Have you ever been involved in the hiring process for your company or team?

If you have, then perhaps you’ve been astounded at how terrible the CVs of many highly intelligent candidates you interviewed were. Senior developers who excelled at their craft, were recognised as brilliant by their peers, and yet, couldn’t seem to put together a coherent CV to save themselves. Why?

It’s a little like that with search engine optimisation. As web developers we’ve probably been involved in the development of many wonderful web sites, and yet we have no clue how to get those wonderful sites ranking in the search engines. Why?

Perhaps its because we’re cynical about the whole search engine optimisation (SEO) thing… Sure, we know the importance of ranking in Google, but we just don’t really have much respect for the process of getting there.

Well, if you are new to SEO, can I suggest the following:

SEO is the Google ranking equivalent of ensuring you have a great CV

Hopefully you’ll agree that having a well written, up-to-date CV is a good thing. And if you don’t have the skills (or motivation) to write a good CV, then perhaps you’d hired someone to help improve it for you.

So what is it about SEO that we don’t like…

Gaming the system?

Perhaps it’s because we think of search engine optimisation as gaming the system. And there’s some truth to that (especially from the bad apples). However, I’d suggest that SEO should only be thought of as gaming the ranking system in the same way as having a great CV is gaming the hiring process.

It’s true, we’ve all heard of complete incompetents gaming the hiring system and getting great jobs – making a mockery of the process. However, we don’t let those bad apples deter us from going after our ideal roles.

Similarly, SEO has those who spam the system and are rewarded (for a time at least) for shonky tactics. But likewise, we shouldn’t let them deter us from making our own sites as discoverable as possible in the engines.

I have to admit, if you’d asked me a year ago about search engine ranking and its related practices I’d have been pretty cynical myself (perhaps a little like this).

But the reason I’ve come to really appreciate and respect the art of proper SEO is simply because of the business results I’ve seen it provide. The return on investment is too hard to ignore. (You may know that I’ve been focusing on Search quite a bit this year as part of my career change to working with my wife on our own web businesses.)

Flogging the Jobseeker analogy

Admittedly, SEO is not just about the site itself. There’s more involved. So let’s push the analogy a tad.

If you know anything about SEO you’ll be aware that ranking well is a combination of optimising your site (we refer to that as the on-page stuff) AND having a lot of quality sites linking to you (we refer to this as the off-page stuff).

So, if we were to push the jobseeker analogy it’s actually more than just having a great CV. Rather, in total it might be something like this: 

• making sure your CV is optimised for your preferred list of employers, with key skills highlighted, PLUS
• ensuring you have a network of people (eg industry colleagues, friends) that help get you in front of your next boss

In SEO terms, the CV is your site, HR departments & recruiters represent the search engines, and your future employer is the web surfer. Your mission is to get those HR departments & recruiters to favour you…

HR departments & recruiters will look for key skills in your CV, plus authority signals from external sources (eg references, recommendations from respected colleagues, social profile, etc) and use this in determining where you rank in being put forward to a prospective employer.

So it is with SEO. Whilst the analogy isn’t perfect, the main point is ensuring that your product/service is:

• strategically communicated on your site (with key terms people are looking for), and
• high in credibility/authority signals (by others linking to you in relation to those key terms).

Simple right? Obvious even. Maybe. Why then are so many wonderfully useful web sites ranking so poorly? Perhaps its because we developers haven’t put a priority on SEO. In much the same way as many of us trot out sub-standard CVs when searching for a new job. And further, whilst knowing that having a network of people to recommend us is a good idea, few know how to build that network efficiently & appropriately.

Thus, think of SEO like this:

SEO is the process of performing the strategic ranking actions for your site, efficiently and appropriately.

It’s far from a perfect analogy of course and if you know a little about SEO then you’ll probably be picking holes in it. But if you are a web developer and reasonably new to SEO, then I hope this helps highlight the relevance of SEO to your profession.

(If you are after a few more details of what SEO entails, I recommend these overviews from Wikipedia, Search Engine Land,  SEOBook and Google.)

A change of mindset?

