Colin presenting a session on Business Intelligence at SharePoint Saturday

I'll be presenting a session on Business Intelligence in SharePoint 2010 on September 11th at the San Ramon Marriott. Registraction is free if you're in the area. Just go to http://spsbay.eventbrite.com/

Here's the abstract:

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Finishing up SharePoint 2010 Unleashed

It's been a long haul, but Michael Noel and I are putting the finishing touches on our newest tome "SharePoint 2010 Unleashed" from Sams Publishing. It took a good six months of work but I think readers will be pleased. During this time period we've been installing SharePoint 2010 for our clients, so we were able to validate our processes and recommendations "in the wild."

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Colin Presenting at SharePoint Pro Live in Dallas, Chicago, Seattle and Denver

Much thanks to Mike Noel (a co-partner of mine at Convegent Computing and co-author of SharePoint titles for Sams Publishing) for recommending me to Dan Holme. It looks like I'll be presenting Track B in Dallas, Chicago and Seattle and Track A in Denver.

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Comparing Lists to Libraries, and are List Attachments Indexed?

I got into a healthy discussion at a client's site about the pros and cons of using Lists vs. Document libraries. The client was under the impression that lists and libraries are basically the same thing.  My experience was the opposite, that they are quite different, and libraries are for storing documents and lists are for storing cells of information (like a spreadsheet). Following are some notes on that topic.

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Some notes on a SP 2003 to SP 2007 Upgrade and My Checklist

I’ve just finished up an interesting migration from SharePoint 2003 with CorasWorks to SharePoint 2007 with CorasWorks and thought I’d share some information from the migration.  One tool I came up with was a high level checklist to use to verify the results of the migration.

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Business Intelligence for the Average Joe: Getting Excel Data into SharePoint 2007 Lists

I wrote an article for DevX.com that has just published. Feel free to read it at the following location: http://www.devx.com/dotnet/Article/35324

I wrote this article as a starting point to better understand how to get Excel data into SharePoint, as a client of mine had some seemingly simple business requirements (get a ton of data out of a ton of Excel 2003 spreadsheets, and into SharePoint 2007) which ended up being quite complex to fulfill.

I hope you enjoy the article.

Windows Server 2008 Beta 3 and WSS 3.0

I’ve been working with Windows Server 2008 Beta 3 and WSS 3.0 for a chapter I’m writing for our upcoming Windows Server 2008 Unleashed for Sams Publishing. 

I had some trouble with the initial installation, so I thought I’d share some key points for people who want to play with it:

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Choosing between Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and SharePoint Server 2007

Many clients ask whether they should be using Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (WSS 3.0) or SharePoint Server 2007. Here is a high level list that I use to help them make this decision.

A high level question to answer is: "Is the organization serious about using SharePoint technologies as part of the tool set that is provided to the end user community." In almost every case where the organization answers "yes" they end up selecting the SP Server 2007 product. 

Questions to consider:

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Tip: Get rid of "This page contains both secure and nonsecure items" Error with RSS feeds

In SharePoint 2003 or 2007: If you've ever seen the "This page contains both secure and nonsecure items" error message, this post is for you. It pops up when you add an RSS reader web part to a page on a site that was in my Trusted Sites or Intranet Sites zone. This has annoyed me for a while, and after a little playing around in IE 7’s settings, I figured out how to get rid of it.

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Notes from the field: Best Practice SharePoint 2007 Designs

Since I’ve been doing a number of SharePoint 2007 designs for clients recently, I figured that people might be interested in reading about some of the common questions that come up and the answers I provide. 

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Introducing ... me

Hello out there. I thought I'd take a minute to introduce myself to add to the Bio that is available on this page. Basically I've been in the industry for a couple of decades and have worn a lot of different hats. I started off in sales, in the "roaring 90s" and gradually moved in a technical direction (primarily because I had this need to understand what I was selling (strange, I know)) and found myself managing multiple technology implementation projects (NetWare, NT, AD, Exchange, etc.).

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