Traditionally, I don’t bring a lot of deep technical value to the table; in fact, I would need much more than 54 short hours to write any code, regardless of the complexity (and we’re definitely not counting HTML here). My reasons are much like anyone else, but I thought I would list a few here to help people who might not think they

Every Weekend needs to start with an idea.

Come to Startup Weekend ready to share and collaborate on a new ideas. Or an old one. Next weekend will bring 75+ people together to turn a nebulous idea into something somewhat workable — maybe that idea could be yours.

Speaking of HTML, learn a technical skillset.

There are lots of gaps in terms of skills for any team pulled together at Startup Weekend. Learning is a critical component to the weekend, and don’t just talk startup, do startup. There’s really nothing to lose by taking on something outside your comfort zone.

Think, design, write, test.

At the last Startup Weekend Edmonton, I was part of a team building a social gaming experience centered on environmental factors. While several people were focused on creating the framework, the Sunday night demo wouldn’t have been very compelling without a brand, user interface, content or strategy.

Startup Weekend is not the place to write your business plan, but you can definitely use the opportunity to think about your business model, how the product is going to be used in market and how people will interact with it. These questions form the basis of any good decisions around user experience — regardless if you’re at Startup Weekend or not.

Testing is a critical component which goes hand-in-hand with planning and content development, and avoids disappointment on Sunday night (and we all know that developers don’t test their own code very well anyways).

Start building your network.

It doesn’t matter if your weekend creates a successful launch, Startup Weekend here in Edmonton is a critical component to our Startup Edmonton annual cycle. Use the opportunity to meet other people in the community, including entrepreneurs, technologists, thought leaders and mentors.

Have fun.

When I describe the Startup Weekend experience to new attendees, I liken it to a weekend at summer camp as a child. You get to meet new people, try new things and maybe work a little outside your comfort zone. Unfortunately, there aren’t any campfires or acoustic guitars, but you can still have fun and make some new friends.

Be a part of something bigger than yourself.

With Startup Weekends happening all around the world (and our second one happening here in town), you have the opportunity to be a part of a global movement. And, who knows, maybe a new opportunity will be waiting for you come Monday. That is, if you make it through the 54 hours.

SharePoint for Internal Use

SharePoint Foundation 2010

SharePoint Foundation is the equivalent to 2007’s Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. This free download provides the core of the collaborative and document storage capabilities of the SharePoint products and technologies.

Licensing requirement: Windows Server, SQL Server OR SQL Express

Office Professional Plus 2010

In order to access the web-based functionality of Office Web Apps, your organization must license Office Professional Plus 2010 or higher. For the most part, all other Office integration components are available within Office Standard 2010. Office Professional Plus also includes InfoPath 2010, for the customization of Forms Server content, Access 2010, which is required tocreate Access Services-based content, and SharePoint Workspace 2010.

Licensing requirement: Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010

SharePoint Designer 2010

SharePoint Designer 2010 is required for management and administration of page layouts, complex workflows and master pages. It is a free download, from Microsoft.

Licensing requirement: None

SharePoint Server 2010 Standard Edition

SharePoint Server 2010 is licensed in a server plus client access license model.

Licensing requirement: SharePoint Server 2010, Standard CAL, Windows Server, SQL Server

SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise Edition

SharePoint Server 2010 is licensed in a server plus client access license model. For the enterprise feature set, it is an additive CAL, meaning both the Standard and Enterprise client access licenses are required.

Licensing requirement: SharePoint Server 2010, Standard CAL + Enterprise CAL, Windows Server, SQL Server

FAST Search Server for SharePoint

Licensing requirement: Licensing requirement: SharePoint Server 2010, FAST Search Server for SharePoint 2010, Standard CAL + Enterprise CAL, Windows Server, SQL Server

Future Licensing: Office 365

In early 2011, Microsoft will be launching the next generation of its cloud-based computing suite, Office 365. This upgrade from the original Business Productivity Online Suite, and will be available in Standard and Deskless Worker editions.

It has been announced that the Standard Edition will be compiled of Exchange, SharePoint Foundation, Lync, Office Web Apps and Forms Server, while the Kiosk Worker will include Exchange, SharePoint Foundation, Office Web Apps and Forms Server.

