Being a part of this conference is exciting for me for a couple reasons – one being that I’m honored to come back to speak at this conference. I was a speaker at the June 2009 event in Boston – a great experience and privilege to be a part of the event. This time around I’m stoked to be back co-presenting with my friend Scott Hoag who I met in October 2010 and have been working on different IT Pro and Architecture experiments in our free time when not SharePointing or watching AMC’s TWD. If you’re up for some dry humour, witty comments and rockin’ information I think you’ll enjoy our sessions.

Nevertheless, if you’re interested in getting an extra $200 off of the conference admission fee (on top of other early bird discounts) be sure to use the code USHER in your registration and save a little cache, errr cash that is .

I’m looking forward to a fantastic week in Boston, seeing friends from the community and meeting new folks too! Come find me and introduce yourselves!

If you’ve been following us, we’ve been presenting quite a bit on the topic of Migration Pitfalls, this time around though from a different angle.

Overall, the presentation went well and we would like to extend our thanks once more to our hosts for allowing us the privilege to present.

If you missed the meeting and are interested in looking through slides, it can be done so below. Or if you’re like me, and you want a copy of the PowerPoint deck, you can find a link below.

PowerPoint 2010 Format Download

Before we presented though we had a few things to explore… such as the Apple Cube on 5th Avenue

I have to say that it was a pretty cool sight to see – the fact that the store is underground is in and of itself an interesting concept.

After a quick stop through we began wandering toward the Microsoft offices on foot… in the wrong direction… which got us caught up in remembering what it’s like to be a kid at FAO Schwarz… having never been inside the store I didn’t really know what to expect except for what I’d seen in the Smurfs movie that I saw last Fall… needless to say it was pretty crazy to see all of the candy and Gummi bears (oh and the nerds) as well as every popular toy that you could imagine from Star Wars apparel and masks to Thundercats action figures to even BatMan in Lego form.

All well worth the time spent in New York City, but for those that happen to be looking for a copy of our presentation, you can find it here through SlideShare.

If you need a copy to go offline with, you can grab a copy here – Avoiding Administrator Blunders in PPTX format.

As a side note, I’m not advocating DirectTV, just reminding you of the adverse effects

Nevertheless, to those that came to our session (and those that didn’t) we’d like to say thanks and hope that you enjoyed.  If you’d like to check out the slides presented, they can be viewed below through SlideShare.

If you’d like to grab the PPTX file, you can get it here - Pitfalls of Migrating to SharePoint 2010.SPSBOS

SharePoint Saturday Boston – Pitfalls of Migrating to SharePoint 2010

View more PowerPoint from Dan Usher

By the time your rss reader get this post here is 1 comments ,Welcome you come to leave your opinion !]]> http://www.sharepointdan.com/2012/04/28/sharepoint-saturday-boston-5/feed/ 1 http://www.sharepointdan.com/2012/04/21/office-365-and-lync-for-mac/ http://www.sharepointdan.com/2012/04/21/office-365-and-lync-for-mac/#comments Sat, 21 Apr 2012 12:39:02 +0000 Dan http://www.sharepointdan.com/?p=774 Recently I started doing a little usability testing of SharePoint Online within Office 365 with my MacBook Pro running Mac OSX Lion (10.7.3) and figured, “While I’m here, why not pop open the Lync client to be able to keep in touch with colleagues working on solutions?”
So I double tapped the command button to bring up Alfred and typed in “Ly” to bring up the Lync client.

So once the Lync client was up and looking pretty on my screen, I put in my credentials, figuring that my e-mail address and user ID were probably both my e-mail address. So I clicked “Sign In” and spin baby spin… the color wheel of Appledom went forth to conquer, only to sit and time out, not connecting, not discovery the SIP server of Microsoft’s Lync servers, not allowing me to find my connected colleagues. I sat and wondered, “Strange, my Windows Lync client discovers Office 365′s Lync servers, albeit it takes a little while, but it finds them, why can’t the Mac client?”

First things first – yes, I’m using my own domain name entry that’s redirected the DNS Name Servers to Microsoft’s so as to let them handle the DNS components.
Second thing – yes I’ve got Microsoft Office 11 running with Service Pack 2 and I’ve loaded the Office 365 sign-in tool to assist with some of the login.

