SPTechCon: The SharePoint Technology Conference

Another SPTechCon Boston is in the books, and I’m happy to report that attendance more than doubled since last June! The bi-annual conference is held once in San Francisco and once in Boston, and it is certainly turning into one of the more popular SharePoint conferences on the circuit. The only downside to the large increase in attendees is the fact that the venue was overcrowded. That will be addressed next June as the conference will move to another hotel that can suit the bigger crowd. But I look at overcrowding as a good thing, as the show is gaining momentum!

So what about the overall vibe of the conference? And what about the quality of sessions provided and the overall experience as an attendee? This is a question that is always asked of me. And it’s honestly a very difficult one to answer. I personally would recommend several conferences, and they would probably be all for the same reasons. I am fortunate to have many friends in the community, whom I enjoy spending time with while I’m there. That’s a big factor for me, but it’s probably not for someone looking to learn about SharePoint. I also have the goal of meeting with vendors to see what new things they are doing, which may not be something that interests a newcomer either.

I had a great experience attending the sessions and meeting with the exhibitors. The location and accessibility was great. I will be attending this event next time.

I thoroughly enjoyed the event. The speakers were great and I liked the variety of classes available. There is information for corporations just beginning SharePoint to advanced topics for returning attendees. This event has helped me in formulating an implementation strategy for my company for SharePoint 2010. I will be attending the SPTechCon 2012 in Boston. I only have a few minor concerns about the event.

1). I was under the impression the full day workshops were where we could get some hands-on experience, but they were not. I never attended this before, so I did not know what to expect.

2). I wish they had full breakfast at the conference. This was minor issue just in the conferences I have attended (mostly Microsoft) they always had full breakfast. Even so the amount of food available during breakfast we very adequate.

3). I wish the exhibition hall opened up on Monday instead of Tuesday. It was hard visiting all the vendors I would have liked to visit and get to talk to them and do demos.

Other than those 3 minor things, which have not swayed my opinion of going back, this conference is definitely worth every penny for me. I met quite a lot of people as well.

Overall it was a very interesting experience attending the conference. I am definitely looking forward to implementing many of my learnings and resources in my work environment to help my team achieve our organizational goals.

A very good conference overall, broad range of sessions and great speakers. It was an excellent way to learn from experts and other users. Really liked the emphasis on knowledge transfer, I was there to learn. Definitely a user driven program, not a vendor driven one. Well worth the time and money.

The content of a few of the talks was all over the place, demos broken and dumbed down. I found I was walking out of a few of them as it was clear a few of these speakers only had superficial knowledge of their subjects.

Some on the other hand were very good, and saved the event from being a complete disaster. If you know nothing about SharePoint it might be worth attending but if you have a couple of years in the subject, don;t bother.

It felt like they rushed to get speakers to talk about any subject just to fill the sessions, I've been to far better SharePoint events.

Venue was good.

This was a good conference, however, there were a few speakers 3-4 that did not deliver.

Overall this was an interesting conference and I learned a lot about SharePoint, since SP is not my area of expertise it goes without saying, I should have learned a lot. One surprise for me is how in several sessions, the SP experts made statements concerning database maintenance, performance etc that were in conflict with standard DB best practices and in one case just outright wrong but the presenter would not entertain that possibility. He may know SP, but not DB....

The location of the conference was a little problematic if you wanted to take a walk and not aware that within a block there were a couple of soup kitchens, homeless shelters and some other, uh seedy areas. In one direction, no problems, the other, truly the 'dark side' of life on the streets.

Apart from those two issues, I thought it was a great conference.

I enjoyed this conference from an overall planning perspective. It was a good way to see the extent of SharePoint possibilities (in terms of capabilities, add-ons, development, and customization). Since I am new to SharePoint (as power user), I would have liked someone to ask which sessions they would recommend so I could better choose one session over another. Also, I had a few beginner questions that I could not get answered so that reinforced the need for focused, in-depth training. I do wish that Microsoft would stop saying how easy it is to use because there are so many layers to SharePoint 2010. Training is necessary to do it right. As far as the location, the Hilton was nice (if a little unpredictable in terms of meeting rooms that were sometimes freezing cold and spotty wireless). The event planners and hotel catering did a great job with the menu, breaks, etc. I like that they offered water from dispensers instead of having plastic water bottles all of the time.

The event Key Note from Microsoft is good. The classes on variety of subjects are good.