As a final note: I’ve noticed a progression in the developer mindset over the last few years. Whereas less than 5 years ago we often dismissed graphic designers and usability professionals as a bunch of skivvy wearers, now we have a healthy respect for their talents. In the Microsoft ecosystem, skilled Silverlight designers (and so-called ‘devigners’) have experienced a deserved credibility increase. They are becoming the uber-cool. It seems we finally understand the importance of a great looking site…

I’d suggest that in a few short years, developers with (proper) search engine optimization skills will have a similar credibility boost.

Search optimisation is an important skill – one that’ll become almost mandatory in the web developer’s toolkit. Don’t ignore  the opportunities it affords.

If you’re like me, then you probably cringe when you see people referring to themselves as a ‘social media strategist’.

And if they point to Gary Vaynerchuk as their main example of why you too should embrace social media then I really despair. Too often it seems, we’re told of the wonderful success stories, with scant mention of the hard work, sweat and perserverance these overnight social media celebrities have been putting in… for years  (as most overnight successes do).

Of course, anyone and everyone can use social networking, but with so many options, how do you know which path to choose? How do we avoid ending up like this poor person:

When it comes to getting the right social media guidance, you obviously want to be wary. Sure, you need to have an open mind and accept that the way you’ve traditionally done stuff might not be the way you’ll succeed in the future. But that doesn’t mean you should jump on the latest social networking fad, or embrace a popularity contest strategy that has little financial rewards. And if you’ve been employing a particular social media approach that doesn’t seem to be bearing fruit yet, it doesn’t necessarily mean you dump it.

Instead, you need to understand – without the hype – what’s really going on in the social media and social networking space.

So, what do you do? How do you find the right guide?

And, perhaps most importantly, how do you get to eat a lot of chocolate in the process…

The Solution

Well, my friends, I have the solution. This month at the Sydney Business & Technology User Group (SBTUG) we are fortunate to have one of the world’s leading social media consultants presenting. Laurel Papworth (aka @silkcharm) is coming along to give us an update on the state of play in social media and social networking. If you are a regular SBTUG member, you’ll remember she presented to us a little over 18 months ago. Things change rapidly. This time she’ll be reviewing what’s changed, what’s new, what you need to understand, adapt to & embrace, and what you should ignore.

About Laurel Papworth

You can read her full bio here, but I thought it worth mentioning the following extract so you get the idea:

Laurel has been a virtual communities/online Community/Social Network consultant since 1989 when she was involved in Twin Peaks IRC and Usenet groups online. For the last decade, Laurel has been running virtual worlds and MMORPGs as a game moderator, forum admin, customer service manager and marketing consultant. Laurel has a patent in social network currencies and is considered a leading social media monetization strategist worldwide.

Since 2005, Laurel has been teaching social media classes, including at the University of Sydney, has advised projects such as Interactive (social media) Emmy award winning Scorched.TV and recently went to Saudi Arabia to work on the iMatter Project for Middle East Broadcasting, teaching Arabic women how to blog and use social media to gain a “voice”. She also runs workshops on Government 2.0 on their social media strategies in Asia.

Laurel is currently in top Power150 bloggers for Marketing and Media worldwide, as collated by the global Advertising Age magazine. She is a popular keynote speaker around the world, recently returning from a Portugal keynote, and her books and courseware are available for download under Creative Commons Licence from LaurelPapworth.com.

If you are business owner, software manager or developer, utilising social networking in your role, then this will be an extremely valuable session. Come and learn from a recognised expert (and engaging speaker), who imparts considered and data-backed advice to all levels of business, including government, enterprise and small business.

I’ve heard Laurel present many times, and can tell you she’s excellent. We’re lucky to have her for the night. And if you are still wary of social networking, then let me put it another way… she’s one of the few people who when I hear the term ‘social media strategist’ I don’t cringe! She’s the real deal.

Please RSVP here on our Facebook Event or email me to secure your place.

Christmas Bonus

But why all this talk about chocolate? Well, two things:

• First, this will be our last meeting for the year (*sob*). So, it’ll be our SBTUG Christmas party (*woo hoo*). Which means we’re bringing along beers, cocktails (did somebody mention mojitos) & nibblies in addition to our regular pizza feast. And chocolate.
• Second, Laurel loves chocolate. It’s the least we could do!

