SharePoint (and Project Server) Shenanigans

So on to the last two days of the conference…

Keynote Day Two

Initially Chris Crane discussed further how important partners are to the Microsoft Project eco-system.

Then Ludovic Hauduc, General Manager of the Project Business at Microsoft (Who has been involved with Project since 1994) discussed how he has moved from developer to his current role and how Microsoft themselves use Project, Project Server and its Portfolio Management capabilities to manage the future development of the product.

As part of his speech, he highlighted that Portfolio Management within EPM solutions was once seen as a technique for those with high project and portfolio maturity, causing an ivory tower affect.  Now, however with Project Server 2010, Microsoft has successfully brought this functionality to the masses in an easy to use interface improving the maturity, focus and success of project run on the SharePoint and Project Server 2010 platform.

Other parts of the presentation discussed the ease of use connecting Microsoft Project 2010 to the cloud with Office 365.  This was demonstrated to the audience…

Keynote Day 2 – Office 365 integration with Project 2010

(featuring Christophe Fiessinger as the “Geek”)

Sessions Attended

Wednesday

• Beyond the Basics: Business Intelligence Reports
• Take Your Project Reporting To The Next Level: Dashboards And Other Tools
• Cloud Bursting Techniques with SharePoint Online

Thursday

• UMT Project Essentials Pro – Effectively deploy a best practice Financial Governance framework for Project Server 2010
• Building advanced Project Server workflows with Nintex Workflow for Project Server
• Extending and Customizing the Project Server 2010 Timesheet to Drive Adoption and Achieve Business Results

A big thank you to all the presenters, the sessions were excellent.  I will definitely be downloading them for future reference.

Evening Events

On the Wednesday evening of the conference, Microsoft and Shark Pro software fired out the Arizona Space Center for the evening

My colleagues and I enjoyed the even very much, playing with all the experiments throughout the place including going into the planetarium

Overall the Project Conference was a massive success and I hope to be attending the next one!

I’m sitting in my hotel room right now totally buzzing from the day I have just experienced at the Microsoft Project Conference 2012.

A whole host of emotions and states have run through from nerves and waking up at 3am this morning to joy and more academic interest in the sessions that I have attended today.

Nerves? you may ask.  Well you see today was my first ever presentation to an audience at a conference!  Now I am a consultant by trade and do presentations at clients all the time.

We even run seminars, where I am backed by sales people and colleagues from my company.

But this is different.  This is the Microsoft Project Conference!

It runs every three years.  I have been preparing for months with dry run after dry run.  Presentation tweaks left, right and centre.

So how did it go you may be wondering…  Well I will come to that later…

Initially there was breakfast…

Phil, Sacha, Chris and myself sitting in the conference centre wearing our speaker shirts feeling tense about our mission ahead.

Philip Stanbury-Jones (ARM)

Giles Hamson (CPS)

The Keynote

First up was the Microsoft Project Conference key note. 

DJ at the beginning of the session really brining the vibe of the conference build up to a head.

Discussions about the focus areas of SharePoint and Project Server 2010 including an excellent demo involving Project Server 2010, Portfolio Management, Windows 8 (On a Samsung slate), MS Project 2010, iPhones in one seamless demo!

Videos on successful implementations at Revlon

Further details can be found on Chris Crane’s blog post (link) and for the time being the Microsoft News Center has links to case studies, videos etc… here:

Presentations I attended

So after the keynote all 1,200 attendees of the conference filtered to their chosen sessions.  My chosen sessions were:

• EPM@EPA: Accelerating Maturity in the Cloud – Richard Warren (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency)
• Practical TFS and Project Server integration in mid size enterprise – Piotr Prussak, Richard Ng (Revlon)

Both excellent presentations and case studies of real world applications of core Project Server functionality with integration of other key Microsoft technologies such as Report Services, Private Cloud Technologies with Project Hosts and Visual Studio 2010 – Team Foundation Server.

Then at 15:15

Both presentations sponsored by my company, Corporate Project Solutions started:Philip Stanbury-Jones

8 Billion Reasons Why ARM Chose Project Server 2010 (#PC301)

A good attendance and well received presentation detailing the project I have been working on for the last 2 years integrating Project Server 2010, SharePoint Server 2010 and Reporting Services 2008 R2 with other LOB applications such as SAP and other internal tools.

This presentation discussed the business benefits of the approach taken.

#PC301 feedback on Twitter

Giles Hamson

Integration SharePoint and Project Server 2010 – Deployment Approaches, Integration Options and Making the Most of the Enterprise Features (#PC324)

As for my session… attendance was excellent, audience appeared to be engaged with questions throughout the session and lots of questions at the end.

I was so excited, I had to take a picture…

#PC324 Audience

The session, related to Phil’s presentation, discusses a more high level view on deployment approaches, pros and cons, some gotchas and examples of Enterprise features to really leverage the power of the SharePoint and Project Server 2010 platform.

Many of these experiences were learnt on implementing the solution discussed in Phil’s presentation, so I urge you to seek you the details at the MS Project Conference 2010 website.

The Wrap Up

So to finish the day, we attended the ClubPC event for networking, socialising and generally calming down from the excitement of the sessions before a group of us split off to eat at the prestigious Hyatt revolving restaurant.

Excellent food, great company.