Licensing requirement: Office 365 Standard CAL OR Office 365 Kiosk Worker CAL

SharePoint for External Use

SharePoint Server 2010 for Internet Sites, Standard

For the development of an extranet, portal or public-facing website, SharePoint 2010 can be licensed on a per-server basis. This license does not require additional Client Access Licenses.

The Internet Sites license includes licensing for content editors and owners for publishing to the external audience. In the case of a blended model, with the same server hosting content for internal use only (i.e. an intranet), the SharePoint Server 2010 and internal Client Access Licenses are required for all named users. Both server licenses can be assigned to the same instance.

The Standard FIS license covers the same features as the SharePoint Server 2010 Standard CAL features.

Licensing requirement: SharePoint Server 2010 for Internet Sites (Standard), Windows Server, SQL Server

SharePoint Server 2010 for Internet Sites, Enterprise

The Enterprise FIS license covers the same features as the SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise CAL features. In addition, the Enterprise FIS license provides rights to FAST Search Server for use in Internet or Extranet scenarios; however, the FAST Search Server requires a separate instance. For example, if two licenses of SharePoint Server FIS Enterprise are purchased, one may be assigned a SharePoint instance, and the second may be assigned as a FAST Search Server instance.

Licensing requirement: SharePoint Server 2010 for Internet Sites (Enterprise), Windows Server, SQL Server

Related Server Suites

Project Server 2010

The Microsoft enterprise project management offering has comes leaps and bounds, and is now 100% SharePoint oriented, requiring an investment in the Enterprise CAL, as well as the Project 2010 infrastructure.

Licensing requirement: Project Server 2010, SharePoint Server 2010, Standard CAL + Enterprise CAL, Windows Server, SQL Server, Project Professional 2010 (Recommended)

Office SharePoint Server 2007 Enterprise CAL > SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise CAL

I’ll go through this in a little more detail.

InfoPath Forms Services (Updated): InfoPath was easily one of my favourite 2007 features. With 2010, while the experience has not changed too much for the client or the browser, Forms Services has been revitalized to handle the load that many organizations are willing to throw at it.

Special note: The InfoPath Web Part gets my gold star for best new out-of-the-box feature. The ability to include a form on a styled page makes Forms Services a much more desirable component to a solution.

Excel Services (Updated): By now, I think that many people are familiar with the updates to Excel 2010, and Excel Services has been updated to match the improvements. I think the improvements to Excel Services, namely in the areas of the REST and Web Services APIs, will hopefully encourage developers to make use of the technology in larger solutions, or in composite applications.

Access Services (New): Yes, it can be said that I am generally most excited about this new addition to the enterprise feature set. It’s simple: publish Access to SharePoint. Make it management, and universally accessible. Awesome.

Business Connectivity Services (Updated, but really – New): Many organizations tried and failed with 2007′s Business Data Catalogue, but from first proof of concepts, BCS has been redeveloped from the group up to truly be useful for developers and partners to implement powerful connections into line of business data.

Visio Services (New): Okay, I lied. I might be most excited about this feature. Visio is my favourite tool in the Microsoft stack, and has been for a while. Why is this exciting? The ability to link workflows to process diagrams, and then publish them to a SharePoint site is going to change how organizations look at SharePoint workflows as an effective tool for enterprise. Previously, this required a very qualified partner and a 3rd party toolset – now, it comes part and parcel with the Enterprise CAL (See some screenshots on the SharePoint 2010 website).

PerformancePoint Services (Updated, but New to SharePoint): They really upped the value of the Enterprise CAL with 2010, and this includes the addition of PerformancePoint. While the dashboarding and BI capabilities of 2007 were very powerful (and generally underused), PP Services allows for the creation of dashboards and scorecards that enable users to get to the right information, at the right time. In 2010, the PP features have been improved from previous versions as well, with elements such as decomposition tree, visualizations and improved filtering.

As well, there are a few other enterprise features, including web analytics and Enterprise-only search features.

Office SharePoint Server 2007 CAL > SharePoint Server 2010 Standard CAL

The standard suite of tools is a pretty standard mapping, however there are additional features to be delivered in 2010 that were obviously not in the 2007 release. From my standpoint, some of the most exciting features revolve around ECM, and the inclusion of document sets and metadata management.
The document set feature allows for the management of a group of related enterprise content as a single element. Document sets support grouped version history and metadata, as well as set-based workflow. This feature will enable organizations to manage content in a more enterprise-ready fashion.

