http://www.sharepointsummit2010.com/call_speakers.asp

This is a great opportunity for you to showcase your expertise and knowledge of SharePoint with your peers that are also interested in SharePoint technology. The selection committee will pick speakers based on the following criteria:

1. Subject quality
2. Presentation content and relevance (Preferably SharePoint 2010)
3. Innovative aspect

The deadline for submissions is January 15th, 2010!

Location : Montreal (12-14 April , 2010)

• Environment:A medium server farm.
• Identity:A brand new custom domain account with no special permissions assigned.
• Action : Assigning the domain account as the application pool identity when creating a new Web application.
• Error Message: Invalid Username or password.
• Point of confusion: The same credentials work like a champ when logging to a test box in the domain. I can also add the user to a SharePoint group.
• Event Log and ULS Log : Nope,nothing!
• Googling (mmmm...Binging) : No dice!

Steps to find the real error:

• Tried a simpler password by taking out the "!" because I was aware of some issues with usual culprits -%,&,$ etc used in app pool password.
• Added  the user to a test site and tried to login - Yup... the user can NOT login to any SharePoint sites ; so there was something wrong! DUH!
• Checked the Event log and that was where the following nasty little error rears its ugly head all over.This event was generated when actual logon request of the last step failed not when the central admin "Create or extend Web Application" was throwing "invalid username or password". It was generated on the WFE where access was attempted.

Resolution (or Workaround!):

• Deleted the account and recreated it.

Ever since the beta bits of Win7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 came out, some folks have written great blog posts, tweets and articles that walk you through the steps to prepare a VHD image for native booting and everyone is approaching this from a different angle - see References section later in this blog post.

The problem is that if you are not an administrator or you have no familiarity with the tools included in Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 or WAIK , it's quite challenging to follow most of those articles that are filled with technical or administrative jargons and involves lots of commands, utilities( For example WIM2VHD or PowerShell script) and various tools. Too much complexity for a dev guy, IMO!

My requirement for the use of native boot from vhd thing is so simple:

Scenario: SharePoint Dev,Demo and Validation Machine

Goals:

1. To build a common , reusable SharePoint image that can be immediately used for dev, demo & testing purposes.
2. To build this image using available user interfaces (i.e. Hyper-V Manager) with minimal use of command line and funky scripts or utilities.

Background: People who have worked with me know me as a person who loves virtualization! I run Windows Server 2008 on all my computers and don't do anything except in virtual machines. However, in order to test my applications (for performance,stability and etc), I'd rather be on a real hardware.Although, there are techniques to even virtualize test resources, the safety net of having everything up and running and fully tested on a real box always gives me an extra level of comfort before any attempts to deploy my stuff to a customer's environment.

Additionally, I do a lot of presentations, so that would be nice if I could demo on real hardware too with no emulation layer that may degrade the performance of my presentations. By leveraging native boot from VHD, now I can have either Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 as my main OS and spin up extra bootable VHDs and multiboot them in a blink of an eye.

I think the ability to boot from VHD (natively) is like having a heap of computers sitting around at your disposal! Use them when you need them; otherwise leave them in your garage or throw them in the garbage bin if you will.

All right, enough talking. Let's just go ahead and get busy.

(more...)

For more information , please visit Techdays 2009 official Web site here.I will update this post about other sessions I will be presenting at a later date when I get the full details. Looking forward to seeing you'll there!

First off – I would like to thank all of the attendees who showed up at my session – Best Practices for Developing SharePoint Applications. I had a blast and a great turnout, with some fantastic feedback and  follow-up questions on my presentation!

Next, I'm so sorry that some folks in the back of the room had to stand up through the entire thing cause there were not enough chairs available! Next year, I will bring a couple of portable chairs just in case

Last - Here are the code and PPT slides from my presentation at SharePoint Saturday this past weekend in Toronto.
 PowerPoint Slides
 Code

Remember, the safety net of following best practices lets us do our job without an “oops, what the heck should I do now?” kinda moment (See the guy on the second slide!).

Kudo’s to Kanwal, Muhsin and Hasan Shahid to put this event together!

Finally, it looks like our book titled "Professional Microsoft SharePoint 2007 Reporting with SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services" is available through Amazon web site. It will probably head off to the printer first week of August, and Amazon.com is now taking pre-orders for it.

Writing a book was an absolutely new experience for me. I always love big projects , but this was the weiredest one that I’ve ever taken on.The process was much longer than I expected it to be , but as with any other projects in life when it was completed I was beside myself with joy! It is nice to feel like the book is finally really and truly out there! Woo hoo!!

Note: Some of the features presented in the sneak peak videos are subject to change by the time the final release comes out.

Related Links:

SharePoint 2010 Protocol Documentation: http://bit.ly/2N3gJ
SharePoint 2010 (Technical Preview) Developer Documentation http://bit.ly/7x5dK
Paul Andrew's blog: http://bit.ly/3gHPfE
Microsoft Office 2010 technical preview--screenshots http://tinyurl.com/nfo7cx
The Complete Guide To Microsoft’s Office 2010 http://bit.ly/Cy4CF

For more more information, check out http://www.sharepointsaturday.org/toronto/default.aspx or follow @SPSToronto Twitter alias .

Update July/07/2009: SharePoint Saturday Toronto schedule is now posted! http://bit.ly/spsto_schedule 

This is just an awesome way to start my Canada day!

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