Wow, anyone in attendance at the 2009 SharePoint Conference will tell you, there was a LOT going on. I don’t want to rub your nose in it, it is a simple fact, being at the conference, experiencing the nerdy goodness of ITF collaboration and sharing, seeing the SharePoint Fairy (#SPFairy) granting geeky wishes and stealing the attention from the conference floor, or rubbing elbows with the folks who write (or manage the folks who write) one of Steve Balmer’s “favorite products”, cannot be duplicated on-line. You have to be there to participate.

OK, You missed it, what now?

There are tons of new resources that have been launched since SteveB addressed the crowds at SPC09. I will try to wrap them up in a list of links for you here:

Conference Key Notes and Highlights

Several of the key note addresses are available to the public. You can watch them on the SharePoint Conference 2009 site. These videos provide a high level overview of the workloads addressed by SharePoint 2010 and will guide your evaluation of the soon to be released beta.

SharePoint.Microsoft.com

If you call yourself a SharePoint expert and you don’t know about Microsoft’s investment in sharepoint2010.microsoft.com, crawl out from under that rock and have a browse around. Start with the sneak peek videos by Tom Rizzo, Paul Allen and Richard Riley. Then you have to check out all of the new video content: http://sharepoint2010.microsoft.com/Pages/videos.aspx there is a ton of demos to whet your appetite while you wait for Beta 2.

Technet

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/ee263917.aspx

Technet is your source for IT Pro content on SharePoint 2010. You can review system requirements and upgrade paths. You can view videos that will help you get up to speed on the new terminology for SharePoint 2010. There are tons of new features that support IT Pros for management, patching and upgrades built into SharePoint 2010. Get started here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/ee518660.aspx (I like the voice on the Security video…)

MSDN

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/ee514561.aspx

MSDN is your source for Developer content. Like TechNet, the folks at MSDN have produced a wealth of content. This developer focused site highlights the significant improvements in the developer story for SharePoint. Get stated with “Getting Started” the center for developer videos: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/ee514561.aspx You have a LOT to learn. SharePoint 2010 supports REST, XHTML, LINQ and Silverlight out of the box. Add to that the Client Object Model and direct integration from Visual Studio 2010 and true F5 deployment and debugging and it all adds up to a busy “rest of the year” for our developers to get up to speed on the new stuff.

Podcast Anyone?

My friends Rob Foster, Nick Swan and Bret Lonsdale conduct regular interviews of SharePoint professionals on a wide range of topics on the SharePoint Pod Show. You can follow their road trip from Seattle to Vegas last week and the interviews they held. I love the format because I can listen to them in traffic and learn a lot while I add to my carbon footprint. Check out 3 favorites on the Road2SPC

Interview with Tom Rizzo

Interview with Mike Fitzmaurice

Interview with Rob Lefferts

Sign up for Beta 2

SteveB announced that Beta 2 will be made publicly available in November, you can sign up to get the notification here : http://sharepoint2010.microsoft.com/try-it/Pages/Trial.aspx

Still have questions?

You can ask them here Microsoft SharePoint Forums

Don’t get left out next year!

It has not been announced yet, but I am sure the folks at Microsoft will start collecting e-mail addresses for the next conference. If it’s like last time the announcement will be on the Conference Site. Don’t get left out again.