So back on the ranch… while sitting there waiting for a while I wondered, “Is this a known bug, did I forget to read an FAQ?” The answer would be yes, I missed the memo.

Microsoft has a nice little article on the Downloads page for Mac software from Office 365 that points to this article:
Set up Lync for Mac 2011 for Office 365 – http://onlinehelp.microsoft.com/en-us/office365-smallbusinesses/hh534384.aspx

Basically it details the following:
Use your e-mail address / Cloud ID for both the User ID and the E-mail Address.
Click on Advanced and then put in the Microsoft Lync internal and external server settings as:
sipdir.online.lync.com:443
Go back to the sign in page and click sign in and you’re good to go.

Wondering why it is that the Mac Lync client can’t perform discovery while the Windows version can without any configuration… granted, the autodiscovery process for the Windows client seems to take a while… perhaps it’s time to do this on the Windows client for zippy login?

Here is no comments yet by the time your rss reader get this, Do you want to be the first commentor? Hurry up ]]> http://www.sharepointdan.com/2012/04/21/office-365-and-lync-for-mac/feed/ 0 http://www.sharepointdan.com/2012/03/29/ahhh-yes-emct/ http://www.sharepointdan.com/2012/03/29/ahhh-yes-emct/#comments Thu, 29 Mar 2012 16:31:26 +0000 Dan http://www.sharepointdan.com/?p=772

After much chagrin and fun, I finally went ahead and completed the process to attain the title of “Microsoft Certified Trainer.” I can’t say that I feel all that different, but my students were ecstatic as can be seen here .

If there’s anything to be said in attaining the professional certification, I’d definitely say that it’s the opportunities it opens up, the networking that it provides as well as the formalization of knowledge. Further, from what I’ve seen the MCT family is a fun one with some very smart and knowledgeable folks like Shannon Bray, Enrique Lima, and Becky Isserman to name a few.

So what does this mean? A few opportunities open up to participate in more events as well as to take on some new adventures through differing roles that hopefully allow me to do more technically inclined training that without the certification, well I’ll be honest, seems a little awkward without the professional credential. I won’t deny that there are trainers out there that are fantastic trainers that haven’t gone through the MCT process (conversely I can also argue that I’m sure that there are MCTs with room to improve). Bottom line, trainers aren’t perfect, we all have room for improvement – remember those feedback forms in those sessions and classes you attend – fill them out, we want the feedback to help us to continually improve. Anyway, for me I look forward to the fun that this community has as a part of it and who knows, perhaps you’re reading this blog article in the back of my class right now

Here is no comments yet by the time your rss reader get this, Do you want to be the first commentor? Hurry up ]]> http://www.sharepointdan.com/2012/03/29/ahhh-yes-emct/feed/ 0 http://www.sharepointdan.com/2012/03/04/leaving-your-mark/ http://www.sharepointdan.com/2012/03/04/leaving-your-mark/#comments Sun, 04 Mar 2012 15:46:03 +0000 Dan http://www.sharepointdan.com/?p=764

Leaving a legacy is the thing that I think so many people miss. Most folks think that you need money to leave a legacy so that folks will notice. I say that if your actions are such that of a servant leading others, then your legacy will be all the more true.

Think about your actions, consider your priorities, live your passion.

For more on this check out these couple of links out on the Microsoft Learning site:

• Discontinued Exams – http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/certification/exam-dev.aspx#tab4

Certifications you have earned remain valid even if qualifying exams have been retired. When an exam you passed is retired, your transcript retains the record of the exam and identifies the exam as retired.

• MCTS FAQ – http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/certification/mcts.aspx#tab3

Today, most of our Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS), Microsoft Certified IT Professional (MCITP), and Microsoft Certified Professional Developer (MCPD) exams retire when Microsoft discontinues mainstream support for the related technology.

Thanks to Todd Klindt for the assist on the second piece of information regarding mainstream support timelines.

Nevertheless, the topic – our tried and trusted fun with Migration Pitfalls with SharePoint 2010.  Interested? Check it out at your convenience

Thanks to Greg Hurlman, Jason Gallicchio, and Tom Daly for the invite – fun times and we’d love to come back sometime next year for another thrilling and exciting session… we’re not sure on what yet