So, do yourselves a favour. Book the night of Wed 25 November in your diary now. Come along to SBTUG and hear one of the leading social media consultants outline the state of play, PLUS enjoy a beer, pizza and plenty of chocolate. Sound like a good night? I look forward to seeing you there.

Full Details

When: Wednesday 25 November 2009 at 6pm
What: Social Media and Social Networking for Business
Who: Laurel Papworth presenting
Where: Microsoft, North Ryde (click for map)
Register: RSVP here to secure your place
Cost: $5 donation* to cover pizza (the beer, mojitos and chocolate are provided for free!)
Why: Because you need to understand how to use Social Media in your business

(*If you’d like to sponsor the night, and help us remove the $5 donation request, then please shoot me an email. We’ll promote you and your company/service on the blog, in our email newsletter and on the night.)

One Final Thing

If you could help promote the event I’d really appreciate it. A simple retweet or thumbs up would be great. But I expect many of you will have to print this out and physically hand it to your boss the people who need it most…

One of the core building blocks of Microsoft’s success over the past decades has been its close relationship with partners. The Microsoft Partner Network (previously Partner Program) has helped Microsoft reach (via their partners) every conceivable sector of the myriad markets they service. And in return, Microsoft was known to be very loyal, supportive and even protective of its partners (there’s even books written on how to best work the relationship).

But that’s been changing over the last few years. Resellers are feeling the pain the most I expect, as Microsoft opens up its own retail stores, experiments with subscription models and grows its online sales channels (Microsoft Office for example makes a sizeable proportion of its revenue directly from consumers, especially those who download the 60-day trials and then buy an activation key). Hosted services are next in line, with Microsoft price-cutting its way to market dominance –> bad luck if you are a reseller trying to make a buck there.

ISVs aren’t immune and will increasingly have to look over their shoulders as their segments get taken over. Anti-virus is an example perhaps (financial software isn’t ) , but the real danger is if you are a partner ISV in the health or educational sectors – be very careful.

Microsoft based consulting companies should also be wary (unless you’re at the big end of town), as they find themselves competing more with Microsoft’s own consulting services and partnerships – entities that are continually scaling up.

Is this wrong?

Is any of this wrong? Or unexpected? Of course not. Microsoft is a business with demanding shareholders and strong competition from other vendors. It needs to push ahead.

So, this isn’t a note to criticise what Microsoft are doing – in fact, some would say it’s been too long coming.

But it is a wake up call to Microsoft Partners. Be wary of counting on continued loyalty from Microsoft in your particular market.

Or more correctly: The Jeff Putt Show

What you would do if you had to organise a product launch? How would you structure it? You’d probably get marketing to pump out a few of the pretty videos, crank the upbeat motivating soundtracks and speed through the nice photo slideshows.

But then, what would you focus on? Would you put the Managing Director of the company up first. Yes, you would. What would you have them talk about? Well, you’d make sure they mention how excited they are, and how thankful they are for the input of many of those in the audience who were involved in the beta program and RC releases. You’d probably note a few statistics with billions in them (there are 1.1B Windows users apparently). OK, ho hum so far. What next?

You’d probably fly one of the stars from corporate out and get them to present a bit as well. Perhaps talk about the approach you’ve taken developing the product and throw in a few more statistics. They’re probably not going to win over the crowd (even with corn syrup lines), but at least it shows you’re taking the event pretty seriously.

OK, so far so good – it’s looking like a professional event… but the crowd is probably going to be bored. What do you do?

You pull out a Jeff Putt

Yes, thank God you’ve got Jeff Putt up your sleeve. Within 30 seconds of taking the stage at this morning’s Windows 7 launch, Jeff has the crowd in the palm of is hand. Why? Because he’s geeky, believable, and jumps straight into the demos. Useful stuff. And pretty funny. Australians like self-deprecation and quiet confidence. And a bit of humour.

A few sound bytes from Jeff as he gets rolling:

Alt-Tab is a thing of the past

This is Windows Aero made useful (talking about Taskbar preview)

Sooner or later you’ve got leave the house… ahem hello to all our viewers on Ustream

The demos are good. Windows shake gets a few good laughs. Onto libraries and file management. Simple demos showing the benefits. Home networking, Media Centre, Remote media streaming, all good.

