Field note / 6 October 2010
The useful parts of SPSUK 2010, after the slides
The session notes that survive are the ones that change a decision in the following month.
A community conference is a dense exchange of experience. The slides are only the starting point. Most of the value appears in the questions, the disagreements and the examples that a speaker did not have time to include.
At SPSUK 2010, the recurring theme was the gap between a feature that works and a service that can be supported. Upgrade planning, permissions and search all produced the same question in different forms: who owns this after the project team leaves?
Write notes as decisions to test
Instead of listing each session, write a short decision for each useful idea. For example: test the upgrade with realistic content, review who can create site collections, or measure search freshness before changing the query configuration. A decision has an owner and a test. A session summary rarely does.
Follow up with the speaker or the community when a claim is uncertain. The conversation after the event is often where the caveats appear. Record those caveats next to the recommendation so the note does not become another overconfident slogan.
The short list
Checks worth running
- Convert each useful session point into a decision with an owner.
- Record the caveats that appeared during questions.
- Schedule a follow up test within the next working month.
The event was useful because it connected technical detail to operational responsibility. The notes are only valuable if that connection survives the journey back to the farm.
Outside reading
Reference shelf
Official documentation and independent community reading for the subjects in this note.
- Microsoft Tech Community (opens in a new tab)Community discussion, product announcements and practical posts from Microsoft teams.
- Microsoft Tech Community: SharePoint (opens in a new tab)SharePoint announcements, community articles and product team updates.
- Microsoft Learn: Microsoft 365 documentation (opens in a new tab)Product documentation for Microsoft 365 services, administration and adoption.
- Microsoft Learn: SharePoint documentation (opens in a new tab)The starting point for current SharePoint administration, development and hybrid guidance.
- Microsoft Learn Q&A (opens in a new tab)A community question and answer space hosted by Microsoft.
- SharePoint Stack Exchange (opens in a new tab)An independent question and answer community for SharePoint practitioners.
- Microsoft Support (opens in a new tab)Support articles, troubleshooting steps and product help from Microsoft.
- Microsoft 365 roadmap (opens in a new tab)Planned and rolling out changes across Microsoft 365 services.
- Microsoft 365 Patterns and Practices (opens in a new tab)Community maintained guidance and samples for Microsoft 365 work.
- SharePoint community on Reddit (opens in a new tab)An independent discussion space for administrators, developers and users.
- Microsoft Security Response Center (opens in a new tab)Security advisories, update guidance and vulnerability response information.
- Microsoft Download Center (opens in a new tab)Official downloads for Microsoft tools, updates and supporting packages.
- Microsoft Learn: SharePoint administration (opens in a new tab)Operational guidance for service settings, site management and the modern admin experience.
- Microsoft Learn: SharePoint search (opens in a new tab)Documentation for search architecture, crawling and result management.
- Microsoft Learn: PowerShell documentation (opens in a new tab)Language reference, cmdlet documentation and guidance for repeatable automation.