Ben Skelton's Blog

SharePoint 2010

We have formerly kicked-off our SharePoint 2010 learning program at Habañero and have started to play with the bits. Ten of us will be heading down to Vegas from October 18th to the 23rd for the SharePoint Conference where Microsoft will be doing the big reveal.

The last SharePoint Conference I attended was for the launch of MOSS 2007 and it was awesome... As such, I've got high expectations for this one. A number of our clients and partners will also be sending attendees so it should be a good chance to catch up and learn what everyone else is doing on the platform.

Are you going to the conference? If so drop me a line...

Last night in Vegas — MIX 08

Tonight is my last night in Vegas before I fly to Orlando. Unfortunately I made a mistake and booked a flight that has a stop in Washington, DC. It is a Ted / United flight, which means it is 99% likely that I won’t have power at my seat. Looks like I will only be able to work for half the flight... I guess the non-removable battery in the MacBook Air is an issue after all :(

Anyway, back to why I was in Vegas — Microsoft’s MIX conference. MIX was really good this year and was a lot of fun as always.

A few thoughts about the past week:

• I came down a day early as Microsoft was hosting an event for influencers, which unfortunately turned out to be a little weak. It focused too much on the Expression tools and the presenters didn't answer a number of questions as they didn’t want to steal any of the thunder from the main keynote. Everyone received an 8GB Zune which was cool. I have already gifted mine to Steven at work as it won’t work on my Mac, too bad as I find the UI on it slick.
• The session on adaptive user interfaces was interesting. I am working on an intranet project right now and we might be able to make use of some of these techniques.
• There were too many panels! I hate panels! Down with panels!
• The Ballmer and Kawasaki keynote was the highlight of the conference for me. Before the conference I was somewhat lukewarm on Ballmer, but he really impressed me. I recommend checking the keynote out online!
• It was awesome to spend some time with both the Microsoft Canada team and Habañero’s Canadian peers. Microsoft Canada always puts on a good event and this year’s was no exception.
• There was very little mention of SharePoint at the conference. Unfortunately Microsoft scheduled the two events during the same week, which was a bit of a bummer. I would have liked to see more sessions around creating exceptional user interfaces in SharePoint.
• The Internet Explorer team had an awesome after party at the Kingpin Suite at the Palms. The suite had a bowling alley in it which allowed me to discover that I am not a very good bowler.
• I got to see the chicken – thanks Bryce! :)

Anyway, I think that's it. Looking forward to MIX 09!

Upcoming conferences

Clients often ask what conferences we are going to and/or are excited about. Here are some of the conferences that are on my radar in the next little while:

Microsoft Office SharePoint Conference 2008
March 2-6: Seattle, WA
We have eight people attending the SharePoint Conference this year from Habañero! I attended the SharePoint Conference in 2006 and it was excellent — an insane amount of information was provided by the SharePoint development team. From the Microsoft site: "The SharePoint conference is primarily intended for those in IT who use, deploy, and configure SharePoint. If you are focused on SharePoint deployment, or want to expand your skills in this area, you should attend..."

Microsoft MIX 08
March 5-7: Las Vegas, NV
I went to MIX 07 and had a blast! MIX is awesome if you want to understand Microsoft's Web / UX strategy, talk to folks on the various product teams and drink some of the Microsoft KOOL-AID (along with other stronger drinks). Both myself and Mark (User Experience Developer) are going this year.

Microsoft Convergence 2008
March 11-14: Orlando, FL
Convergence is focused on Microsoft's Dynamics product offerings including Dynamics NAV and Dynamics AX. Habañero will have a booth at the Expo and there will be seven of us going (including myself). If you are interested in Microsoft's ERP strategy or product offerings it should be a good conference. If you attending make sure you drop by our booth and say hello :)

Adaptive Path: MX San Francisco
March 11-14: San Francisco, CA
I attended Adaptive Path's UX Week conference for a couple of years in a row, but as my job shifted the conference became less relevant to me (it is very practitioner focused). MX is much more multi-disciplinary and is awesome for creative and / or experience managers. I can't wait to attend this year with Caterina (Director, User Experience) and Mallory (Senior Information Architect).