Then a demo of touch, including shake, right click, jump lists. And not just the simple stuff, inertia in the touch interface, multi-finger resizing, and the list goes on. It’s great stuff.

Hardware

But no presentation of Windows is complete without discussion of the hardware, and for a minute I’m worried that we’ll lose Jeff as he hands over to a number of the partners to demo their new products running Windows 7 – starting with Acer. This is where I’d normally zone out (I’m not really a hardware guy) but thankfully Jeff stays on stage and keeps me awake, and then, hello! did someone mention 12 hour battery life. Yes, 12 hours on the Asus. But it gets better. Dell pops up to show one of their new products – was it called the Adamo?. It’s beautiful. HP are keen on the touch aspects of course (ie their TouchSmart machines have lead the market for the last 2+ years) and their devices are not only highly functional, but look very slick, enter…  the HP Envy. Sony, are up next to demo the Vaio X series – it’s only as thick as the VGA port, and has an embedded 3G module. And their site mentions 14 hour battery life! And made from carbon fibre body – which Jeff stands on for a demo. Toshiba are up last, and their focus is on battery life also. 21 new notebooks, including one that boots up in 3 seconds. Yikes. Maybe hardware isn’t so bad after all…

Partners

Sadly, our Jeff time is coming to an end, and David McLean is the unlucky person who has to take over.

David does pretty well though and brings up two partners for a little chat. Deborah from Dick Smith, and Theo from Leader Computers. Amusing introductions and then a quick chat about the hype around Windows 7. Consumers are the focus here, even though business is well catered for. Deborah’s opinion is that touch, home networking and backup are key consumer interest items. It’s always good to mention a pain point (she suggest losing all your photos as a common anxiety) and then how Windows 7 is the solution. The discussion yawns into evolution and other guff – I think I heard connectivity mentioned – and how it was an exciting time. Sorry, trailing off…

Aside: It’s interesting to note how much Home group is mentioned. Personally I don’t think this is going to be a big thing for most ‘normal’ consumers (although it would be for power users of course). Instead, I think consumers just want something that works… And if it’s rock solid, simple to use, and has lower hardware requirements than it’s predecessor then all the better.

For example: When I personally talk about Windows 7 with people, I highlight that:

It just works! It’s beautiful to use, and it works.

There’s a few Windows ads shown – the ‘Windows Kevin’ is a classic, followed by the ‘I’m a PC and the chops are done’ moment. Love it.

Question time

Yay, Jeff Putt is back.

• Question time is on, and Dan Warne asks about Family Pack. Sorry, I got distracted and tuned out during the answer.
• A good question about Windows Security and whether the Windows advertising downplays the risks. Jeff mentions that consumers shouldn’t take their security advice from an advertisement. I hope I’m not mis-quoting him here, but I think his answer is less than ideal. In fact the Q+A time is the only part where Jeff doesn’t shine – as a host and presenter he’s wonderful, but there’s a few rough edges that need smoothing when it comes to taking questions from the gallery (more on this later).
• The inevitable question about what went wrong with Vista and what did they learn from that and fix in Windows 7. This is a gift question, because it will be a perceived reality in many customer’s minds and needs to be addressed. The answer is standard and James had pretty much covered it in his earlier presentation anyway.
• Next question: Why not include an email client in the Windows 7? Why make the Live Essentials suite a separate download (instead of providing it in the product). James DeBragga responds well with an explanation about the speed of innovation of the Live Essential separate from an O/S. Good answer, but most people are probably just thinking it’s so Microsoft doesn’t get caught in anti-trust cases or some such. Or perhaps so they can claim that the product is a smaller footprint than Vista. There’s a number of advantages for Microsoft of keeping it separate, but I suspect the advantages to customers is minimal. Retailers, we are told, have the option of bundling the extra packs (which is good!) but I’m still sceptical. The average mum and dad consumer uses the web browser, then the email client, and then probably some photo programs. Having it as a separate download is a bad call (in my opinion). At least having it as part of the install as an option would be better. But that’s just me, and chatting a few people afterwards I realise I’m in the minority (ie most people think keeping it separate is better).
• There’s a question about pricing. There’s a spin answer. It gets called out as BS from the audience. Yawn. There’s an ever-so-slightly heated (I’d have liked a bit more actually) retort from David – with lots of ‘facts’ mentioned. Pricing is always a sensitive topic, and rarely are you going to keep many people happy – everyone wants it cheaper right? I’ll move on.
• A well known journalist asks what’s in it for business? He’s laughed down because as Jeff explains this event is the Consumer Launch. Funny? Perhaps. But a bad call by Jeff. Making a joke of questions asked by the audience is not going to win anyone over.

