This year I attended the SharePoint Conference at the Washington Trade & Convention Center in downtown Seattle. It was nice to be able to be out the door and there within 10 minutes each morning! Thank you transit tunnel!

I began the week a bit skeptical about what I would get out of the conference, but it ended up being an excellent experience. I got a chance to see some examples of what other customers have done using the technology and even see some of my own work on the screen! It was interesting to listen to presentations by professionals whose books and blogs I’ve been reading for awhile now and get a chance to interact with them.

I also quite enjoyed the sponsor booths in the exhibition hall. This was the first real trade show I’ve been to so I had fun collecting swag and signing up for freebies from places that I won’t mind being on the mailing lists for. Other highlights included Halo’s Master Chief wandering around in a sea of Microsoft nerds and picking up a Zune t-shirt for Will (a notoriously enthusiastic Apple fan) to give to him as an ironic gift. It was also pretty cool to see Bill Gates give a keynote speech even though I was only in the overflow room. The conference was so big (~3800 attendees) that there were too many people for a single room.

The best news I gleaned out of all of this is that the technology adoption rate is skyrocketing, and MS should reach 1 million licenses sold by June. This means that there will be a ton of work available in the months to come, which is fantastic for our business!