We are done with conference planning for now and heading back to Redmond. After our last stop before I started to map out the “must go to” SharePoint conferences I said I would return back to walk about the community at msdn. In an interesting bout of curiosity and letting the free wind take us to our next stop I tossed out SharePoint Community to my road trip planner. The first hit in the list is our next stop.
SharePoint Products and Technologies Community
See I knew I would learn a little something along the way. I did not know there was an official SharePoint Products and Technologies Community site. Guess I am lucky to have such a great search, I mean road trip planner.
I would consider The SharePoint Products and Technologies Community as part of the Microsoft Communities which is sort of like a flea market , bazaar or maybe a vendor fair. Everyone has a table or booth to show their goods. At the Microsoft Community you can wander around to different tables such as Exchange, SQL Server, MOM, BizTalk and SharePoint. Unfortunately the rest of the community has a leg up on the SharePoint Community. Ah- where’s the content guys? Even the Macintosh Community has got us beat on this one.
Well, since I drove all the way over here I might as well get out and see what I can find. Expect this stop to be a quick one.. When I started the road trip I did not guarantee that all stops were going to be fruitful. I am not surprised I have not happened on to this community site before. Anyway lets take a look around.
Lets see. Looks like they got some content but most of it includes links to generic sites such as MSDN and TechNet Chats. Chats can be good content it is just that these links point to all the chats and not SharePoint chats. There is a link to SharePoint blogs – well a link to Marks site with his list of bloggers. The Microsoft Communities contain some links but again digging into these they are generic links and not really related to SharePoint.
The SharePoint Products and Technologies Community site does include links to some live newsgroup so you could use this place as a step off to the newsgroups. That’s a plus. The Related Communities section does include a link to D2D which does have a lot of SharePoint related content. But seems to me that this is not the only related SharePoint community.
I poked around on this table for a while. I think I gave up when digging through the tips and tricks and code sections yielded tips and examples for SPS 2001.
I started to wonder around the other community booths just to compare. The other community sites I see look pretty sharp. If it wasn’t for the newsgroup links pointing to current newsgroups I would’ve thought I was on the wrong community site. I scratch my head at this one and pull out the trusty trip planner to head out towards our next stop.