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Archive for the tag “Community”

24 Jun 2009

Social computing with SharePoint

I have a couple of clients at the moment who are very interested in exploring social computing trends and how they might apply within the organisation.  I have to admit I find it all very interesting if not a little overwhelming and being relatively new and such a fast evolving area it’s quite a challenge to get onboard.

I’m currently making hard work of reading the rather catchily entitled Social Computing with Microsoft SharePoint 2007: Implementing Applications for SharePoint to Enable Collaboration and Interaction in the Enterprise.  Hard work not because of the book, it’s content  or how it is written but simply because I just don’t make the time to read right now.  I do however make sure I keep on top of my RSS feed list and have just stumbled upon an interesting looking Microsoft blog: The Enterprise Social Computing Blog.  It looks to have been running since January 2009 but I’ve only just noticed it so I have some catching up to do but if the opening sentence of the first post is anything to go by then it will be the perfect place to get up to speed;

Welcome to the new Microsoft mini-site dedicated to enterprise social computing– what it is, what it can bring to your organization, and how the social power of Microsoft SharePoint and other Microsoft offerings can help you collaborate, communicate, and achieve your business goals more effectively than ever before.  If you are interested in enterprise social computing, SharePoint, or both, you’ve arrived at the official river of news and perspectives from Microsoft on this hot topic for enterprises.

So if you have an interest in social computing for the enterprise I suggest you get over there, check it out and look around the rest of the Microsoft Office Social Computing site which looks full of great content.

Posted in SharePoint and tagged , , ,
19 May 2009

SharePoint unit testing

My last post about ASP.NET unit testing was prompted by the offer that the guys at TypeMock were making for free licences to their new ASP.NET bundle.  I noticed that fellow SharePoint developer and all round top man Chris White was far quicker off the mark than I was!  Rather notably Andrew Woodward has joined the league of SharePoint bloggers willing to spread the word even though (like myself) I know Andrew is a fully licensed user already.  The reason for this?  In accordance with the spirit of my earlier SharePoint as a development platform post there has been a groundswell of activity by Microsoft and leading 3rd party development tools suppliers to support the platform.

If I get a free TypeMock license I will happily donate it as a prize for the 2nd Annual SUGUK Golf Day on 23 July at Ullesthorpe Court.  With any luck, Agile development and unit testing will be on the agenda for the evening user group meeting.

Posted in Development, SharePoint and tagged , , ,
08 Apr 2009

More excellent community content

I saw Eric Shupps present at the European SharePoint Best Practices Conference this week and he has that rarest of combinations – a deep knowledge of and experience in the product together with a confident and competent delivery.  Eric has posted an article titled Debunking SharePoint Performance Myths and anyone working in any capacity within the SharePoint space will find this type of information invaluable.  I believe that it is shared insights like this that make the product stronger as we can all only do and experience so much ourselves.

Other highlights of the conference for me this week were Andrew Connell with a talk entitled ‘Building High Performance Solutions on MOSS’, Daniel McPherson discussing ‘SharePoint, the Social Computing Platform’ and the whirlwind that is Todd Bleeker giving us more information than could possibly fit into just one head on ‘Best Practices for Creating Custom Field Types’.

Whoever had the idea of a casino night after day 1 should be given a big pat on the back – excellent idea that had exactly the desired effect (I suspect).  I met several new people that evening and we ended up discussing SharePoint, Tamil Tigers, kilts and the north south divide (amongst other things) in a Westminster pub until late.

Overall, I wish the content had been slightly more in favour of excellent insights from the frontline such as Eric’s blog post but I know the organisers have a tough job getting the balance of content just right and I’m looking forward to reviewing the delegate DVD containing recordings and the slide decks from all the sessions.

Posted in SharePoint and tagged , ,
05 Apr 2009

European SharePoint Best Practices Conference

By virtue of the fact that I have worked for a succession of the world’s tightest employers and am now in the employ of probably the tightest of them all (i.e. myself), I have never been to single fee based conference.  However, after much persuasion my aforementioned current employer agreed that the first European based SharePoint Best Practices Conference was too good an opportunity to miss.  I am therefore happy to report that for the next 3 days my only concern is exactly how I arrange my time to hit all the sessions I really want to see delivered live (although I have already established that is actually impossible as several sessions I really want to see clash).  That said, one of the many benefits is a post conference DVD of all the sessions which for me will be almost worth the registration fee alone.  Of course, the opportunity to catch up with and talk to many of the SharePoint world’s leading lights and so many MVPs in one place will be invaluable.

