As regular readers of the Bamboo Team Blog know, this week marks the first ShareFEST Conference, the SharePoint Conference for life sciences, which takes place in Philadelphia, PA, on Thursday and Friday.  I’ll be heading up to Philly from D.C. on Wednesday evening, but I figured there was no time like the present to begin sorting out my Conference schedule.

I’m a SharePoint professional, but not a life science professional, so I expect this to be a fascinating and educational window into how SharePoint is being used within the life sciences industry. The lineup of sessions is dedicated to best practices around using SharePoint in life sciences and includes two tracks running in parallel for the most part. The first track is “SharePoint in Use: Case Studies” featuring life sciences industry leaders presenting their SharePoint use cases, and the second track is “SharePoint as an Enterprise Platform,” featuring SharePoint professionals sharing their own expert knowledge and making best practices recommendations for SharePoint’s use within the life sciences industry.

The Conference kicks off Thursday morning with a keynote by Microsoft’s Steve Aylward on “New Models of Collaboration and Compliance: The Role of SharePoint in Life Sciences.” Matt Walz of NextDocs follows the keynote with a keynote presentation on “The Many Faces of SharePoint: How SharePoint is Being Used Today in Life Sciences.” For the remainder of the day, some of the sessions I’m currently eyeing include Microsoft’s Les Jordan on “The SharePoint Life Sciences Ecology”; ProtonMedia’s Ronald Burns on “Collaborating in 3D: Merck’s Virtual Meeting Space for Scientific Collaboration”; TranSenda’s Jeremiah Rehm’s “Exploring the Benefits and Challenges of Exchanging CTMS Data with Microsoft Office”; and Shire’s Patrick Metzler and HighPoint Solutions’ John Jones’ “Case Study: Building a SharePoint Center for Excellence at Shire.”

ShareFEST kicks off on Friday morning with a keynote from Microsoft’s Mike Gannotti titled, “Beyond Compliance: What SharePoint 2010 Brings to Life Sciences.” Additional sessions I’m eyeing on Friday include BioClinica’s Peter Benton on, “SharePoint as an Enabling Platform for Next Generation Clinical Solutions at BioClinica”; Lorenz Life Sciences Group’s Raoul Lorez on, “The eCTD, Current Global Practices, and eSubmission Trends”; Innovative-e’s Dux Raymond Sy on, “Don’t Curb Their Enthusiasm: Navigating the Shift from Local Applications to SharePoint as an Enterprise Platform”; and NextDocs Ken Lownie’s “Conference Wrap-Up: An Updated Perspective in Life Sciences.”

Phew! Would you believe that the above schedule actually includes an attempt to build in some time for blogging sessions during the day? Something tells me that, to use a food services rather than a life sciences analogy, my eyes may have been bigger than my stomach, and I might not be able to take in all of the above sessions. Either way though, you’ll be able to follow my progress with as-prompt-as-I-can-manage blogs on each session I attend throughout the conference. Fair warning that I’ll probably save the last couple of session blogs for Monday though, as I suspect that both my brain and my fingers may be aching by the time the Conference shuts down at 5 p.m. on Friday!

Breaking news!  Dux Raymond Sy announced this morning that he will be joined by Michael Gannotti from 7-8 p.m. EST on Thursday for a live ShareFEST webcast, coinciding with the Conference’s official welcome reception. Complete details are available at meetdux.com.