SharePoint Conference 2009 from a Distance

Sitting on the sidelines is no picnic when there are 7000 people having fun without you at #SPC09. So like thousands of others around the world, we sat glued to our laptops for days instead. The energy generated by the global SharePoint community for the keynote was felt in all four corners of the world – a ShareGasm if there ever was one ;-). We may have been sitting in suburbs in other world countries, but those few hours around the keynote felt like we were really there, and that was thanks to the thousands of tweets, pictures and blogs that were posted by those that attended. Thanks SharePointers!!!

Apart from all the great info shared on the sessions, there were underlying topics of conversation on Twitter, think it’s a fair representation of how these things go :

Day 1 – excitement, jetlag, food, SharePint
Day 2 – coffee, walking far, lack of sleep
Day 3 – beer and naps
Day 4 – irritability and exhaustion

This fun post is for the 7000 that were there that may not have gotten the big picture like we did. This is also for end users to see what’s in store for SharePoint 2010 – and how much we missed out on, sigh. This presentation (6MB, 2007 version) is a summary of my favourite photos and tweets posted over the past few days. (I don’t know anyone in the photos, they were just taken from the links supplied on Twitter). It is stored on Information Worker under Events - SharePoint Conference 2009 Pics if the presentation takes too long to load.

In the presentation:

Photos : keynote hall, speech, exhibit, how we kept up, around Vegas, parties Vegas style.

Tweet categories :

• Getting there and day 1
• On the keynote
• On Steve Balmer
• Geeks and nerds
• Party consequences
• Getting tired
• What?
• Appreciation
• Marriage and divorce
• Random stuff
• On hotels and Vegas
• On Twitter
• Priorities
• News for end users
• What happens in Vegas...

There are thousands more photos all over the net, a search on Flickr has a great selection. Some people were so happy to be there they had to jump for joy, you can't help smiling at them. And of course there are plenty on Facebook too.

(Click here for the Office 2003 version, 10MB).

Enjoy.