Azure, then this session will help you with some of the details.

SPC266 – Holme &Thake – Wish I’d Have Known That Sooner!SharePoint 2013 Demystified – CJG RANK 4 of 5

Wow, not sure how they managed to cover all those topics in 60 minutes. They had just about everything in these slides but the kitchen sink. They were the only people to talk about Shredded Storage in depth. I was impressed with the detail they had around it. I know that the data points they had took long time to put together! Being that Apps and Authentication was covered in like 10 other sessions, it probably could have been skipped here and more focus on the other topics would have beneficial. From the title, I was expecting more of the "tips and tricks" type of tidbits would have been laid out, but their were only a couple.

SPC267 – Adenouga – Working with User Profiles in SharePoint Server 2013 – CJG RANK 5 of 5

Everything you ever wanted to know about User Profile Sync at its very core. I'd consider this the follow on to Harbar's UPS session.

SPC269 – Pisoni – Yammer’s Secret Sauce – CJG RANK 5 of 5

Very cool set of slides on how Yammer adapts to its customers and then applied Agile methods to their development. Wish all development shops were like this…*sigh*

SPC270 – Kogan & Connell – Zero to Live in 60min using SharePoint 2013 Publishing – CJG RANK ? of 5

You have to watch the video to get anything from this session.

SPC271 – Harbar – Request Management in SharePoint 2013 – CJG RANK 5 of 5

The most complete coverage of Request Management I have seen so far

SPC273 – RaduGrama – Deliver SharePoint Apps On Non-Microsoft Platforms – CJG RANK 3 of 5

This was beat to death in at least 3 other sessions. Really didn't need a 4th.

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