For the record, here’s the invite I received. No mention of consumer here. The only clue would be if you knew/noted that James DeBragga is the Windows Consumer Product Marketing Manager.

So, a good question actually, but not one that is being focused on this morning (they’re having separate launches and PR events targeting business customers).

• A question about ‘offers’. Answer: stay tuned. Yawn.
• A question about netbooks. Yes, it’s getting a lot of focus.
• A question about music, video and home automation. Much was promised with Vista, but not much delivered. Answer: again, stay tuned. *crickets*
• Finally, a question about whether Microsoft Retail Stores would pop up in Australia. Answer: currently no plans, instead they are only focused on working with existing partners.

The event finishes on a down note – some of the final questions have given it a negative tone, and perhaps that’s why the closing motivating music gets pumped up (to compensate?).

Main lesson of the day. If you are organising big product launch, don’t end the event with a Q+A from the press. Hindsight is easy of course, but perhaps saving some of the best demos for the end would have provided a better outcome.

Summary

I love Windows 7 and have been using it since the beta in January, so I’m definitely biased, but all in all I think this was a good event that highlighted the approach, features and benefits of Windows 7. Microsoft have been far more humble about their products in the last 12-24 months, and in place of the hype of yesteryear, we now have the quiet confidence of a vendor who is working extremely hard to produce top quality software for a more demanding than ever customer. I think they are doing well.

And finally, Jeff Putt is a master. If you are planning a product launch, or a wedding for that matter – he’s the man to run the show!

So, that’s how Microsoft launches a product. How would you do it?

I love the Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 pitch – no namby-pamby here:

This is no namby-pamby beta. It’s a full-octane beta release with a “Go Live” license that you can use to concept, build, test, and deploy* your next project.

The Beta 2 has just been released, and whilst it seems to be downloading/installing OK, I notice that most of the download pages still refer to Beta 1 (but I’m sure they’ll be updated soon).

I missed this little announcement about ‘TFS Basic’ a few weeks back, but luckily Adam Cogan alerted me to it during one of our recent walks (can you tell where we stopped for lunch ). The news came from Brian Harry originally, but you could be forgiven for missing it since his blog post was extensive (that’s a good thing!) and covered a history of SourceSafe before mentioning TFS Basic details.

TFS Basic is aimed at the small development teams that use SourceSafe (or worse – nothing) and need a better solutions for source control, bug tracking and automated builds. It’s part of the upcoming TFS 2010 release (ie it’s not released yet – look out for Beta 2 in the coming months) and Brian’s post has all the details about ease of installation etc. Note also, that TFS Basic is just a label at this stage (I’m not sure what the final name will be) and of course there is no pricing information yet.

The Benefits

The reason I mention this announcement is because it shows that the trend towards better software development methodologies is being promoted to all levels of an organisation now. TFS was initially an enterprise play (at least its price tag said as much) and small teams had to suffice with SourceSafe or get their heads around the TFS Workgroup edition. But that is all changing (as Brian mentions):

To make sure we could handle the broadest range, we started by targeting enterprise customers and development teams with more involved development processes.  The pinnacle of that has been the Microsoft Developer Division experience that I’ve talked so much about where we have over 3,500 regular users and terabytes upon terabytes of data.  However, it has been our intention from the beginning to build a toolset that is attractive to teams of all sizes and all levels of process.

And this is happening not only in the Microsoft space. Atlassian for example and have been making their toolset much more integrated and affordable for the smaller shops (check out their Starter offering here) over the past 12 months.

It’s a promising trend. With large numbers of senior enterprise workers starting their own consultancies (either by choice or forced by economic downsizing), the need for proper software development tools in the small business sector is greater than ever. Tool vendors are catching on and providing better solutions at affordable prices.

