I've been confirmed as a speaker at SharePoint Saturday Houston Saturday April 28 2012! Looking forward to meeting some new SharePoint folks as well as seeing some old friends.

I'm presenting "UX & SharePoint... Why Bother?" again. Explaining User Experience and how UX techniques benefit a SharePoint project. Make sure and stop by!

Very excited to be added to the speakers list at SharePoint Saturday Austin this weekend! I'm a last minute addition to cover for another speaker who could not attend. One man gathers what another man spills!

My presentations is titled "SharePoint & UX... Why Bother?" discussing User Experience and its Importance to SharePoint. I hope to see you there at the session or at least If you manage to notice that I am there, please stop by and say "Hi".

Stay Weird!

My Employer, Slalom Consulting is Gold Sponsor of Sharepoint Fest 2011 in Dallas.

The event is being held March, 16 2011 at the new Irving Convention Center.

Should be a great time. hope to see you there!

This year’s SharePoint Saturday Dallas took place at the Hilton right off the Tollway in North Dallas. Thanks to Eric Shupps for all his hard work and planning. I felt it was a well run affair with a nice variety of speakers and sponsors and a nice opportunity to catch up with some of my nerdy friends and make some new ones. These things are great for networking and learning and you can’t beat the price.

I appreciate the speakers taking a Saturday away from their normal routine and sharing their knowledge. Big ups to Derek Martin and Tracey Nolte from Slalom Consulting for great presentations!

I have to say that, for me, SharePoint TechFest was a huge success. Even though I got there late and missed the morning sessions, I did get to attend the Keynote and afternoon sessions. It was as well put together an event as any I’ve attended, great presenters, great sponsors and an abundance of really smart people.

As a non-developer it’s common for me to feel like a fish out of water at the SharePoint events I attend. There just isn’t an abundance of “creatives” so the talk is rather technical and I end up understanding about half of what the “SharePoint Vulcans” have to say. This event started out about the same… a Star Trek convention without all the neat costumes. They did have great BBQ.

Things started looking up for me at the Keynote. The self acclaimed “SharePoint Dude” Brett Kovatch from Penson Financial Services was tasked with delivering and he did. Brett began to admonish the crowd to do the unthinkable. Gather and evaluate requirements with polls and interviews and USE the data to drive the design and interaction. Use wireframes and workflows to help the business stakeholders and SMEs understand what it is they are getting themselves into. Nice. Throw in a creative brief and I’m in heaven.

Seriously though, it is true what he said and I know that all the super intelligent people there are not strangers to the idea of requirements gathering and user testing. It’s common practice in custom development. For some reason SharePoint is not treated with the same kid gloves. I suppose it has to do with the “do it yourself” aspect of SharePoint and the fact that it’s really not as simple as all that. Gotta set it up right for it to work right.

Between someone (who knows SharePoint) agreeing with me on interaction design for SharePoint and all the great previews of SP 2010 I had some great takeaway. I’m excited about what I learned (understood) about SharePoint 2010 and can’t wait to get under the hood and see what I can break.

At the end of the day, it was great to see my friends from the various sponsors and customers. Meet new folks and put some faces to names and twitter accounts. If you get a chance to go to TechFest next year, do it. I’ll be there for the whole day this time.