I’ll be speaking at Boston Area SharePoint Users Group (BASPUG) that was founded to bring together like minds to network and share their experiences, triumphs, and tribulations around Microsoft SharePoint, to provide a community platform for Boston area SharePoint users, administrators, developers, architects, of all experience levels, even brand new to SharePoint, to share their knowledge with the community. We meet on the 2nd Wednesday of every month at the Microsoft New England Research and Development Center in Cambridge, MA.

Session Abstract

What are the basics when designing and delivering SharePoint based business solutions? How do I approach a business problem? What are the available Tools and techniques? In this session we’ve cover the basics and get you pointed in the right direction.
We’ll cover
Overview of Lists and Web Parts
Site Columns, Content Types, List Definitions
Use of Out of the Box > SharePoint Designer > Visual Studio
Page Viewer, CQWP, DVWP
Next Steps

>> Register Now <<

Thank you to all of you that attended my SharePoint Saturday Session in NYC. I’ll have the slide deck up later today or tomorrow. Thanks for making the SharePoint community such a great one.

If you are in Boston, MA area and wish to meet other SharePointers be sure to check out the Boston Area SharePoint User Group

The Boston Area SharePoint Users Group (BASPUG) was founded to bring together like minds to network and share their experiences, triumphs, and tribulations around Microsoft SharePoint, to provide a community platform for Boston area SharePoint users, administrators, developers, architects, of all experience levels, even brand new to SharePoint, to share their knowledge with the community.

We meet on the 2nd Wednesday of every month at the Microsoft New England Research and Development Center in Cambridge, MA.

In a previous post I discussed the SharePoint employment market that I’d like to build upon…

You’re the founder and president of You, inc. Do not let the circumstances of your current employment dictate what, where, when, why, and how to live your professional life (this coming from a 12-year independent consultant).

If you desire to break-into or extend your SharePoint skills, here are the basics:

>> Join your SharePoint User Group
>> Participate in a local SharePoint Saturdays
>> Get a Technet Plus subscription
>> Build a SharePoint Virtual Machine
>> Choose your goal: Administrator, Designer, Developer, Architect
>> Improve your skills
>> Get support: MSDN | Twitter | Blogs
>> Give Back!

I recently read “The Middle Tier Manifesto: An Alternative Approach to Development with Microsoft SharePoint” by a friend Marc Anderson.

I completely agree with Marc as to the merits of UI and SharePoint Designer in solution delivery – which is well received by the community and market. People make a living out of it and other passionate enough to dedicate a community to it like my friend Mark Miller.

My only disagreement with Marc is with his use of the term “Middle Tier”. If you check authoritative sites such as Wikipedia and MSDN you’ll see that there is a definitive use of the term in software. Trying to alter it or re-purpose it to discuss solution development on the SharePoint platform is going to be challenging.

I agree with Marc that there’s a need to better describe the various flavors of solution delivery within SharePoint. In my workshops and training you’ll often here me refer to configuration, customization, and development via UI, SPD, and VS in solution delivery. Let’s keep the discussion moving…

The recent turnout at the SharePoint Saturday DC event showed that there is still momentum in the community and market. With over 900 attendees this was the largest SharePoint Saturday event to date. In less than 2 years this grass roots effort has eclipse some formal conferences. It speaks to the community and technology behind SharePoint. Thank you leadership, support staff, speakers, and participants for such a great event!

It was great to have standing room only in my LINQ to SharePoint 2010 session delivered at the end of the day. Thankfully the session participants still had energy in the tank to hear a technical discussion on partial entity classes generated from SPMetal.exe.

I look forward to SharePoint Saturday NY and SharePoint Saturday Ozarks and Boston Area SharePoint Users Group (BASPUG)

Now off to build those RTM SharePoint 2010 Virtual Machines…

Come join me at

A recent client of mine asked to have a downloadable version of images stored in a SharePoint 2007 portal. There is a native capability that you might want to consider to meet such a requirement. When an image is uploaded to a Picture Library SharePoint produces two additional versions of the image: Thumbnail, and Web Preview.

The thumbnail is just what you’d expect – a version reduced in dimensions of the image for use in “All Pictures” list view. The image is stored in the “/_t/” folder of the libray. The image name is created in the form of “filename_ext.ext” such that “photos/image.jpg” has a “photos/_t/image_jpg.jpg” version.

The web preview, like the thumbnail, produce a reduced version of the image. The emphasis here thou is producing a “lightweight” version of the file. Even if the dimensions of the image are not reduced the memory size of file will be. The image is stored in the “/_w/” folder of the libray. The image name is created in the form of “filename_ext.ext” such that “photos/image.jpg” has a “photos/_w/image_jpg.jpg” version.

I wanted to always display links to the three image versions from the display form (/Forms/DispForm.aspx) of an image. This is acomplished by adding a custom webpart to the DispForm.aspx page. You’ll notice that you do not have access to the “Edit Page” function via “Site Actions”, but the capability is there. Simply add “&ToolPaneView=2″ to the querystring of the URL (/Forms/DispForm.aspx?ID=1&ToolPaneView=2).

SharePoint event participants often ask me about about their market value given their various skills.

It is impressive to see the continued growth of SharePoint in the market. It explains why SharePoint Salaries are increasing. Here are SharePoint skills in order of marketability (ie $$)

• Admin > if you are a super user of SharePoint those skills may be worth more in formal support.
• Trainer > if you’ve been supporting SharePoint for a while perhaps make more money begin a trainer
• Designer > if training is not your thing, knowing how to do all things out of the box with SharePoint can earn you more

Be sure to understand your market value when working with employers. After all there are about 23,000 SharePoint Jobs out there!