Society puts a premium on getting access to ‘news’ as quickly as possible. The person who breaks the story first gets the rewards. Speed to market trumps quality delivered to market every time. It’s a shame really.

Take the T-Mobile debacle as an example. The story kicked off two weeks ago, but hit fever pitch last Saturday with news from TechCrunch of T-Mobile losing all customer data and thus:

This goes beyond FAIL, face-palm, or any of the other internet memes we’ve come to associate with incompetence. The fact that T-Mobile and/or Microsoft Danger don’t have a redundant backup is simply inexcusable, especially given the fact that the Sidekick is totally reliant on the cloud because it doesn’t store its data locally.

and the Engadget pronouncement of it:

…shaping up to be one of the biggest disasters in the history of cloud computing…

Mashable follows with unchecked agreement:

The story is a jarring one for those storing increasing amounts of data in the “cloud”: as we become more reliant on servers to house our data, such losses can be catastrophic.

The event descends into a critique of Microsoft’s failure to make backups, and the impending death of the Sidekick:

Unless Microsoft pulls a miracle out of thin air the Sidekick is dead.

Ars Technica keep the momentum going:

This outage and subsequent data loss is just the latest, and probably the most dramatic, black eye yet for "cloud computing,"…

And of course, then the lawyers start lining up:

Another suit, filed on behalf of Maureen Thompson "and all others similarly situated" seeks unspecified damages for Thompson and others who have lost data as a result of the recent Sidekick problems.

(Keep in mind these legal suits are being filed within 3 days of the initial report of data loss and long before final details of the extent of the loss were fully confirmed!)

By mid week reports had started to shift the blame away from ‘the cloud’, and away from Microsoft directly to their outsourced partner (Hitachi), and then to non-Microsoft technology, and even to sabotage (supposedly due to low morale in the T-Mobile team).

Finally, by the end of the week Microsoft reports that most of the data may well be recovered and the story cools down.

We are pleased to report that we have recovered most, if not all, customer data for those Sidekick customers whose data was affected by the recent outage. We plan to begin restoring users’ personal data as soon as possible, starting with personal contacts, after we have validated the data and our restoration plan. We will then continue to work around the clock to restore data to all affected users, including calendar, notes, tasks, photographs and high scores, as quickly as possible.

Hindsight is a beautiful thing of course, but you have to wonder how much time and energy was wasted preparing and consuming this extended, lack-of-information fuelled coverage.

In our age of ever increasing speed of access to information, what a pity we can’t improve the quality. The signal to noise ratio this last week has been way too low.

Just a quick tip if you run your WordPress site on IIS 7.0 and run into issues with pretty permalinks.

It’s pretty easy to configure: there’s a full tutorial here on the Learn IIS site and the WordPress Codex has a good overview too.

You just need to add a few lines into your web.config file.

[If you don’t know what a web.config file is don’t get too concerned. All you need to do is copy the following text into a text file, save it as web.config and put it in the WordPress directory.]

Here’s the full content of your web.config file:

<?xml version="1.0"?> 
<configuration> 
    <system.webServer>
        <rewrite>
            <rules>
                <rule name="Main Rule" stopProcessing="true">
                    <match url=".*" />
                    <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll">
                        <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsFile" negate="true" />
                        <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsDirectory" negate="true" />
                    </conditions>
                    <action type="Rewrite" url="index.php" />
                </rule>
            </rules>
        </rewrite>
     </system.webServer>
</configuration>

If you’ve already got an existing web.config then chances are you know what you are doing, and will know how to add the snippet above into your existing file.

This is also handy if you keep backups of your WordPress sites on your local machine. For example, even though my blog is hosted on Apache, I keep a full backup of it locally on my Windows 7 machine running under IIS7 (using the most excellent Web Platform Installer). Just about everything works perfectly out of the box, except the pretty URLs, so I use the rewrite lines above to make it work. The web.config file gets placed in a directory such as:

C:\inetpub\wwwroot\<your wordpress directory>\

And if you haven’t yet checked out the Web Platform Installer, then I strongly recommend it. You can get it here:

Perhaps you’ve been hearing a lot about SharePoint 2010 lately… or perhaps not! Most likely the latter because most of the juicy bits have been locked under NDA. Until the SharePoint conference in Las Vegas next week that is!

