As reported earlier Bob Young, we are here in sunny San Diego for the Best Practices Conference 2011, but we seem to have left the sun back at Bamboo HQ in Virginia!

The conference keynote began with Bill English reviewing the definition of what is a Best Practice, and the key theme of the conference, which is more on what should be done, and not just how to; the emphasis on the Why’s and the Should have’s, there connecting technology to Best Practices in the SharePoint world. The speakers were reminded that their sessions should have three very important elements – Clarity, Direction, and Confidence, and that they must provide at least three best practices, one bad practice, and one tradeoff.  This caused at least one speaker to promptly leave to ensure their presentation had all these parameters!

Owen Allen joined Bill English to present the results of a survey sent out to SharePoint users to get feedback on various elements of their SharePoint deployments. An instant win with the Bamboo crew at Best Practices were the results of the question regarding which ISV’s were being used, as Bamboo led the pack at 20%, with Axceler ControlPoint and AvePoint both above 10%.

Other notable points were: SharePoint is maturing as it shifts to an enterprise service offering from the initial point solution, a key shift was in the use of extranets, with 52% of the respondents using it for customers and partners. The answer to the survey question regarding usage of My Sites led to an interesting statistic – 38% use various social features, but not My Sites! The fact that the social features were being used outside of My Sites led to a quick question and answer session with the audience. Most participants reported that the reasons behind not using My Sites related to security concerns, privacy issues, load on the system due to an influx of content that was unrelated to work. In most of these cases, other social features such as tagging and message boards were being used instead. Clearly the growth and poor adoption of Social Networking in the work place is still influenced largely the unknowns related to the true benefits vs. the lack of governance.

The conference sessions are running on several tracks and promise to provide something of value for all attendees. If you are interested to learn more about “Why projects fail and how to leverage SharePoint for Project Management”, please join Bamboo’s Trang Husebo and Angela Dillon tomorrow at 12:45 pm in Grand Ballroom D.   If you are attending the conference, please stop the Bamboo booth.

Read our complete coverage of the SharePoint Best Practices Conference 2011:

• Checking in from Best Practices 2011
• Keynote with Bill English and Owen Allen
• Please Save the Pandas
• Questions from the Bamboo Booth “Do You Offer Installation, Configuration or Training Services?”
• To Social or Not to Social
• Keynote with Ben Curry – SP Server 2010 Best Practices – You Can’t Fix Stupid!
• Why Projects Fail? How to Leverage SharePoint and Bamboo PM Central for Project Management
• Wes Preston Presents ‘SharePoint: When to Crawl, Walk or Run’
• Final Day – Ask the Experts Panel