Tonight is the final SharePoint 123 presentation
It's taken us something like a hundred hours to get where we are now, but we're finally here. All the Content CDs and Virtual PC DVDs have been pressed, the slide deck and hands on lab document have all been polished, pizza has been ordered, and we're all wearing our fancy presentation shirts. Today is the day for our final, 300 level presentation of Windows SharePoint Services in the SharePoint 1, 2, 3! training series. This week, in SharePoint 1, 2, 3! we'll be looking at the SharePoint Object Model, document event handlers, web services, and external applications interfacing with SharePoint. Brendon and I will be standing in front of the crowd tonight, so please come, even if only to heckle.
We've collected over 200 surveys so far, and every survey has generally reflected glowing reviews. We've gotten some constructive criticism and lots of unbridled praise for working so hard to put on this free community training event. I truly believe that Brendon, Dan, Keith, and I have put together a training package worth hundreds of dollars and we're giving it all away! You may ask, "Why would anyone work so hard to build something so nice and then give it away for free?" I think the answer must be that we're completely insane! That and we felt we could really do something valuable. We set the bar really high when we started this project, and I think we've blown everyone away - including ourselves. I looked back over our documentation, and we've got over 100 pages worth of step by step Hand on Labs documentation. We've got about 100 slides across all three slide decks. We can truly take someone who's never seen SharePoint before, put them through this material, and have at the end a person who is significantly better prepared to work with SharePoint as both a business manager and as a developer. I'm not saying that this is the only material you'll need if you want to take and pass the Microsoft exam 74-133, but you will be significantly better prepared.
The best part of getting this material together has been that I've gotten to spend a LOT of time with Brendon, Dan, and Keith. These three guys have been a blast to work with and I've learned a tremendous amount from each of them. I can't say that I'm sorry to see the end of our 14 hour meetings every Saturday (and our once a week 5 hour meetings) but I'm glad I went through this. I learned a great deal about building an effective team, about SharePoint itself, and about how a seemingly simple task can turn into a humongous undertaking by simply saying that you want to do it "right".
We've still got to get through the meetings tonight and tomorrow, but I think we'll have no problems. We're ultra prepared and now we've got the mac daddy of all powerpoint remote controls!
-- Matt Ranlett