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I am a 26 year old female SharePoint Enthusiast. I work for B&R Business Solutions from my home in Olathe, KS. I have been working with SharePoint since I attended the Portal University in 2005. I hold a BA in Computer Science from the University of Missouri - Kansas City. I love playing Rockband, organizing user group meetings, working with MOSS, attending Code Camps as a speaker, and having bizarre conversations about geek things with cool people. If you have any comments or questions fill out the contact form and I will try my best to help.

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January 2009 Entries

SP Tech Con So far...


So I've been in San Francisco for a few days to kind of write about some things I've done and seen.  I wanted to kind of just write this out so I can process some of it while it's happening.  I've met some really cool people so far one person, Barb, in particular seems pretty cool and really nice.  Just the type of person you can sit with and kind of have a decent discussion.  Really laid back incredibly smart and awesome.  Not overly crazy.  The other person I met who is insane, but I like is Neville Atkins.  He's so intelligent.  He reminds me of my boyfriend, Johnny.  Every five seconds he has something insanely brilliant to say.  I spent dinner today with Dux Raymond Sy, Neville, and Barb (and one of Dux's friends).  It was a group of people I could hang out with on a daily basis.  A pretty good mix.  Dux has been pretty cool this week introducing me to a lot of different cuisine.  Stuff you just don't get in Kansas City or St. Louis that often.  Intellectually and foodwise it has been a really good time.  I met a few other people, one in particular that struck me as really cool was John Ross.  He also seemed very intelligent and I kind of got him in trouble for talking to much at the sponsor hall.  Of course I got to hang out a bit wiht Michael Lotter and all the B&R guys (I finally met Jay Medero).  I'm pretty picky and kind of elitist with who I hang out with at these conferences.  I know it's kind of a jerk thing to say, but I'm not the type of person who likes to surround themself with people.  In fact I didn't really walk into the sponsor hall, because to me it just felt like too many people.  I went in once did a circuit left, then came back a few more times.  I kind of had to push myself a little bit and if I had not I would have never talked to John.  The other thing is I'm very analytical of what I say to people later on.  Some people it's just easier for me to get along with than others.  It's just who I am.   Anyway I feel a little sick again and I really need sleep, but all in all it was a pretty big day.  I had a lot of fun.  I hope that tommorow is as good as today.

posted @ Thursday, January 29, 2009 3:00 AM | Feedback (3) |


Why is my CSS not working...


So I had the recent privilege to work with a bunch of InputFormTextboxes and KWIZ Tagging Controls.  None of them would inherit my styles using the CSSClass tags for some reason.  So I shoved a couple spans around the controls in the RenderContents method and finally the links inherited everything I needed.  Morale of the story: <span></span> is your friend.

 

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posted @ Monday, January 19, 2009 10:25 PM | Feedback (0) |


SharePoint .Org Conference


I had the privilege of meeting John Stover and Sean Bordner at SharePoint Saturday in Virginia Beach.  I wanted to post there conference information in case anyone was interested:

The upcoming 2009 .ORG SharePoint Conference is focused on sharing SharePoint knowledge and expertise with Associations and Non Profit Organizations. For 2009 the conference has been expanded, providing as many as four concurrent sessions with topics for everyone from the end-user to the CIO. The main Conference consists of two full days of general sessions and breakout sessions, but this year we have added both pre-conference and post-conference options.
More than 30 educational sessions covering business and technical topics.
A pre-conference introduction to SharePoint session on Sunday, March 22.
A post-conference SharePoint Developer camp on Wednesday, March 25.
Sponsor-driven sessions with case studies on how their products and services have been used by customers. Networking functions to allow attendees to share information with one-another.

