I attended my first user group meeting last night since joining the SUGUK forums. The evening opened with a presentation on Excel services by Andrew Woodward, followed by Design decisions by Bill English and then after a very nice buffet meal, Dr Bleeker took over and gave a very animated presentation on the possibilities for Site and Farm customization.
Whilst Andrew’s presentation didn’t go exactly as he’d planned, it was nevertheless very interesting and has given me some interesting pointers as to where we may deploy some of Excel services functionality within the farm.
Bill’s presentation was away from the technology and focussed more on the design decision one should undertake before setting anything in stone in a production environment. This content was drawn on from a wealth of Microsoft Whitepapers as well as some healthy common sense, and consolidated into a series of statements that you or your users can answer.
Finally the presentation that I was most interested in was the Site customization methods by Todd Bleeker. I’ve ready several of Todd’s documents across the web and found them very interesting, even if some were a little too deep for me at this stage. They didn’t prepare me however for the animated fella that stood in front of us last night to wax lyrical about the current availablity in MOSS 2007 as well as the proposed functionality due in SP1. To quote Todd, “The AJAX train is coming whether you like it or not..”
Guess I’d best get out and start learning a little ajax too… Does anyone ever manage to learn everything they need?
To read more from Todd, check out his blog at Mindsharp.