SharePoint World Domination

SharePoint has descended upon Las Vegas. 10,000 developers, administrators, power users, executives, and sponsors from 85 countries have gathered for SharePoint Conference 2014, a.k.a. #spc14. That hashtag represents not only the conference's presence on Twitter but also on Yammer. More on that later...

The morning kicked off with breakfast. Just like at #k2con, there were scrambled eggs but no salsa. Where's the salsa? There are at least a dozen of us from Texas here. I don't know if all the Texans need salsa for scrambled eggs, but I sure do! The redeeming factor was that there was...as you may have guessed...bacon. Even though I'm not a huge fan of bacon, I did have one piece so that I may remain in this cult known as SharePoint.

On three separate occasions, I had the opportunity to meet folks from Denmark. One of the gentlemen told me that there are about 200 people from Denmark at SPC14. I asked one of them why they came to this conference rather than going to the European SharePoint Conference. He said that the European conference is not as big. And let's face it, it's also not in Las Vegas...Sin City...where everything that happens gets posted to social media for the world to enjoy.

The day was filled with keynote and breakout sessions. The worth-a-mention of the morning keynote was hearing President Clinton talk about technology. I had not thought about it before, but he was the president when the Internet became popular. He never mentioned SharePoint, but he talked kindly about Microsoft and the Bill Gates Foundation.

So what was the highlight of the keynote session? Jeff Teper from Microsoft revealed a new app, code named Oslo, that will bring relevant content to the user instead of the user having to search for it. Views include presented to me, shared with me, trending around me, modified by me, liked by me, and viewed by me. I have deemed "work like a network" as Microsoft's new catch phrase. It was also announced that the next versions of SharePoint, Exchange, and Office would be released in 2015. SharePoint on-premises lives on!

At the IT Pro keynote, Bill Baer talked about  the transformation of IT, SharePoint 2013 and Service Pack 1, and Office Innovation. As we all know and have experienced, IT is being asked to do more. Microsoft wants to transition systems administrators to value added service brokers. In other words. IT professionals would be proactive, rather than reactive. As for SP2013 and SP1, Bill focused on the new features that SP1 brings, such as Yammer integration, OneDrive for business, and Windows Server 2012 R2 support. He also mentioned that in Office 365, Yammer can replace newsfeeds through a setting in Central Admin. My favorite quote from Bill came from during one of the demos, when he was in Central Administration. "SharePoint Health Analyzer has detected an issue. When doesn't it?" (Maybe the SharePoint Health Analyzer needs some bacon!) On the topic of Office Innovation, Bill talked about a new feature code named Fort Knox, which introduces two-factor authentication. Also, Office 365 will be capable of handling 1 petabyte (PB) tenants and 1TB site collections.

After lunch, I went to a session to learn how anyone can build an Access app. Since I already have 3 blog posts about Access Apps in SharePoint 2013, I was already familiar with most of the content for this session.

My last session of the day was Microsoft's Roadmap for Enterprise Social. The speakers focused on "work like a network," did a more in-depth demonstration of Oslo, and explained the Office Graph. Another feature they highlighted was the ability to have Yammer conversations inside Office documents. Christophe Fiessinger finally and officially answered the question "SharePoint Social or Yammer?" The answer was "Go Yammer!" Although SharePoint social features will exist in SharePoint 2015, those features will not be enhanced or improved from what they are now. The focus and investments are on Yammer.

That was day one of SPC14. Between sessions, networking events (a.k.a. parties), and a little sleep, I did not blog about each day individually. Stay tuned for a post-SPC blog where I'll share the highlights from the rest of the conference.

Don't forget... When you get into SharePoint, you get into bacon!