SharePoint Nick

BDC and SalesForce

nick — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 10:09:49 GMT

We’ve recently published a free article on how to connect SalesForce to SharePoint via the BDC. You can download the article, the code, and also try out the dummy web service we are hosting. Take a read to learn some more:

BDC and SalesForce.

Connect Via Books Relaunched

nick — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 16:23:32 GMT

Before getting into the SharePoint world a friend and I started a web site around 2004 called Connect Via Books. The aim of the site was simple – a social networking site for people who loved books. The original site was developed on ASP.NET 1.1 and although the original launch was quite promising after a little while we got distracted by other work (SharePoint for me!) and the site remained as it was.

Well I’m very happy to announce that the site has recently been relaunched after a large redevelopment! We learnt an awful lot from developing the first version both on a technical basis and also how people want to use a social networking site. Things have certainly changed since 2004 as well with Facebook coming along and peoples attitudes to sharing personal details on the web being a lot different.

As you’ll know from reading this blog I absolutely love reading books, so combining a development project and books was the thing that first attracted me back in 2004 and still excites me to work on it again now. Being able to connect with people who’ve read the same types of books find new recommendations is something I find really valuable and fun.

We’ve completely rebuilt the site on ASP.NET MVC which was good as it was a new thing to learn. I’m a programmer at heart and it was great fun learning this new framework. Next project perhaps I’ll try Ruby on Rails! :-)

Please register and try it out – we have a UserVoice feedback tab on the site so please leave any feedback or ideas you may have:

www.connectviabooks.com

See BDC Meta Man Web Edition in action

nick — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 13:57:40 GMT

Phill Duffy will be taking two web casts tomorrow that show how you can configure the Business Data Catalog application definition files from within the browser using BDC Meta Man Web Edition. If nothing else it’s an amazing demo of how you can use jQuery within SharePoint to build very powerful applications.

The sessions are

Wednesday 17th June 3pm GMT
Wednesday 17th June 8pm GMT

If you’d like to attend either of these please drop an email to support@lightningtools.com and indicate which session you want to attend.

Outstanding customer service

nick — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 06:35:49 GMT

We often spend so much time complaining on blogs I think it’s right that when someone does something good we mention it too. I was having dinner tonight at the restaurant that is part of the Marriott hotel in Redmond. As I sat down a large group of people were just ordering so I knew that I may have to wait a while but I had a book to read so no issue.

It did take may be 15 mins longer for the starter to turn up – but I wasn’t fussed and the manager was nice enough to bring over a free drink. When my main meal arrive just after I finished the starter I had an invitation for breakfast ‘on the executive chef’ as a thanks for being so patient. I didn’t have to complain or anything – it was all done without a mention on my part.

Needless to say what was a great experience in the restaurant due to great food became exceptional due to leaving with a nice happy feeling – and I know where I’ll be coming back to stay in Redmond next time.

Life without caffeine

nick — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 18:21:44 GMT

For the past 4-5 months I’ve been caffeine free having given up tea, coffee and diet coke. I never used to drink any coffee but could quite easily get through about 6-8 cups of tea each day and 2 diet cokes. Of course the caffeine rushes were great but then the lull afterwards always meant the need for another coffee. I also found it quite hard to get off to sleep each night.

At the end of the day caffeine is a drug and I’d rather my body not have anything going around it that it does not really need. My fiancé Sophie has given up caffeine for a long time now (I guess approx 5 years), but my previous attempts only lasted about 14 hours due to bad headaches!

Back at the start of the year I developed a very bad case of man flu and didn’t really feel like anything to eat or drink. 24 hours went past and without even realizing I’d not had any caffeine. I didn’t suffer from any headaches apart from the general lousy feeling that man flu brings. Halfway through the second day I realized that’d I’d not been drinking any of the evil stuff and so committed myself to continuing! The third day was the only time I had a bit of a caffeine withdrawal headache and to tell the truth it wasn’t that bad. 5 months later – and I’m still going! Some of the benefits of giving it up

- no highs and lows of energy, just a good constant flow

- sleeping much better at night now, which helps with the above point

- really enjoying some different teas that don’t have caffeine in such as Jasmine tea and Rooibos tea.

One small caveat to this is that I’ve not given up chocolate (although I have cut down) – so I sometimes get a little caffeine from that now and again.

I saw an interview with Gary Player a while ago talking about first tee nerves when playing golf. He commented how funny it was that 99% of club golfers always have a coffee or tea in the club house before playing. This pre round drink with caffeine in will raise your heart rate, thus making you more nervous on the first tea and more likely to swing too fast and hit a duff shot. So remember golfers – a glass of water or orange juice before tee off!

Taking pride in your work

nick — Mon, 11 May 2009 23:22:37 GMT

I’ve started taking the time to read a few blogs again. One of the blogs I’ve started reading is the famous Uncle Bob who I’m ashamed to admit I only really found out about relatively recently after his interview on Hanselminutes. Listening to that show and recent readings of his books and Crystal Clear by Alistair Cockborn have really put us in the right direction at Lightning Tools and also been incredibly motivating. Currently we do a lot of our development work remotely rather than all sitting in the same location but this is soon to change with the opening of Lightning Tools HQ – very exciting stuff!

