By now most of us are the over jet-lag and sleep deprivation that accompanied this year's SharePoint Conference (i.e. SPC 2011). This year’s SharePont Conference was a tremendous success with great attendance, speakers, exhibitors, parties, etc. and it is clear that “SharePoint is all grown up”. It seems like just yesterday that we first installed SharePoint Team Services here at SusQtech, but it's actually been 10 years. At the time it was used it for simple collaboration on our large web development projects. But oh how it's grown. We saw Portal Server 2003 and then MOSS in 2007 and now SharePoint 2010 and Office 365. It's amazing the way the product, community and industry around SharePoint has grown and matured.
It was great to see all the ways SharePoint is being used from internet sites and eCommerce sites to education portals for primary, secondary and higher education to large government intranets to Business Intelligence to Office 365 and SharePoint Online, the question is no longer 'Can SharePoint do that?' but 'What will I do with SharePoint Next'?'

Here is a list of highlights/observations from this year's conference:
  • SharePoint Spokesperson Auditions were funny. Especially Carmen Electra talking about the cloud. View it here.
  • SharePoint can do that!
  • Recommended Watching (in case you missed it):Ken Mallit and Mark Dunkel gave a great presentation on SharePoint Solutions for the Public Sector. It’s amazing what a group of motivated high school students have done with SharePoint. Also, lots of great Free Resources in this presentation. View it here.
  • SharePoint for America’s Heroes: Free SharePoint Training to servicemen and women re-entering the work force.
  • Great Evening Events All Around: The Red Party, OktoberFiesta, Nintex’s Welcome Reception, Bamboo Solutions and many more.
  • SusQtech (that’s us) released SP Community 1.5 our next generation of social web parts and tools for SP 2010. 
  • Digital Marketing (i.e. SharePoint for Internet Sites), FAST Search and Microsoft Commerce Server are pushing SharePoint Outside the Firewall in a big way. There is a great summary of all the Digital Marketing sessions here.
  • Office 365 is making SharePoint available to every organization big or small. The question is becoming more ‘when’ than ‘if’ you are moving to the Cloud. SusQtech.com/O365
  •  CloudShare rocks!
  • Our very own Liam Cleary (MVP) won his match of BONK! against Mark Miller and Zlatan Dzinic (MVP).
  • Looking forward to the 2012 SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada November 12-15, 2012
  • The 2012 SharePoint.ORG Conference dates were just announced and this years event will be held April 30 - May 1 2012 in Reston, Virginia.