Yes, and once the NDA wrappers are off there’s tons of goodness to talk about.

Which is why we’re having a special SharePoint 2010 Extravaganza at the Sydney Business & Technology User Group (SBTUG) on Wed 28 October (2 weeks away).

When: 6pm Wed 28 October 2009
Where: Microsoft, North Ryde (map)

It’s going to be a big night with SharePoint MVP and Microsoft Technical Specialists presenting.

Agenda

Here’s a quick (draft) agenda for the night:

6:00 – News & Intro (Craig Bailey)
6:15 – Introduction to SharePoint 2010 (Kathy Hughes + Aaron Saikovski)
7:15 – Pizza break + networking
7:30 – Overview of Office 2010 SharePoint Integration (Alistair Speirs)
7:45 – SharePoint Workspace (previously known as Groove) (Alistair Speirs)
8:00 – Diving into SharePoint 2010 (Kathy Hughes + Aaron Saikovski)
8:30 – Visio Integration Services + SharePoint 2010 (Jamie Hutchins)
8:45 – Final demos + Panel Session Q+A
9:15 – Finish + networking

Because this is a big SharePoint night, there’s also going to be a stack of Sydney’s finest SharePoint consultants and developers coming along. So, it’s a good chance to make useful contacts if you are looking to investigate SharePoint strategies.

Although the night officially commences at 6pm, most of us will be there from 5:30pm for general chatting and mingling. Feel free to come along early (and get a good seat!).

Oh, and here’s an obligatory graphic of the SharePoint pie

A little bit about our presenters:

Kathy Hughes

Kathy Hughes is a long time SharePoint guru, Microsoft MVP, and author of the upcoming SharePoint Designer 2010 Unleashed book (which has over 1,000 pages – yikes!) . Along with Aaron Saikovski, she’s been preparing a stack of demos to showcase the new features in SharePoint 2010 Server. They’ve put together 2+ hours of detailed information and demos.

Aaron Saikovski

Aaron is well known in the SharePoint space, having worked for some of the largest SharePoint consultancies in Australia, before moving to Microsoft Services Australia as a Senior SharePoint Consultant a year or so ago. He’s a Certified Microsoft Technology Specialist and former MVP with experience as a consultant and trainer across a variety of sectors including defence, federal and state government, financial services, logistics and insurance both in Australia and internationally.

One of the advantages Aaron brings to the event is his close ties to the SharePoint product teams in Redmond, due to him being the local MCS field readiness champion for the SharePoint 2010 wave of technologies. If you are after a key contact to keep you in the loop, then make sure you have a chat with him on the night.

Alistair Speirs

After the pizza break we’ll be handing over to Alistair Speirs. He’ll be giving an overview of how Office 2010 fits in with SharePoint 2010, plus talk about his favourite Office app – SharePoint Workspace (what used to be known as Groove).

As an aside, I wanted to mention a few thoughts about Alistair (in case you don’t know him that well). Alistair is one of those quiet types who you might easily miss. However, I’ve noticed that every time I chat with him I come away really impressed. His knowledge & experience with all things Microsoft Office is vast! He’s also very considered (no off the cuff opinions here). He’s also pretty patient when you want to have a rant (as I tend to do at user groups from time to time ) – and then comes back with a few wise thoughts after the meeting that totally re-align my perspective.

Why do I mention this? Well, simply this. If you haven’t had a chance to meet and speak with Alistair about Office & SharePoint, then this SBTUG meeting will be a good chance. As I mentioned, he’s quiet and unassuming so you’ll have to make a point of finding him. But if you have a real-world question about Office then he’s the one to see. He’s seen just about every conceivable scenario to do with Office, Groove, SharePoint and InfoPath used in enterprise and government departments around the country. Make sure you track him down.

OK, enough of the praise-Alistair fest! Back to SharePoint 2010.

Why SharePoint 2010 is important

SharePoint is already one of the biggest money-spinners for Microsoft (Steve Ballmer describes it as one of Microsoft’s Unsung Hero products). And there’s no indication that’s stopping anytime soon. But more than that, SharePoint 2010 is effectively the ‘version 3’ of a product that everyone waits for (or in the case of WSS it’s version 4!). Put another way: SharePoint 2010 is when they finally get it right (<- joke). So, you need to understand what’s coming in the product. We’ll be covering operational, developer and designer/user interface aspects.