Uncle Bobs recent post called ‘Why the sea is boiling hot’ struck a real cord with me - ‘I want developers to take pride in their work.’

Some people I used to work with may laugh at me finding that important – and I’m not sure if it is because I have got older and wiser or now run a software company – but it’s really a great question to ask some one – ‘are you proud of that bit of code’ when you’ve found an issue that really should have been picked up. Putting more processes in place when we get into the new office such as pair programming and maybe even TDD(!) will help developers become more professional and proud of the work they complete. David Heinermeier Hansson posted a response to Uncle Bob saying that as well as engineers we need artists – but I’ve got to agree with Uncle Bob in that these processes and systems that take care of the professional development process actually will allow developers to free their mind and come up with great new ideas and features.

This again brings me round to thinking about Getting Things Done – as many things seem to these days. One of the barriers people put up to David Allens GTD processes are that they are of an artistic nature and do not want to be boxed in by the processes of GTD. The reply that is always given by GTD’ers is that by letting GTD manage your projects, tasks, inbox etc – your brain is free from having to keep track of these things and actually gives you more of an opportunity to use it how it should be – in an artistic way thinking up new ideas, product features, writing songs, painting pictures or whatever you think being artistic is!

SharePoint Podshow and doing things you enjoy and learn from

nick — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 11:27:22 GMT

Rob posted up the other day that we’d hit the 100,000 download mark with the SharePoint Podshow (we’re actually well over it now). While a nice milestone – I thought we’d actually get there quicker! So if you know someone who isn’t listening get them subscribed. Whether they are into SharePoint or not doesn’t really matter!

As Rob said in his post we really enjoy recording the shows. I obviously work with Brett so we get along well, and I’m yet to find someone who doesn’t enjoy talking with Rob – and so it all goes along nicely. Of course the important people in the podshow are the people we interview and thankfully we’ve had many volunteers come forward to speak about what they do and share their knowledge.

Enjoying what you do and continually learning in the context of the SharePoint Podshow reminded me of something I read in a book called Mental Ketchup which I finished just before the weekend. The book covers training your brain for high performance – both in terms of sport and business, I highly recommend getting yourself a copy.

Anyway, the book describes a triangle with the words results, enjoyment and learning at each point.

(sorry for my badly drawn triangle)

Too many people get themselves too far into the results corner of the triangle and although things may start off well – without the other two areas to balance things out the quality will be effected and results will in the end suffer.

The best place to be is right in the middle – so you are continually learning, enjoying what you are doing – and quite often the results will follow and improve without you even realizing.

I managed to use this myself at the weekend in a golf competition. All last year I was very focused on wanting to win and counting my score as I went round. I ended up being so nervous and stressed about the score on each hole I didn’t enjoy it and my scores were bad. Last Sunday it was a lovely sunny morning, I kept focusing on how great it was to be outside – while still thinking each individual shot though and planning it carefully. I didn’t focus on the score of each hole though. Low and behold I get in the club house and I am in the lead – and it finishes up that way – a great start to the new golfing season!

So whatever you get up to – sport, blogging, twitter, work – make sure you stay in the middle of the triangle and you’ll get the enjoyment, learning and results you really want.

Nottingham SUGUK meeting

nick — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 06:49:01 GMT

SUGUK is spreading its wings a little further this month with the first meeting being held in Nottingham on April 30th! Steve Smith and Mark Macrae are presenting 2 great sessions so get your name down to attend:

http://suguk.org/forums/thread/18475.aspx

Steve and I have also penciled in the dates for meetings up to August – as soon as we have venues secured we’ll post up the dates as we know people want to put them in their diary as soon as possible.

Golf Books

nick — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 12:04:49 GMT

Doing a little spring cleaning today and gathered all my golf books up together! Think I need to ban myself from Amazon for a little while!

Out of all these, the two I would recommend are Dave Pelz’s Putting Bible and Short Game Bible.

(I haven’t read all these yet by the way! I just like collecting :-) )

SharePoint Best Practice Conference Roundup

nick — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 21:07:11 GMT

Last week was the SharePoint Best Practice Conference (BPC) held in London, organized by Combined Knowledge. There have been a couple of BPC’s in the US, but this was the first in Europe – as it showed with a great attendance of around 450 people. Lightning Tools were there with a stand and we had a chance to speak to lots of people about what we do and the values of the BDC.

This was also the first chance Rob, Brett and I had been in the same room since starting the SharePointPodshow – so we had a few drinks and a bit of banter to catch up on!

Rob and I did a couple of joint presentations on Business Value from SharePoint and the Business Data Catalog (of course). This was the first time I did a joint presentation and although I enjoyed it (and it felt like a podshow!) I don’t think we were as prepared (or practised) as we should have been. If you have any comments or feedback on them I’d be keen to hear it.

It was great to see a number of the US SharePoint MVPs at the show. Wondering around London was good fun as I never pay much attention to the tourist sights but to see others get excited kind of spurred me on.

The whole three days would have been perfect other than the football on Wednesday night! I reckon Liverpool can pull off something special on Tuesday though.

Well done to Steve, Zoe and the rest of the CK crew for organizing a great event.