Wow! A lot of people here and a nice combination of suits and jeans since this is a conference where besides the geekie stuff one can also network with partners and attend sessions delivered by partners showing off their latest contributions to the world of SharePoint. SharePoint is hot in Europe and the conference is definitely demonstrating this. You actually feel the SharePoint vibes going through the building :)
Day started with breakfast with Fitz after having spent the night in our Kunst Hotel. It is a nice change to the traditional business hotels I see too much. Arriving at the convention center, I was expecting some chaos for the registration but everything went perfect. The organization of the conference is actually excellent. U2U has a small booth here near the Skelta booth. I brought my wife as the person to man the booth and she is doing an excellent job selling SharePoint trainings all over the world. Very fun indeed. She is making sure that the next half year is going to be packed again with travelling :)
I did not see too much of the keynote since I was prepping my VPC for the first session directly after it. As a trainer or presenter doing SharePoint demos, you better make sure that everything is in place before you start, otherwise there could be some surprises (like long waiting intervals). First session went excellent I think. Room fully packed, no seats left, people sitting on the floor .. that's what a presenter likes to see :). Throughout the day Mike Ammerlaan, Dustin Friesenhahn and I delivered a 4-part developer-focused series on what you should know to survive as a SharePoint developer. I kicked off with object model fundamentals, talking about Web Services, security and event handlers, Mike went deeper into the customization and branding topics. Dustin then with content types and the metadata and then me again with templates, features and solutions. If you were new to SharePoint 2007 as a developer and you followed these four, you must have enjoyed all of that information.
I certainly enjoyed the networking dinner and show last night. Food was excellent and unlike at most conferences in the States, you can have drinks as many as you want :). The Vegas-like show with celebrities like Madonna, Elvis, Luis Armstrong, and more was a good conclusion of the first day here in Berlin. As said, excellent organization. Congrats to Wim Dierickx and his team for pulling this together.
Today I am going to relax a bit. Talking to people, seeing the new tools partners have built, and maybe follow one or more sessions. My wife and I plan to sneak out of the exhibition hall around 2PM to visit Berlin a bit. So, if no one is there at the booth, just grab a folder and come back to us the day after.