Rob Wilson thoughts about technology, education and life

Recap from devLINK 2010 in Nashville

devLINK 2010 ended today, and I've got to tell you that was one excellent conference.  John Kellar and his leadership team obviously work really hard.  This year the conference sold out with around 900 attendees.  There were around 150 breakout sessions and opening/closing keynotes.  Tim Huckaby pulled off an amazing keynote to kick the conference off.  As fate would have it, he mentioned some of the cool things his company has done with WPF and SharePoint just minutes before I was to deliver the first SharePoint development session of the conference.  So I was caught a little off guard when 120-130 filled the room -- me, on the third day of antibiotics and antihistamine battling a terrible sinus infection.

Thanks to the adrenaline rush from Tim's keynote (did I mention he was amazing?), I was able to pick up some steam.  I only had 45 minutes to deliver a 75 minute presentation.  Even after running over by five minutes, I was still not able to completely finish.  I will post the code on my blog soon -- on a new page I added just for code.  The reviews of the session were mostly good.  Despite stating in the session description that my objective was to guide .NET developers when to develop on the SharePoint platform and introduce them to the SharePoint Object model, and my verbal disclaimer at the beginning that it wouldn't be a code-filled session, there were a handful of people who still expressed their desire to see more code.  After all, this was devLINK -- where code rules and slide decks drool.  So it was my first time there...give me a break!  Call it a rookie mistake.  Let me come back next year and I'll "code the far outta ya."  Here is the slide deck for the "Intro to SharePoint Development" session.

The audience for the InfoPath session was a bit smaller as anticipated.  We demonstrated how InfoPath can be used to replace paper forms and automate common business processes.  We developed a simple workflow using a custom SharePoint list and a workflow developed in SharePoint Designer 2010.  Then we demonstrated how to streamline that workflow using InfoPath.  Using codeless rules and actions, we can show users only the views of a form that they should see and use buttons on the forms to move the workflow along with a minimal amount of clicks.  The slide deck is below.  A complete walk-thru will also be added to my labs page.  The room came up with some great ideas for the InfoPath product team -- including the ability to share data connections and rules across forms, and the desire to inherit forms (instead of using lackluster form parts).