Make sure you take a look at these sneak peek videos on the SharePoint 2010 site for more:

One other thing

There’s another thing I wanted to mention about the night. At the end we’re having a panel session with all the presenters up the front to answer any questions you may have. This will be a similar style to the way we conducted the Virtualisation Smack-down panel session a few months back. Come along with your questions and get informed answers. Both the good and bad. This won’t be marketing guff – instead it will be expert advice from people who work with the technology day-in, day-out.

Have I sold you on the event? I hope so. Let me just add this final note:

This event will be one of the first public demos of SharePoint 2010 in Australia. So, make sure you join us to find out what all the fuss is about. You can RSVP here on Facebook (preferred), or email me (if you aren’t on FB).

Free pizza?

Oh, and one more thing! I’m applying to get Microsoft funding for this event so that I can provide you all with heaps of pizza and drinks for free. If I can get a really big turn out it makes it easier to get the funding approved. So, please let all your work colleagues and friends know, tweet about it, RSVP on the event page, and then I look forward to seeing you on the night.

Let me know what type of pizza you want

See you on Wed 28 October, at 5:30pm.

Many thanks: to Ivan Wilson (<- SharePoint guru) for promoting the event on Guru Web.

After too much pain with both BlogEngine.NET and GoDaddy hosting I moved this site over to WordPress (on DreamHost) last week.

I’ve been using WordPress and DreamHost for years on my other sites, so it was only a matter of time before my personal blog finally made the move. Recent issues with BlogEngine.NET – including Search and Comments not working after a recent update – were the final straw.

I’d been dreading the work involved to make the move, but it turned out to be pretty easy. I basically followed the steps Merill outlined, with a few tiny additions that I’ll outline below. The process even includes a CSV with the required redirects to add to your .htaccess file, so you won’t lose any hard earned Google juice.

Note that the import only imports posts (ie no pages) from BlogEngine.NET – so make a manual backup of the pages from your site (eg copy the source HTML).

Here’s a summary of the steps:

1. I’ll assume you have a blank WordPress site set up. Make sure you’ve set the Permalink structure you’d like before you do the import – the import will honour those settings.
2. Export from BlogEngine.NET to a BlogML.xml file.
3. Copy all the images from your old blog up to the new blog (eg into the /wp-content/uploads/ directory)
4. Make some replacements in the BlogML.xml file (eg the images paths – BlogEngine uses image.axd?picture= re-directs that you can replace with the direct path name you used in point 3)
5. Edit the categories in the BlogML.xml file (you’ll need to replace the GUID-like IDs with the actual category names – both at the top and throughout the file)
6. Download the wonderful BlogML import script for WordPress by Aaron Lerch (get it here) and FTP it up to your /wp-admin/import/ directory.
7. You may need to make some changes to the settings if you have a large file. Add these to the start of the BlogML import script just after the require_once(’XPath.class.php’);
   ini_set("memory_limit","146M");
   ini_set("max_execution_time", "300");
   ini_set("max_input_time", "300");
   These set the memory used to 146M* (up from a default of 8MB) and the timeouts to 300 seconds (up from a default of 30). If you import has errors you may need to up these values even more. My import had 913 posts and took roughly 4 mins (ie 240 seconds). Yours may be more if you have a big site to move.
8. Import the file in WordPress (from Tools -> Import -> BlogML)
9. You may discover after the import that some things aren’t quite right (eg image paths), and need to import again after fixing (it took me about 5 imports until I got it all right). Before doing so, you’ll want to delete all the imported posts. You can easily do a bulk delete using the Bulk Delete WordPress plug-in.
10. Download the CSV file of redirects. Open your .htaccess file and add them in. You’ll need to manually add any category re-directs.
11. You can then do all the usual blog stuff (updating your FeedBurner feed source, submitting your sitemap.xml to Google Webmaster tools, etc)

Hope that helps. If you’d like any further details, leave a comment/question and I’ll update the post.

* Note: I have a Virtual Private Server on DreamHost, so I can increase my memory to 146MB no trouble – depending on your hosting package, you may limits less than this.