Speaking Engagements

It’s good to talk – I love SharePoint and I love to talk, sometimes even about SharePoint ;-) Following are some events where you can hear me talking, mostly about SharePoint!

I also run the Channel Islands SharePoint User Group – I am working on an Office365 website for that; but in the meantime please feel free to join the LinkedIn group.

Upcoming Talks

April 17th 2013 – SharePoint Evolution Conference, London

Building Secure SharePoint Extranets with Claims-Based Authentication

This session will cover secure SharePoint extranet topology options, focussing on a number of examples created for government to service citizens, suppliers and partners. A variety of membership providers including Microsoft Dynamics CRM and SQL Server were used to along with Active Directory Federated Services (AD FS 2.0) to provide internal users with seamless access to the public-facing SharePoint farm in the DMZ. Services provided to citizens on one of the platforms will be presented including booking a driving test, making a planning application, and paying tax or invoices online, each of which had their own particular back-end or 3rd party integration challenges. A look at what’s new in SharePoint 2013 in terms of “Claims First” will also be covered and how integration with trusted 3rd party identity providers such as Windows Live ID can be implemented.

 

Previous Talks

February 21st 2013 - C5 Alliance Breakfast Briefing (Moores Hotel, St Peter Port, Guernsey)

February 20th 2013 - C5 Alliance Breakfast Briefing (The Royal Yacht, St Helier, Jersey)

Automating Business Processes with SharePoint & Workflow

Our presentation will cover examples of relevant client work to date, demonstrations of workflow and automation in SharePoint 2010, an overview of SharePoint 2013, improvements made and a taste of the new 2013 platform.

  • Making the case for Business Process automation
  • Workflow options in SharePoint 2010
  • SharePoint Designer Workflows
  • Nintex – Workflow for Everyone
  • Integration and contrast with Microsoft CRM
  • An overview of SharePoint 2013
  • Creating workflows with SharePoint Designer 2013 & Visio 2013

December 8th 2012 - SharePoint Saturday UK (Nottingham)

BI for the masses with SQL 2012 and SharePoint 2010

This session will cover the major Business Intelligence improvements that SQL 2012 brings and how SharePoint 2010 can be configured to provide self-service access to this traditionally specialist realm. The following will be presented, with demonstrations using real data:

  • SharePoint & SQL Integrated Reporting Services
  • PowerPivot
  • Power View including Bubble Charts and the design tools
  • The BI Semantic Model (BISM) and impact of tabular data
  • SQL 2008 R2 vs SQL 2012
  • Azure Data Market

July 18th 2012 – C5 Alliance Breakfast Briefing (The Old Government House, Guernsey)

July 17th 2012 – C5 Alliance Breakfast Briefing (The Royal Yacht, Jersey)

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 in the Real World

This session will leverage our experience of successful implementations and demonstrate scenarios where this technology can support your organisation’s activities efficiently.

 The following key areas will be covered during the briefing:

  •  What is Microsoft Dynamics CRM?
  • CRM 2011 – Business benefits of upgrading
  • Business Process automation & workflow with CRM
  • Integration with SharePoint & other Line of Business systems
  • CRM Anywhere – Bring Your Own Device options (Windows Phone 7.5,  iPad, Phone, Android, and Blackberry devices)
  • The Microsoft roadmap and future of CRM/xRM

April 25th 2012 - International SharePoint Conference London 2012

Delivering a Search-Driven User Experience with SharePoint and FAST
Do you always know exactly what you are looking for? The traditional Search Engine model requires known and accurate keywords to return meaningful content. This session will cover best use of FAST technology including pipeline extensibility, lemmatisation, fuzzy logic and synonyms which can be combined with SharePoint to break that model and provide a compelling Search-Driven User Experience. An in-depth case study with lessons learned will also be presented including a live demo, in which everything ever recorded by the Government numbering tens of thousands of documents in a variety of unstructured, difficult and lengthy formats is successfully parsed and indexed to deliver a public-facing SharePoint site driven by FAST Search for a great User Experience.

March 21st 2012 – C5 Alliance Breakfast Briefing (The Old Government House, Guernsey)

Business Intelligence & SharePoint 2010

March 20th 2012 – C5 Alliance Breakfast Briefing (Pomme d’Or Hotel, Jersey)

Business Intelligence & SharePoint 2010 

February 26th 2012 - British Computer Society (BCS Jersey)

Automating User Interface Testing
When, why and how to implement Automated UI Testing for improved quality and reduced human testing effort in the development of web applications (SharePoint included!). A number of options for creating, running, monitoring and measuring automated UI tests as part of the development lifecycle will be presented. Load Testing options and web-based solutions to assist will also be demonstrated.

November 12th 2011 – SharePoint Saturday UK

SharePoint Intranet Branding
Web Content Management and the branding of public-facing SharePoint 2010 Publishing sites are relatively well-publicised and documented. However the majority of SharePoint deployments are internal-facing and typically require a greater degree of flexibility for users to remain unconstrained by fixed designs yet maintain the corporate identity.
This session will cover some Out Of The Box styling tips using CSS and dive into using Control Adapters for re-styling core SharePoint components and better target them using CSS and jQuery. Rounded corners included!

June 23rd 2011 - Polycom’s EMEA Executive Briefing Centre

Perfecting Collaborative Working
By embracing the latest business tools you can quickly change from a reflective to a reactive organisation; communicate as it happens, collaborate in real-time and build a dynamic business operation using Microsoft’s integrated technology suite, centred on using Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Lync and Microsoft Office.

April 12th 2011 – SharePoint Best Practices Conference UK

Taking SharePoint Offline
Many clients need the facility to work offline on occasion, especially those with a mobile sales team, or those being upgraded to SharePoint from a Lotus Notes environment used to offline replication. The content that sales people need access to can be rich and bandwidth-intensive, which makes a good 3G signal or poor Wi-Fi connection frustrating for the salesperson to use, not to mention the client. This session will cover the pros and cons of the options available for offline SharePoint, and why/how to build a Silverlight 4 out-of-browser application driven by SharePoint 2010, solving connectivity issues and taking advantage of SPMetal, LINQ, WCF, Isolated Storage and Silverlight.

February 24th 2011 – Microsoft Scotland

Dynamic Business 2011
As Gartner predicted for 2011, businesses must adopt new technologies to recover from the economic downturn. Understand the ‘New World of Business’, the strength of integrated technology solutions and be part of a live demonstration of Lync, SharePoint and Office working in unity

February 2nd 2011 – Edinburgh Napier University Conference

A Career in Software Engineering
Guidance to final year Software Engineering students on the Microsoft Ecosystem and how to transition from being in education to a career as a professional software developer.

November 26th 2010 – Microsoft Scotland

SharePoint in Education
An overview of SharePoint 2010 to Scottish Further Education Colleges and how it can be integrated with Lync and Line of Business applications to enable better communication between students, teachers and administration.