If you can’t make it in person, you can follow on Twitter, hashtag #SPSTCDC.

http://www.sharepointsaturday.org/dc/default.aspx

If you’re around DC area and you’re an IT professional using SharePoint, I recommend you attend. And you don’t want to miss this one. The last SP Saturday DC that I attended, they intentionally banned discussions of SharePoint 2010 in the official agenda (you can talk it on the hallways and breaks but wasn’t allowed at the session topic). Looking at the current lineup of the sessions, there are going to be a lot of SharePoint 2010 sessions! So attend!

SharePoint Saturdays typically have good sessions and it’s an opportunity to meet other SharePoint folks. If you’re not from the DC area, SharePoint Saturdays are all over the country and I would recommend checking  what the closest SharePoint Saturday is.

It was full day of sessions, networking, and bagels and pizza and coffee. It started with a General Session: The State of SharePoint session by Joel Oleson, NS Rana, Thomas Vander Wal, and Errin O’ Connor. From that point on, people branched to End User, Developer, Administration, or Special Interest sessions.

I’m primarily a solutions developer. A friend of mine who I bumped into at the conference asked me “so, are you headed over to the Developer sessions?” Initially, yes—my first session for the day was a developer session. But I mixed it up for the rest of the day since there were so many interesting topics and I like diversifying what I learn.

Here are the sessions that I attended this last Saturday:

• Building and deploying custom SharePoint Application pages (layouts) with Visual Studio 2008 by Michael Lotter
• Social Computing and Blogging with SharePoint by Dan Lewis
• Visually Developing Custom Web Parts by Becky Isserman
• SharePoint Admin Fundamentals by Joel Oleson
• Implementing a SharePoint Pilot: An IT Manager’s Perspective by Jonathan Distler
• Using the SharePoint Platform to Build Vertical Business Applications by Paul Galvin
• SmartCard Authentication: Considerations, Options and Pitfalls by Dan Usher and Joel Ward

I really enjoyed the SharePoint Saturday. I highly recommend that fellow tech professionals go to these events—they’re informational and you get the chance to network with other professionals (and gurus) in the industry. For me, the best thing I got out of SharePoint Saturday are product ideas that I may develop for Zenpo Software Innovations, LLC, my company.

I will follow up by writing individual entries for each session I attended.

Items discussed in the meeting:

• SharePoint Designer is now free – Wow! I couldn’t believe it! Check this out: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointdesigner/FX100487631033.aspx?ofcresset=1
• Certification paths in SharePoint – MCTS Exam 70-542, 70-630, 70-541, and 70-631. All these exams use case-study type exams. So, the recommendation of those who have taken the exam is to get real-world hands-on experience
• There is a “Certified Master” for SharePoint. If you get this certification, you pretty much are considered all-knowing with everything related to SharePoint. For details, see http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/master/SharePoint/default.mspx

It’s been a while since I’ve met with others that share the same or similar interest with a given technology. The information sharing and networking benefits of going to these events are great. There are things that you would otherwise miss because it’s difficult to keep tabs on everything going on in tech. Also, with today’s challenging economy, you should go out there and network. I recommend you find meetup at your hometown. If there is none, perhaps it’s time you start your own and lead the way.