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For anyone new I met yesterday I probably don't remember your name I am really sorry. You see yesterday I was pushing myself to the limit in a couple of weeks and my body was not all too happy. When I got home I watched an episode of House with my boyfriend and called it a night sometime around 11 pm. I never go to bed before midnight and I was exhausted and passed right out until 12 pm the next day. Today I am going to be taking it easy, so I can start coding again on Monday. I will not be running any marathons or running around for a while, because officially I had a sinus infection and bronchitis. The doctor told me it's going to take a while for me to fully recover from either. So officially for me the event started on Friday night with the speaker/volunteer dinner. We had about 20 people or so show up to the dinner and I got some of the print outs that night (thanks Chad). Haitham showed me the name badges and they looked really good. I'm going to wear mine to all SharePoint Saturday events from now on to show people that I am truly the "Head Geek" (no idea what that means:). So Mark Slavin from Idera made his presentation and I saw a couple tools for backup and recovery and such. Even a performance monitoring tool for SharePoint, but was more trying to pay attention to not coughing. Afterwards there was a lot of coughing that happened. Then when I get home there is an e-mail in my inbox from one of the speakers. The guy doing the 101 sessions was completely sick. So what I did was call Brian and then talk it over for a minute. I ended up calling another volunteer Bob and he did the sessions like a pro. I hear he was excellent. He gets a special thank you for doing it on such short notice. That night I was working on creating a site collection, turning on search, and creating a SSP for my presentation VM. That way Bob could have something to use for his sessions. I saw a House episode that night and went to bed (I was behind two episodes). The next day (day of the event), I actually woke up and and had an e-mail in our inbox for SharePoint Saturday KC from another speaker canceling. Earlier this week Michael Lotter canceled, so I had shoved grab bag in his sessions. At that point I e-mailed the speakers and people were like do your Silverlight session (in hindsight I need to improve just a bit). So I put myself down, although I had been coughing like an insane person and I still sounded horribly wispy and nasal. I got to the event site at 6:30 am and Leslie (Trainer at Centriq) opened the doors at 6:45 or so. Mark from Idera and John Stover had arrived around this time and helped carry a ton of things (thanks guys). John checked all the projectors too, so we knew that they worked. It was great early on everyone took the tables and decorated them (sponsorwise). All the speakers kind of trickled in at the times they needed to be there. We only had a couple major hiccups that will be addressed at the next event: - The doors at Centriq locked at noon and no one had any idea how to fix that problem, so we had to put up a sign.
- No soda came with the lunch (and it was supposed to), so we had to go out and buy some soda.
- The rooms were too small (going to have to find a bigger venue next time, even though we really love Centriq. We'll still use it for Office Geeks).
- We need to have a microphone and a place to do a welcome, because there really wasn't a good spot to fit 135 people.
Overall we got really good reviews and we are going to meet Wednesday to talk about what was good and what was bad. Then perhaps start throwing off ideas for the next event. The volunteers, speakers, and sponsors all seemed pretty awesome. To pull together 135 people and get a great response was a combination of everyone's combined efforts. Everyone says I started the idea here, but I could never have pulled off an event without all these people: - Haitham Gosheh
- Nidal Gosheh
- Brian Laird
- Joyce Laird
- Lee Brandt
- Jana Unruh
- Scott Robinson
- Michael Lotter
- Susan Lennon
- Chad Clarke
- Howard Davy (dude I hope you're better)
- Shawn McCubbin
- Bob Davis (dude gets a platinum star for stepping up at the last minute)
- Kevin Shaffer
As I said before also all the speakers and sponsors...Now I need many days to relax and process and fully recover from my sinubronchitis...I'll catch you all later.
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