Managed metadata, on the other hand, fulfills a feature that was largely missed in the 2007 release, where the gap was filled with custom solutions and some 3rd party tools that didn’t necessarily fit the bill. Effectively, the management of metadata will allow for a collection of centrally managed terms (for both taxonomy and folksonomy) which can then be attributed to items in SharePoint (If you want to learn more about this feature, read this blog post for an excellent review). Tagging, as well, has been added to the mix, but I’m not sure if this is as popular as it was a few years ago.

Overall, many of the features that made SharePoint 2007 so popular have been improved as well, including search, making an upgrade from 2007 very attractive for many organizations.

One feature that I do want to call out that is mainly for developers and partners would be Word Automation Services. This is a feature that, as solution developer, we could have used many times over the past three years. Basically, it is an engine that enables the creation and manipulation of Microsoft Word documents on the server, from SharePoint or other business systems. For example, a use case would be the development of contracts based on data collected from lists or InfoPath forms. Granted, this is made more powerful with the Enterprise feature set (see below), but still is available in the Standard edition.

Tomorrow: Part 3, Enterprise Features.

This is going to be several articles, focusing on Foundation, Standard, Enterprise, Internet Sites and Online.

Windows SharePoint Services v.3 > SharePoint Foundation 2010

From Introducing SharePoint Foundation 2010: “Windows SharePoint Services is now Microsoft SharePoint Foundation—the essential starting point for organizations that want the business benefits of Web-based collaboration combined with the value and security of an enterprise solution.”

As before, SP Foundation is going to be the free version of SharePoint that is arguably one of the most hated/loved in the Microsoft ecosystem. Features are generally the same as WSS, and is centered on collaboration with peers (through blogs, wikis, team workspaces and basic document management).

Personally, I think WSS was overlooked by many IT pros and business decision makers as a very powerful tool at the compelling price of free, and Foundation continues to be an important element in that space.

Just like WSS, Foundation is will still form the underlying architecture for the full server suite.

Important across all the SharePoint editions, the 2010 release is going to be supporting accessibility standards, ensuring that any solutions delivered with SharePoint 2010 comes with out of the box support for WCAG 2.0.

Tomorrow: Part 2, Standard Features.

Like in Joel Johnson’s article at Gizmodo, I too am most disappointed about the fact that the thinking behind the device isn’t going to make it to production. EAVB_IBGIEFKRHF

The Look and Hardware Interface

The device, as per every photo floating around the web, looks very similar to an iPhone. Roughly the same size, and perhaps 3-4 mm thicker, it’s definitely a good looking device. I suspect that the metallic plastic bevel will begin to show age faster than the rest of the device. The screen is large, and fairly crisp. For indoor use, the contrast is great, however outside, I did find glare to be a bit of a problem.

The hardware buttons also make a lot of sense. The standard “phone” and “end call/home” buttons, coupled with the Microsoft-mandated Windows button and a “back” button make for easy back and forth within the main functions of the phone. Hitting the Windows button brings up the TouchFlo interface for the Start Menu, which is very iPhone-similar, and finger navigable.

An interesting hardware feature of the device is the built-in zoom slider. It’s great for mobile browsing and for Google Maps, to quickly resize the view. Not exactly precise, or smooth, it does act as a great shortcut.

The one majorshortcoming of the device is the USB connector. This device uses the HTC ExtUSB connector, a proprietary USB format. It’s almost MicroUSB, but not quite. This, coupled with the fact that the headphones use a ExtUSB connector might be deal-breaker for some consumers. Maybe I’ll just get a Bluetooth headset (just kidding).

The slide-out keyboard is great, although, I am a little worried about the hinge. I’m hoping that it can stand the test of time, since I tend to be pretty rough with my devices. I think I once kicked a BlackBerry underneath a bus. It survived. I guarantee the Touch Pro2 wouldn’t.

The low-down: People are probably going to ask if I have an iPhone. I’m okay with that, because then I can make a clever comment like “Of course, there’s an app for that.” The hardware keyboard is well spaced and comfortable.

Power Consumption

Probably the number one reason why I didn’t go with an iPhone was battery life. Some of the Apple fans around the office here suggested a number of different options, like “Get a battery pack” or “Always keep it plugged in”, but as a mobile user, I need something that will last at least a day. The benchmark was my Palm Treo 750 with Windows Mobile 5.5/6.0; I would get 2-3 days of battery life with moderate voice usage and heavy data usage (I send ~1,500 e-mails and texts per month).

