Nothing much in the opening keynote session, just a release date for Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005 and BizTalk 2006 -- November 7. The details are available at the launch site: http://msdn.microsoft.com/launch2005/
After a visit to the INetA booth, I caught the last part of Billy Hollis (www.dotnetMasters.com) presentation on Click Once WinForm deployment. Between MSI, Click Once and the Application Updater Block, we should be able to deploy anything across the web these days. We're working on getting a schedule date for Billy to present to the Enterprise Developers Guild. Stay tuned.
My next session was a SharePoint lab given by BrightWorks, a Microsoft partner. BrightWorks has an excellent support product for SharePoint product, but they are proud of it.
My next session was a SharePoint Workflow Lab with one a MetaLogix partner, Captaris (www.Captaris.com). We have an excellent workflow product in Captaris Teamplate and it really works well with SharePoint. Matt Williams led us through an excellent hands on demo of the latest release. The workflow is implemented using an interesting approach to SharePoint programming. One web part is used to drop Captaris on SharePoint page. Then all the workflow screens work in a "dialog" mode, popping up small windows over the web part. The wizard works pretty much the same way. I will definitely keep that in mind for future SharePoint development. Can you say "interactive development"? For that matter can you say "finesse"? Captaris sure can.
After a twenty minute stop at the CodeZone launch party for "dinner", I went to an outstanding SharePoint Site Definition and Templates session given by Mike Fiztmaurice of Microsoft and consultant Ted Pattison (www.TedPattison.net). Again, the best approach to cloning a SharePoint site involves lots of finesse. Mike and Ted did an excellent job showing the pressure points where SharePoint can be prodded and pushed into using cascading style sheets and the navigation bar can be controlled programmatically, or interactively. I really like Ted's sample site, Wing Tip Toys, he has posted on his site. I hope I can find the presentation slides as they were a treasure trove of SharePoint modification tips and tricks. If you are at all interested in SharePoint development check out GotDotNet. The workspace /SharePointDevKickStart does what it says. The new SharePad, note pad for SharePoint, is another GotDotNet workspace you should check out.
A late night cabana session on Best Practice for SharePoint Development got of to a bad start when the scheduled expert didn't show. However, Amanda, the INETA moderator pulled it out. We may not have discussed best practice, but she got a lively exchange of experiences, questions and answers going among the SharePoint "Birds Of a Feather" in attendance.
It was a long day, but these break out and cabana sessions are keepers.
Bill J
Orlando