The next one of these is this coming Wednesday, July 21, 9am PST / 12pm EST.  We have a great bunch of people slated to be on the call.  In addition to myself we have Adam Buenz, Alex Pearce (UK), Amanda Perran (Canada), Arno Nel (UK), Bryan Phillips , Dan Attis, Darrin Bishop, Eli Robillard (Canada), Jason Medero, Matthew McDermott, Muhanad Omar (Jordan), Randy Drisgill, Sahil Malik, Sean Wallbridge (Canada), Serge Tremblay (Canada), Shane Perran (Canada), Shane Young.  So dial in, ask a question, listen on about all things SharePoint.

Twitter tag: #spmvpchat

MSDN Live Chat link

Thanks! - M

Remember when (days long ago...) you tried to instantiate to a list in SharePoint via either SPWeb.Lists["List Name"] or SPWeb.GetList("list URL"), you'd not know if the list was truly there until your code went along it's merry way, or it exceptioned out?  Well here comes SPListCollection.TryGetList().  Passing in the title of the list will either return the SPList itself or null.  At this point you can then do a null check and address it accordingly, instead of relying on an exception.

Something a little cool I just came across... - M

SPListCollection.TryGetList Method

Ben Curry (SharePoint MVP extraordinaire, CISSP, MCT, MCP and all-around great guy) asked me to help contribute to this book (scheduled to now be out on July 4th) and let me tell you, what a learning experience this was.  It was my first foray into the realm of publishing and it was a lot of work for something relatively small (in terms of amount of pages that I was responsible for) and while it took up a ton of time (as you could tell from my lack of recent blog posts) it was an exceptional learning experience.  My contribution was the My Sites / User Profiles chapter and while it's a bit of a what/how-to, there are a couple "whys" thrown in there as well.  I'm really looking forward to checking out the finished product.

Big/huge thanks again to Ben for letting me help out on this! - M

Amazon link to Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Administrator's Pocket Consultant

Back up for air!  And with that, I'll be presenting my SharePoint 2010 Features and Solutions with Visual Studio 2010 at the upcoming SharePoint Saturday - NYC event, coming up on July 31st.  Remember, there's no better place to find a wealth of knowledge on all things SharePoint at these SharePoint Saturday events.  We're talking networking, SharePoint, speakers, SharePoint, MVPs, and did I mention SharePoint?  Again, come on out for a day of all things SharePoint with industry experts, learn a bunch of great stuff, and to top it off, it's FREE!  Head on over to the SharePoint Saturday - NYC site and register!  It'd be great to meet you all.

- M

Well folks, it's that time again!  SharePoint Saturday rolls into Philadelphia (the Fort Washington area to be specific) for a Saturday full of SharePoint stuff.  Come on out and join SharePoint architects, administrators, developers, and other professionals who work with SharePoint for this SharePoint Saturday event on May 8th, 2010.  The day will be filled with educational and informative SharePoint 2010 sessions and provide you with an excellent opportunity to network with Microsoft MVPs and other SharePoint professionals in Philadelphia area.

SharePoint Saturday is FREE and is open to the public!  Click here to register cause it'll fill up fast!

Date: May 8th, 2010
Time: 8:00am - 5:00 pm
Location: DeVry University Campus, 1140 Virginia Drive, Fort Washington, PA 19034

Follow us on Twitter too! #SPSPHILLY

So register, come on out, mingle with folk of like mind, and just have an all around great day of SharePoint sessions! - M

MSDN is having 2 online chats on SharePoint, April 27 from 7pm - 8pm EST, and April 28 from 12pm - 1pm EST.  Why don't you sign up and catch up on some SharePoint technical goodness?  I'm lucky enough ot be on the April 28th call.  Sign up, sign in, sign on, and have at it! - M

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/chats/default.aspx

Getting closer to GA folks...the 2010 bits (see screens) appeared for me on my TechNet subscription...have at it! - M

Just announced on the MSDN SharePoint Blog, SharePoint 2010, Office 2010, Project 2010 and Visio 2010 have gone RTM today.  The applications will slowly be released to the masses over the coming weeks with general availability come May 1.

It's almost here...

- M

Just when I'm going to get the ball rolling, crazy things like work get in the way.  So, after much scrambling, here's hoping to being back on track with my blogging, and what better way to start off than to say "Hey, come on out to Philly.NET's Code Camp 2010.1!"  Code Camp, run by the Philly.NET User Group is a gathering of geeks for all things .NET (and a few tracks of ALT.NET) run a couple times a year.

Code Camp is an excellent opportunity to network with 500+ of philly's finest developers, consultants, and IT decision makers.  It will be held at the DeVry University campus in Fort Washington, PA on Saturday, April 10 from 8:30-5:00.  I will be doing a track on SharePoint 2010 Feature Development with Visual Studio 2010.  It'll go over the changes since VS 2008, and how it's much more streamlined, with demos/walkthroughs.

Philly.NET's Code Camps are entirely free events.  Below are just a couple of details about it:

• Lots of code, just say no to slides!
• 8 hours of learning and networking
• 60 sessions by 60 speakers (8:30, 10:00, 12:30, 2:00, 3:30)
• 12 tracks (two recorded live by Microsoft MSDN)
• 600 seats with tables (laptops welcome)
• Breakfast, lunch, and afternoon snack
• Raffles and prizes at lunch and closing

So, if you feel like hanging out with a bunch of your fellow geeks, come on out!  It'll be a blast! - M

One of the enhancements to SharePoint was an "upgrade" to how it does Themes.  Everyone remembers how Site Themes are handled now, right?  Head into the Site Settings and under Look And Feel find the Site Theme link, which shows you the below image.

Now, when heading into the same area in SharePoint 2010 you see the following:

Note the additional information now available in the page: the color scheme is shown, the text backgrounds and foregrounds, accents and hyperlinks are shown as well.  This aligns up perfectly with a PowerPoint Theme.  Now, how can we create a PowerPoint Theme?  Well, you can either open up PowerPoint 2007 and start playing there, or, enter: Theme Builder.

Theme Builder (currently a beta tool) allows you to create Microsoft Office 2007 Themes to be used throughout the Office suite.  Utilizing a tool like this allows you to create Themes that can also be used in your SharePoint 2010 sites.  Using the interface (see above) you can assign colors to the various areas that match those that SharePoint is looking for (accents, hyperlinks, etc).  Once created, you can upload the Theme to the Gallery, and then reference it in the Theme Settings.

So, to create a custom Theme using Theme Builder

1. Open up Theme Builder
2. Assign different colors to the various accents and hyperlinks
3. Select the font of the major and minor fonts
   • Major=Heading Font; Minor=Body Font in SharePoint
4. Test the Theme in Powerpoint
   
5. Save the Theme inside the PowerPoint interface
6. Open up the SharePoint 2010 Site you wish to play with
7. Navigate Site Actions --> Site Settings
8. Select Themes under the Galleries section
9. Upload the Theme created/saved in the steps above
10. Navigate back to the Site Settings page, then select Site Theme under the Look and Feel section
    • You should now see your uploaded Theme as a choice in the list
11. Select the new Theme...the color scheme, accents, hyperlinks and fonts in the page will now reflect your Theme
12. Select the <Apply> button
13. Your site now has this new Theme throughout

Relatively simple, eh?  It's not too bad for something automated.  Now, you can experiment with different color schemes and see what looks best for your new theme.

Note: When trying to just save the Theme through the Theme Builder only, and then uploading it, SharePoint exceptioned, hence we need to save it through the PowerPoint interface.

Enjoy! - M