It looks as though the guys have arranged after hours social gatherings every day culminating in a SharePoint by Day, SharePint by Night evening after the conference closes down on Wednesday.

Posted in SharePoint and tagged , ,
23 Feb 2009

SPDisposeCheck and Visual Studio

If you haven’t heard the SharePoint Pod Show yet then I highly recommend you try it out.  One of the hosts, Nick Swan is a good friend and occasional golf buddy and I’ve also had the pleasure of meeting co-host Brett Lonsdale a few times.  Together with US based Rob Foster they are doing a great job of bringing SharePoint current affairs to us by interviewing a wide range of really interesting people in the field.

In episode 16 Brett interviewed the amazing Todd Bleeker and believe me, I use the word amazing quite advisedly. A couple of years back I was fortunate enough to attend a Combined Knowledge 5 day WSS 3.0 Developer course delivered by Todd and not only does he have a rack of Quad core, HP Proliant blades running 128Gb RAM for a brain but he is also a genuinely nice and really interesting guy with an obvious passion for SharePoint and development (listen to the interview and you will know exactly what I mean).

In the interview Todd talks about the SPDisposeCheck tool, where it’s at, what’s missing and how to use it.  I was especially interested by what he had to say on integration with Visual Studio and I noticed that Eli Van Eenwyk blogged a post on the subject here.

I often read people gushing about the SharePoint community for just this sort of thing; people like the SharePoint Pod Show guys, Todd, Eli and an absolute host of others continually give up their own time for nothing more than the buzz of helping others (special mention to guys like Andrew Woodward, Andrew Connell, Chris O’Brien, Joel Oleson and Scott Guthrie to name but a few who have been of particular help to me over the years).  However, I have noticed an overall increase in community activity throughout the areas I am interested such as Silverlight and SQL Server too and this is further evidenced in the UK through events like DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper! Day and the Next Generation User Group meetings.

Posted in Development, SharePoint and tagged , , ,
05 Feb 2009

Design for developers! Whatever next?

I’ll tell you what next – they’ll have us working on Macs and wearing flowery shirts, that’s what next!

Deep breaths… and relax.

So what got me so up tight? I was browsing the Silverlight community area and happened upon this blog post from Arturo Toledo, a Microsoft Product Manager on the UX Platform & Tools team. They have produced a series of short videos called UI Design for Developers in cooperation with Total Training and having watched the first 5 (from 13) I have to say they have done a pretty fantastic job. Here is what Arturo has to say:

“…we produced these 13 video series with quick tips & tricks for non designers to learn more about design. This is something I officially consider Part I because teaching design takes longer than just 13 videos but I hope these help you to get a little deeper into design.”

Not only do the videos take you step-by-step through some of the fundamental principals, but they are a great tool for getting some familiarity with Expression too.

Maybe, just maybe, us developers and those designers don’t have to be divided by Macs and PCs, combats and flowery shirts anymore?

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Posted in Design, SharePoint and tagged , , ,
29 Jan 2009

Notebook touchpad stopped working

My current laptop is a (rather heavy) Dell Vostro 1700 which I chose as a compromise between outright performance and of course price. I upgraded from the preinstalled Vista Home 32bit to the 64bit version of Vista Ultimate. I recently (mistakenly and stupidly as it turns out) installed the tablet PC software with Windows updates and since then the touchpad has stopped working. I don’t use the touchpad unless I absolutely have to but even so, I knew that if I didn’t sort it out sooner or later I would get stuck. I did a quick search and found this forum entry where someone had just added a comment to say they thought it had coincided with installing the tablet PC software. There were several suggestions that hadn’t seemed to resolve the issue for various people so I started to dig around for myself.

My first thought was to uninstall the tablet PC software so I went to Control Panel > Programs and Features expecting to see something obvious for Tablet PC. Nothing there so I clicked the link to Turn Windows features on or off and then unchecked the Tablet PC Optional Components box. This had no effect so I opened Control Panel > Device Manager and expanded the Human Interface Devices node. There was an entry for IdeaCom HID Touch Screen (PS/2) so I right clicked it and selected Uninstall (and I selected the option to remove the driver).  The system prompted me to reboot and hey presto, when Vista restarted my touchpad had come back to life.

I posted this resolution as a suggested answer on the forum thread and have doubled up here in case anyone with the issue spots this post in a search result.

Posted in Laptop and tagged , ,

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