If there are any other conferences you think people should know about please feel free to put 'em in the comments!

EUCI Conference

I'm traveling to Tampa on Tuesday to attend the EUCI: 3rd Annual Web Self-Service for Utilities conference. Donna Gratton (from Terasen Gas) and myself will be doing a 45-minute presentation Wednesday afternoon to discuss the tools and techniques we used to redesign the Terasen Gas website. On Friday I will be doing a 3 1/2 hour workshop that focuses on information architecture and usability testing.

Hopefully my new MacBook Air will be waiting for me when I get back :) I ended up getting the base model, but opted for the external SuperDrive and the USB Ethernet Adapter.

Why do they still give you headphones?

With all of the cost cutting Air Canada has done in the past few years I find it strange that they still give you a pair of headphones on each flight. I guess it makes sense on planes that have those old-school two-prong plugs, but for planes that have a normal headphone jack at each seat people should just bring their own headphones or pay $2 for a pair.

On my last flight to Calgary the flight attendants didn't turn on the individual TVs because the flight was a bit bumpy and they felt they didn't have time to give out headphones. My laptop battery was dead, so I ended up staring at the "Welcome aboard" screen for an hour :(

Returning home tonight

I've had a awesome vacation in the last two weeks...

My trip started out with me spending the day in Las Vegas, which is a fun place to have an eight-hour layover. McCarran International is not far from the strip and you can waste time waiting for your flight by gambling or seeing a show. I ended up going shopping at Circuit City where I bought a Garmin nuvi 660 GPS (no more renting one each time), grabbed dinner and then played roulette for a couple of hours. I lost $80 at the Venetian but won $215 at the Hard Rock, which was a fun way to spend three hours (not to mention the added bonus of free Ketel vodka sodas).

After Las Vegas I caught an overnight flight to Miami where I met up with a friend who was staying at the Angler's Boutique Resort in South Beach (he was writing a travel piece for a Vancouver-based magazine called The Block). The hotel room was one of the nicest I have stayed in — our suite was two levels with a bathroom and huge plasma TV on each floor. The service at the hotel was awesome and the French restaurant off the lobby had really, really good drinks, not to mention the best dinner we had during the trip. The nightlife in South Beach was fun (as expected) and the restaurants were really good — especially SUSHISAMBA.

I'm now on the last part of the trip (spending a couple of days in LA with my sister). I'm flying back to Vancouver tonight and should be there for a couple of weeks until CanUX in Banff :)

Trying out the Avion card

I just picked up my new RBC Avion card today. The 12,500 bonus points, plus the ability to convert RBC Rewards points to British Airways Executive Club or Cathay Pacific Asia Miles to access business class inventory seemed like a pretty good deal.

I have had a CIBC Aerogold Visa for a number of years (and am a CIBC customer) but I have accumulated a large number of Aeroplan miles and thought it might be good to start collecting points in another program as reward ticket availability on Aeroplan's site is pretty crappy. In addition CIBC seems to be heaping out the Aeroplan miles as of late for opening accounts, etc., which means availability will be even worse.

I also have had an Alaska Airlines MasterCard for a couple of years. The card is pretty good, especially when you factor in the $50 companion ticket they give you and the fact that you can earn and redeem miles on a large number of airlines. I'm flying to Miami in November, and on one Alaska reward ticket I was able to swing a day and evening in Vegas, six days in Miami and then two days in LA. Not bad!

When I called to activate the Avion card the guy on the phone was a bit of an ass. Hopefully this is not the norm with RBC and I was just unlucky. One area where CIBC has always been strong is in the customer service department. Employees seem to have the authority to remove service and interest charges when necessary without going through a number of hoops. Any time I have had an issue with a charge (even when it was clearly my fault) the agents have been nice about it and have removed them. It will be interesting to see how RBC's service compares.

Lewd Conduct?