URL: http://www.SharePointConference.org 
Call for Speakers: http://www.sharepointconference.org/Presenters/Pages/SharePointAbstract.aspx?source=mosslover

So if anyone wants to speak at the conference in Baltimore looks like they need speakers and the obvious attendees.  I've noticed they do this yearly.  John Stover will also be at SharePoint Saturday Kansas City.

posted @ Monday, January 19, 2009 10:22 PM | Feedback (0) |


More SharePoint Saturday Thoughts


So I think I picked something up this weekend.  Not sure what, but I'm not feeling so great.  You know me I'm running at 50 mph and when I get sick I have to stop and pause.  Sometimes it's great, but other times not so much.
Anyway, so a little more on the meeting with Joel, so there was a speaker dinner Friday night.  I left my coat by my chair and went to the bathroom.  When I came back Joel was sitting next to my chair.  It was apparent who it was and I kind of just sat there stunned.  Honestly, this is how I would act with anyone who sat next to my chair that I didn't know.  Sometimes I can suck in my gut and push myself to say hi and sometimes I've had very little sleep and I'm not so good at meeting people.  For that reason people think that I hate them.  No it's not so much that I hate them.  Sometimes you have to get the conversation started with me and once that happens sometimes I won't shut up.  A little after that meeting Mark Miller came up to me.  Mark was pretty cool.  I felt like Mark is a little like Paul, where you can talk to him really easily.  I look forward to seeing both him and Paul in the NYC SP Saturday.  I also met Dan Usher and at first he was really quiet.  When he came to my session later he seemed a bit more talkative which was really cool.  He's a pretty interesting guy that I chat with now regularly on im.  I met a whole ton of other cool people including John Holliday, Kevin Griffin, Kevin Israel, Susan Lennon, Jessica Moss, and Robin (don't remember her last name).  I look forward to seeing some of these guys again at various events.  Overall I like these events, because you meet all kinds of people you never really meet on a normal basis.  I had a crazy idea to come to New York (which is literally stupid), but I need to see some cousins.  I keep putting it off, so I told Michael I would volunteer that weekend at the event.  That way I get to see my cousins and my aunt in Philly.  I get to have lunch with my aunt that Sunday.  So I'm actually speaking in Jacksonville the day before I fly to NYC.  It will be a weird weekend.  I'm finally meeting AC, then I get to see my family and friends up that way.  I seriously need to compile a list of all the people I know out that way.  I contacted my other aunt in Baltimore and she said she'd rather I visit in May, so I'll go the D.C. one too.  I promised that I would make more time for family and I'm kind of doing so in my own way.  I'm hoping I can get my cousin David to come to the event.  If it wasn't on the Shabbos I could probably get my aunt and other cousins to come.  The next few months are going to be crazy and hectic and awesome.

posted @ Tuesday, January 13, 2009 8:20 PM | Feedback (1) |


Exhaustion and Some Virginia Beach


I am a little tired, so I'm not counting this as my official post.  I think I need some time and some sleep to process.  I did get 6 1/2 hours of sleep last night, which is the most I can say for last week's total.  So anyway....I had no idea what to expect from this event.  It is my third full on SharePoint Event.  I am a code camp nut, so I usually end up meeting all kinds of .Net and SharePoint people.  I would have to say this was one of my favorite events.  I'm not so sure it can beat the Regional SharePoint Conference, where I first met Paul Galvin and Michael Lotter (plus some other crazies).  That event was certainly a pinnacle of events and kind of a turning point for last year.  This event was more like let's see how far you've come in the past year.  I can't believe it.  It was almost one year ago that I started going from event to event traveling all over the U.S.  In April of 2008 I attended the St. Louis MOSS Camp.  At that point I knew of AC, John Holliday, Todd Bleeker, Joel Oleson, but I didn't really know anyone.  I met Paul Schaeflin, Todd Kitta, Scott Spradlin, and Corey Van Dyke.  It was a pretty good event, but seriously nowhere near SharePoint Saturday Virginia Beach.  Virginia Beach was kind of like opening my eyes and realizing what i've been trhough and how I got there.  I met Bleeker a month ago at KC Day of Dot Net.  I saw him again.  He seems like a really nice guy.  I still haven't seen his awesome List/FBA Presentation.  One day I will see it somewhere, just like I finally saw JD Wade's SharePoint: The Tour Starts Here presentation.  We went out to dinner a bunch of us after Virginia Beach and Bleeker made an appoint to talk to everyone.  You don't see people doing that often.  That's a good quality to have.  Now you all know Joel Oleson was there and I had the opportunity to hang out with him a bit on Friday night.  He's a cool guy, but everyone knows how I am.  I spoke with him a bit on Friday, but not much (I couldn't hear anything).  Ok so I have to board  a plane so I will continue my post later (bigger, better, and uncut).

