Tech in the 603, The Granite State Hacker

Granite State 2014 Q4 Events – SharePoint Saturday New Hampshire, and the Users Groups

SharePoint Saturday New Hampshire 2014
Better late than never.   SharePoint Saturday New Hampshire 2014 is happening just over a week from now at the Radisson Nashua Hotel in Nashua, NH on October 18th.   (We traditionally have held this event in mid September, so we’re essentially a month late.)

The SharePoint Saturday New Hampshire theme for 2014 is

“Cloud First” means SharePoint developments don’t wait for major releases.

It’s very true, with developments implemented in SharePoint Online, including Delve and social graphing, there’s lots to talk about.  Incremental changes they may be, but increments happen at a more rapid pace than they did in the Pre-SharePoint Online world, and of course that has implications for SharePoint on-prem, on premise.

http://www.spsevents.org/city/nh/2014

Granite State NH SharePoint Users Group
Regarding the NH SharePoint Users Group, our schedule remains on the 1st Thursday of the month thru the end of the year with the December meeting being held at the Microsoft Store in Salem.  Our speakers and topics remain to be determined.

#NHWPUG is dead…. long live #NHWPAD!
The Granite State Windows Phone Users Group is in the midst of some bit of reorganization.   We had long discussed the idea of broadening the focus of the group to include Universal platform app development, and the topic got some hot debate when 8.1 was announced.   With the announcement of Windows Threshold as the unified version of Windows that will run on all hardware form factors (pc’s, laptops, tablets, phones, and even Xbox consoles) it’s become clear that we need to redefine our group and refocus it.  

With this post, I’ll announce that the group will be called the “Granite State (NH) Windows Platform Application Developers”.  I’ll begin re-branding the existing LinkedIn, Facebook, Eventbrite and Meetup sites, and the community app.  We’ll continue to support Windows Phone 8 app developers, but our focus will move to supporting community evangelism of developers in the Windows App Store space. 

I want to thank the my new teammates at BlueMetal for putting up with my agonizing over this change somewhat openly within the team’s internal discussion, and for their support.   I’m not worthy, but I can’t help but think it’s a huge win for the Granite State SPUG and WPAD groups, and the greater New England technology community.

Our next meeting will be in November, but we’ll get that announced soon.

Regarding the SPSNH schedule change…. To make a long story short SharePoint Conference 2014 pushed off SharePoint TechCon SF, which then push SPTechCon Boston right into SharePoint Saturday New Hampshire’s traditional 3rd Saturday of September space.  Our choices were to have SPSNH before or after SPTechCon, and going after seemed reasonable.

Tech in the 603, The Granite State Hacker

Late Summer/Fall 2013 in Granite State Users Group Events

Fred Brandon Presenting at SharePoint Saturday New Hampshire 2012

Something I haven’t been doing enough of, ever, is blogging about upcoming events for the two users’ groups I help co-organize.   I generally think of this as a technology blog, and while I often like to blog about everything from nitty-gritty technical details to architectural level development stuff, I think I can spare a label for community involvement.  🙂 

While SP Tech Con is rolling along down in Boston, here’s what’s rolling just a smidge north of there.

We just had our August 8th meeting for the Granite State NH SharePoint Users Group at Daniel Webster College in Nashua.   Due to a scheduling conflict Rebecca Isserman couldn’t make it… thankfully Kris Huggins stepped up and presented on MS Project integration with SharePoint 2013 (as opposed to Project Server itself).  

We also organized a bit for volunteers for SharePoint Saturday, New Hampshire, 2013 as well as went over topics for SPSNH speaker selection.   All in all, we had a great meeting… those that attended really got to take part in what is becoming a special tradition for the users group and SPSNH.

Granite State SharePoint Users Group Meeting at the Microsoft Store in Salem

Our next meeting for the Granite State SharePoint NH Users Group meeting will be September 12th, with Richard Harbridge, from Microsoft!   In fact, we will be meeting at the Microsoft Store in Salem, NH, as well.  I believe this will be a fun easing-in “back to school” atmosphere event!  🙂

Richard’s visit should also be an excellent last call before SharePoint Saturday NH on September 21st.  We’re really psyched to have a new location for SPSNH:  the Radisson Nashua.   It has been host to bunches of great events I’ve personally attended… so I’m really proud that SPSNH has grown to this level!

We have a fantastic lineup of speakers and topics and even great vendors with cool stuff to show off there.

If you haven’t gotten your FREE SPSNH attendee ticket, please do so…  they are limited, and we won’t get much notice before we run out.   You can knock that off your to-do list at http://spsnh2013.eventbrite.com


As far as my other group, the Granite State NH Windows Phone Users Group goes, our next meeting is this week, August 15th.  We’ve got Roman Jacquez, UI Developer Lead of Qvidien, with

“Creating Multiplayer Turn-Based Games with Windows Phone and Windows 8”, again, at the Microsoft Store in Salem. 
 
Going out through September, the NHWPUG’s meeting will be September 19th (just days in front of SPSNH!) with Gary Ritter, who will be chatting about “Favorite Windows Phone Development Tips ad Shortcuts for Beginners”, also at the Microsoft Store.

I’ll also take this opportunity to thank Daniel Webster College, the Microsoft Store, and Alexander Techology Group for their steadfast support of the users groups, and Edgewater and Atrion for their core-team support of SharePoint Saturday!

Tech in the 603, The Granite State Hacker

SharePoint Saturday NH

I’m psyched to be a part of the founding and building of SharePoint Saturday for New Hampshire. It’s a part of the Granite State SharePoint Users Group (follow twitter @NHSharePointUG ) or check us out on Linked-IN.

Stay tuned for more info…. lots of exciting stuff happening for the SharePoint community in NH.

Edit: May have jumped the gun on this a bit… the site may not be publicly accessible… yet. I’ll update this post when it’s made public.