#K2Con Is On!

Greetings from Las Vegas!

Since I'm awake way too early (but an hour later than yesterday), I thought I'd update you on how the first K2 User Conference is going.

The morning kicked off with registration and breakfast at 7am. The K2 staff was ready and checking people in even before 7am. I appreciate that they were able to accommodate us early birds. While I waited for breakfast to open, I browsed the vendor/sponsor halls. Typically, I see the same companies at SharePoint events, but there were some new ones this time. Later in the day, I had the opportunity to speak with 5th Method. I asked them what the first 4methods were. I'm not sure they appreciated my humor, but they were good sports about it. Back to breakfast...it was your typical conference breakfast with some carbs, some fruit, and of course BACON! I'm not a huge fan of bacon, but you can't have a SharePoint related conference without bacon. While I ate, I met some nice people from Massachusetts. It turns out that they are clients of my friends from Atrion. It's a small world after all...

The keynote included some technical folks from K2, Microsoft, and Clarity Consulting. Marketform was the winner of the FWD Thinker award and demonstrated their K2 solution called Alfred for us. Since a few of my co-workers recently completed a SharePoint front-end solution similar to Alfred, I was intrigued and impressed by Alfred. The emcee for the morning was Baratunde Thurston, author of How To Be Black. He's also a comedian and entrepreneur. His presentation was entertaining, insightful, and down right funny. I liked how he told a bunch of stories that were so well linked together it felt like a personal conversation.

After lunch, the breakout sessions began. First, K2 demonstrated their new product K2 for SharePoint. They implemented K2 for SharePoint in under 5 minutes. I have not implemented, configured, or used K2 yet myself, but I've heard that it can be quite difficult. Needless to say, the live demo was a huge success. K2 for SharePoint is expected to be available to blackpearl customers in April.

Then there were three more sessions: Fast Data, Using K2 to build K2 for SharePoint, and Fast Forms. As a non-developer and not-yet-a-K2-user, I found the first 2 sessions to be more technical and more advanced than I would have liked. In the Fast Forms session, the speaker introduced us to K2D2, a robot who can be controlled through K2 and who can post to Yammer when his head is removed. That was really cool and fun!

In the evening, I attended the K2 attendee party at the Vanity nightclub in the Hard Hotel & Casino. The booths in the club had a 70s feel to them, which I really enjoyed. Our booth was right by the dance floor. When "Thriller" by Michael Jackson played, about a dozen zombies came out and danced in, with, and among the crowd. They even stuck around for most of the night. After the zombie attack, I had a photo op with Adriaan Van Wyck, the CEO of K2. He was a very down to earth guy, and I enjoyed the chance to meet him.

When the party finally ended an hour later than scheduled, I returned to my room for some much needed sleep. I've got another full day of K2 sessions, followed by the SharePoint Conference welcome reception tonight. If you're at either conference, I'd love to meet you! If you're not here, follow #k2con and #spc14 to be virtually here.

I'll leave you with this quote from Marketform's presentation yesterday. Since tweeting it, this quote has received 7 retweets and 2 favorites, so it must be important. :)

"The difference between good solutions and great solutions is the user experience."