A group of us went down to LA a couple of weeks ago to visit my sister and another friend from Montreal who was in town doing a photo shoot. On Sunday July 1st (Canada Day) the five of us went to Beverly Center to do some shopping. We went to H+M and a few other stores and ended up at the pet store to check out the puppies. We were getting ready to move on to Melrose for more shopping when one of our friends told us that he had to run to the washroom first. He went up the escalator to the nearest restroom (right above the pet store) while we waited for him.

A few minutes later we heard him yell at us over the railing. We made our way up the escalator and a group of police officers told us that he had been arrested for "lewd conduct." We were told that we could pick him up at the police station and were given a business card with the arresting officers names — Ramos and Lee. We saw him being taken away in handcuffs with a few other people and yelled that we would meet him at the police station. When we went to the police station the officer informed us that it would be a couple of hours before he would be released from custody (it turned out to be five). The officer also "told us what happened" which turned out to be a total and utter lie when we learned the truth...

It turns out our friend was using the urinal when a man came in and went to a urinal near him. The man was staring at our friend and making him feel really uncomfortable — like he was going to be robbed. Another person entered the bathroom and the man started staring at the person who had just entered the bathroom. Our friend was looking back trying to figure out what was going on. The two men left the washroom and as our friend was walking to the sink he saw four people blocking the entrance. The man that had the creepy stare said to grab our friend as he was looking at the other guy...

All of us are pretty pissed off at what has happened and are trying to do something about it. Our friend has filed a wrongful arrest complaint with LAPD internal affairs and has found a lawyer that seems really good — the lawyer even knew the names of the arresting officers before being told. It is kind of lame that he has to pay for a lawyer for something he didn't do. Apparently this is a common occurrence and the two arresting officers are well known for not telling the truth. The Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade was pretty useless (their email even included a grammatical error) but one government official that has been very responsive is our local MP — Hedy Fry. I am hoping that our friend files a civil suit against the LAPD and sues them for this bullshit... If anyone has any other advice please let me know in the comments and I'll pass it on to him.

Maybe next time we will all go to New York :(

The Trouble with Trip Advisor

I am sitting beside the pool at the Viceroy Hotel in Palm Springs. My experience at this hotel has been great (we are actually extending our stay by a day because we are enjoying it so much). The staff have been wonderful, the room is well appointed and the pool areas are awesome. They also have bikes that you can borrow (although me getting on a bike is probably not a great idea). To top it all off the room rate was $110 per night and they give you a $50 food and drink credit if you stay for two or more nights.

The funny thing is that we almost didn’t book the hotel because of the number of negative reviews (and rating) on TripAdvisor. If you read many of the reviews it sounds like the hotel is a little piece of hell on earth — which it is not. I used to find TripAdvisor reviews fairly accurate, but more and more I am finding the site completely irrelevant when trying to determine if I should stay at a hotel or not. I have stayed at hotels that have been highly rated that have been complete dumps and hotels that have had negative reviews and have been wonderful.

The problem with sites like TripAdvisor is that they have no way of letting me know which reviews are from people with similar tastes to mine and which reviews are from people that aren’t looking for the same things as me. In general I look for a hotel that has great style, a vibrant atmosphere with restaurants and bars, great staff and an absence of children.

It will be interesting to see how TripAdvisor will solve this problem (or if they will). If they don’t tackle it themselves there is likely a great opportunity for someone to figure out how to use some of the social networking concepts and platforms to deliver better, more relevant reviews. In the meantime if you are looking for a nice hotel in Palm Springs the Viceroy is a pretty good bet — if you like the same things as me :)

Off to Los Angeles Tomorrow

I'm off to LA tomorrow with a couple of friends to go and visit my sister (Sara), soak up some sun and do a little shopping. The first night we are staying at the Chamberlain West Hollywood and then we move to the Huntley Hotel in Santa Monica. Can't wait! Sara is having a Canada Day party so apparently I have to bring down Ketchup Chips and Wiser's... She considers these items some of Canada's finest!