The verdict:We’re one day in on initial charge, and the battery indicator is hovering around 40%. It was a standard day of usage, plus a lot of time on WiFi. It won’t last the weekend, but it will last a heavy workday.

TouchFlo 3D

I thought I would be crazy about TouchFlo. I’ve seen it on other phones, and I’ve been jealous. It looks amazing on the web. People rave about it. Maybe I’m just old fashion, but I don’t think I need an additional layer between myself and my data. After using WinMo for the past 3 years (and being on a BlackBerry for years before that), I guess I’m okay with a simple user interface for a mobile device.

That being said, I don’t mind the TouchFlo interface. I mean, it is pretty, and there are a few features that I don’t think I want to get rid of. The bottom of the TouchFlo interface entertains a sliding bar to move between core applications, like Contacts, Mail, Messages, etc. Once I got the hang of using it, I was sliding all over the place. The Mail layer and the Messaging layer just make it more difficult to get around (I’m become accustomed to clicking Inbox or All Messagesright away. Yes, I know everyone rags on WinMo for not being as pretty as some of its cousins, but she’s functional. And I like that.

My view: I’m hoping that with TouchFlo for WinMo 6.5, they enable a little more control over features. There are some glaring omissions. The thing about a Windows device is that, as a power user, I have control. I can fire up a registry editor and do my thing – HTC should think about that.

Camera and Video

Both are sufficient for a mobile device. There a variety of situations where I use my phone as a camera:

• A car accident;
• A concert; and
• When I don’t actually need a camera, and I want to post something from Twitter.

That being said, my Twitter example can be found here. It isn’t great, but I don’t have a very steady hand either.

The long and short: If you have an expectation that a camera phone is going to produce even point-and-click quality, don’t buy this phone. I mean, really, people – the lens is tiny. It’s good enough to produce grainy photos of [insert band name] at [insert venue name].

A Few Hacks

So, there were a few things that I had to address before I was truly happy, both dealing with some registry edits that I had to take care of. Luckily, I quickly grabbed PHM RegEdit and went at it.

Issue One: There is an annoying dialog that pops up after every successful text message sent. Unfortunately, there isn an interface to manage said dialog. This was solved here.

Issue Two: There is a known issue with Rogers + Windows Mobile 6.1 that has to do with time stamping of text messages. While this isn’t related to the phone, it does make for an annoying, un-threaded text conversation.

This brings me to my last point…

WiFi and Data Speed

I was able to find the fixes, download RegEdit and apply the hacks from the comfort of my couch, in about 10 minutes. I wouldn’t necessarily use a mobile device as my primary internet access, but it did the trick.

From a cellular data standpoint, connectivity is decent. A little slower than I’d like, but fast enough to hit a few websites, or update Facebook in a pinch.

So, these are my impressions after the first 24 hours. I’m thinking that I will enjoy using the device, but it is going to force me to change how I use my mobile device. With the Treo, it was a purely functional play: it did what it had to do, and it did it well. I believe with the Touch Pro2, I may have to give it some slack: it isn’t just a business device, it crosses the line between my professional needs, with a little bit of gadget/toy too. Check back in a few days to see how I’ve fared.

In the mean time, does anyone recommend a good WordPress app for Windows Mobile?

Most appropriate, I think, is the question in regards to whether or not SharePoint is “good enough”. In my experience, many organizations are (a) already licenced for SharePoint, and (b) when implemented, are not using the feature set to its fullest potential. Food for thought, I suppose.

Microsoft SharePoint Social Computing
New MSFT website outling SharePoint’s potential in the realm of social computing, focusing on customer wins and case studies. Bonus: it’s running on SharePoint 2007 for Internet.

There have been a lot of times when I’ve had a client say, after a presentation, “How did you do that in [insert Office product here]?” In this case, I actually had to ask, “How did you do that?”

Recreating the NY Times Cancer Graph

The video (in Quicktime) is not short (and may not be exciting for people who don’t like making pretty graphs in Excel), but it is worth the watch.

Note: I realize this is my first post in 20 months. I will try harder, I promise.

 http://blog.gartner.com/blog/index.php?itemid=1637