Microsoft Partner SharePoint 8th Oct

Hello all,
First of all thank you to those that took the time out of their busy schedules to join us at the Network Si headquarters for our MS Partner briefing on Microsoft SharePoint.

Network Si and Novotronix both Microsoft Certified Gold Partners have a Partnership where by we are working together to help bring practical advise on implementations of the Microsoft Learning Gateway and to ensure schools are becoming up to speed with the 2010 target deadlines to enable them to deliver Parental Access.

We arranged for Industry recognised speakers Jon Novichi and Alex Pearce Microsoft SharePoint MVP to present. Alex demonstrated Great Barr School the largest school in the UK and how they are currently using the SharePoint technology - I was a pupil at Great Barr School funnily enough!

Steve Eyton Jones highlighted the SharePoint building blocks as well as giving an LEA example, Parental Reporting and Management Reporting as well as MIS integration. Steve really is a wealth of knowledge and has always been helpful to most us of us here at Network Si along with the customers of NSi.

Dave Rook from Charlton School presented as a SharePoint reference site.

Colin Winstone presented the implementation road map, decisions to be made, typical implementation example, delivery options, hosted/on premise, example of costs and ongoing support. I have always found Colin to be extremely professional and responsible in his dealings here with the customers at Network Si.

Well done to Robert Lister from All Saints Catholic High School on winning the laptop.

The feedback my end so far has been very positive, everyone I managed to speak with found value in one way or another and what I am particulary pleased about is the visitors making additional contacts for various other IT projects they are working on also. We are pleased we were able to add value -Thank you Dave, Martin and Steve for being of valuable assistance there.

In our experience of holding briefings we find the intimate briefings of 20 or so attendees means we can harness in and focus more to give attention to detail for the attendees and their individual needs and requirements.

For more detail on the morning please see the homepage on EduGeek a leading Educational Forum site http://www.edugeek.net/ where James Evans gives his overview report. James has also uploaded the master PDF.

Already we have had requests for additional dates and SharePoint 2010 Partner events, we will schedule a date soon to fulfill this -Watch this space for more details on that once the SharePoint conference in Las Vegas has finished of course!!

To get more SharePoint tips we recommend you have a look at http://www.learninggateway.net/

I would like to give a special thank you to the speakers for the help and assistance you have provided us. Last but not least thank you to all of my wonderful colleagues here at Network Si for the "Can do" attitude - It is a pleasure to work with you all as well as our MS Partners Novotronix you are a credit to our Partnership and we look forward to continue our successful working Partnership

Learning Gateway Conference

I was honered to be asked to help out at the Learning Gateway conference which happened recently at the prestigous Belfry grounds in Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands.

I greeted around 150 delegates mainly from Education and LEA backgrounds.

The days agenda consisted of innovative technologies being used in education including
-A keynote from Steve Beswick who is the Education Director for Microsoft.
-A session on maintaing your SharePoint and best practises
-Microsoft Unified communications for the learning gateway, office communications server, Exchange.
-Ask the 'Exports" which consisted of a team of leading independant experts including MVPs
-Informal SharePint at the Belfry bar afterwards to the chance to discuss with educational suppliers


My own opinons of the day were first of all shock to see so many attendees flooding us at the registration desk and some even before the desk was open at 8:00 and to even have attendees from other countries. People even showed up that wern't on the list (you all know who you are!) now that is when you know you have a good conference, the guest speakers had a lot to do with that! http://www.learninggatewayconference.com/

The day certainly helped me to increase my understanding of the future of educational technologies Microsoft in particular SharePoint and user adoption. I met with real world experts.

It was nice to see so many familar faces myself, Steve Eyton Jones from Novotronix who works for a SharePoint implementation company as well as Alex Pearce from the Great Barr School (my former school where I was a student!) Mark Berry who travelled all the way from the Bradford Academy, the guys from Edugeek, a few of the admins and those lovely moderators who keep us in line on Edugeek and many more, sorry if I've missed you off!

To read the educational forums comment post on the learning gateway conference you can view it on http://www.edugeek.net/forums/general-edugeek-news-announcements/38960-edugeek-learning-gateway-conference.html

I would also like to say a quick well done and thanks to the speakers for the knowledge and last but not least a special thank you to Alex and Richard for organising the conference and putting me up overnight in the Belfry. Let's all watch this space for the next one!