posted @ Sunday, January 11, 2009 9:47 AM | Feedback (2) |


SharePoint Saturday Site Down


The SharePoint Saturday Site is down. If you need the Speaker Submission form you can e-mail me at SharePointSaturdayKC@gmail.com. If you want to register for the event go directly to the click to attend at https://www.clicktoattend.com/invitation.aspx?code=134017. Sorry guys and thanks for your patience.

posted @ Wednesday, January 07, 2009 10:07 PM | Feedback (0) |


SharePoint Saturday


So it looks like the first SharePoint Saturday event will be this weekend.  I have most of my demos and a few slides thrown together and ready.  They have about 200 people signed up for the event.  They had to cut off registration.  I hope that we can get nearly as many people in Kansas City as they have in Virgnia Beach.  I am getting so many session abstracts and will be cutting them off around January 16th at midnight.  I have called so many different consulting firms in the area and heard the words "No we cannot help you at this time"...I have never really noticed how much effort and work you have to put in to make an event great.  Right now we have about 65 people signed up for Kansas City.  We should be getting more in the upcoming weeks as we push to call more recruiters and people in the area.  I think I might post at the end of this whole thing about what was good and what was bad that we did.  I am trying a new strategy with recruiters.  If they try and recruit me I'm going to try and recruit them to get more people for the event or sponsor the event.  So far it's working mainly to get more people for the event, which is not necessarily a bad thing.  Overall I would say the sponsors part is the most exhausting part.  The speakers are not too bad, except when they forget to send in abstracts.  I think that we will be able to fill a lot of different tracks, levels, and areas of SharePoint.  I guess the hardest part is throwing an event and not speaking.  I am still trying very hard not to post a submission.  In the end I seriously don't think I can coordinate and speak at the same time.  I need to admit defeat.  Anyway, I'll continue posting and maybe throw in a real blog post in the upcoming weeks.  Later everyone.

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posted @ Tuesday, January 06, 2009 7:23 PM | Feedback (0) |


Reflecting on 2008...


It's weird it's 2009...If I look back to when I was 10 all I wanted to do was get to 18, so I could leave my parents house.  On December 31st, 2000 things were so very different.  I was 17 years old about to turn 18 a couple months later.  I went to my grandmother's apartment at the assisted living facility a week before and she was complaining of a cold or the flu.  This day was the day that she would end up in the hospital.  I had this gut feeling that we wouldn't see her again outside of the hospital.  I went to the hospital every day until January 30th.  I was crying in my bedroom.  I guess my parents couldn't hear me.  They were debating on whether they should wake me up, because my grandmother had passed away.  Every year during New Years I remember what happened to lead up to that day.  Ever year I put on my Jewish Star to remind me who she was and what she wanted for me.  She told me I could do whatever I wanted.  She was one of the few positive influences in my life that made me feel like I could succeed.  She is the reason why I am here writing this blog.  She taught me how to type on a keyboard using an old Smith Corona Typewriter when I was 10.  She helped me buy my first computer when I was 15.  When we went to private school and my mom would not wake up due to crippling depression she took me and my brother to school.  She gave me her 1985 Chrysler Lebaron when she could no longer drive, so I could bring myself to Lacrosse practice.  Despite all her crazy flaws she was my beacon of hope for the future of what I could accomplish.  I will never forget where I came from and who helped me get there.  This year I need to remember that my family and friends are very important.  They hold the glue together in your life and they help you out when you fall.  Happy New Year Everyone in the SharePoint Nation!

posted @ Thursday, January 01, 2009 4:04 PM | Feedback (0) |