The second SharePoint Saturday Vietnam took place this past weekend on a beautiful, sunny and clear Saturday in Ho Chi Minh City. Even before entering the venue, I was impressed the banner at the front gate featuring the new SharePoint Saturday logo and the logos of the three event sponsors (Officience and KMS Technologies, in addition to Bamboo). I entered the K&K Conference Room at 7:45 AM to assist with the preparation, only to learn that everything was already set up, so I had some time to setup my laptop and the phone for the live event broadcast on Twitter.  Once complete, I was ready to help welcome attendees who would soon be arriving.  

8:00 AM: As the first attendee checked in, we were eager to provide him with the event agenda, and the goodies provided as giveaways the Microsoft Learning Department in Vietnam: a nice handbook with the Microsoft Training and Examination Program for 2011.

9:00 AM: With the conference room at capacity, there were around 100 attendees awaiting the first presentation.

9:15 AM: Following the opening remarks, Phong Le, Bamboo Solutions Technical Manager, began his presentation on How to Get Formatted Data from SharePoint which Belongs to the Regional Settings. Dealing with the Regional and Cultural Settings in a Microsoft.Net application document is not an easy job, especially in the SharePoint Application Development. Issues arise as one has to combine the use of the Microsoft.Net Cultural settings with the Regional Settings in a SharePoint site. Phong provided an overview of the Regional Settings in SharePoint sites, and the way that SharePoint uses them to format the data to display in the List View and Item View. He also explained in his session how to format the data to display correctly in your Web Part, Application Page, or custom module, all based on the SharePoint site’s regional settings.

10:00 AM: Officience Web Designer Tuan Minh Nguyen began his SharePoint Branding Projects session after Phong Le’s presentation. Tuan’s session demonstrated an approach to branding SharePoint sites for the enterprise. The presentation also provided an overview of the work specific to SharePoint branding projects. Topics Tuan addressed included: Why Brand SharePoint?; How Branding Works in SharePoint; Advanced SharePoint Branding; and What tools are used in SharePoint Branding? Many questions were asked, and common experiences were shared sharing during the Q&A at the conclusion of Tuan’s session.

11:00 AM: After the tea break, Thuan Nguyen, Editor in Chief of SharePointVN.net, presented his topic, Designing Service Applications in SharePoint Server 2010, focusing on the new capabilities of Service Applications in SharePoint 2010. The session was primarily targeted at IT Pros who want to plan and design a service applications architecture to meet business requirements. I was impressed Thuan’s notion that “SharePoint Service Application is a buffet.”

11:45 AM. Gia Duy Mai, Bamboo Solutions Assistant Team Lead, concluded SharePoint Saturday Vietnam’s sessions with his presentation, providing an Introduction to Windows PowerShell in SharePoint 2010. This session presented an overview of Windows PowerShell, one of the most popular features that Microsoft released with SharePoint 2010. Windows PowerShell is a task-based command-line shell and scripting language designed especially for system administration. It helps IT professionals and power users to control and automate tasks related to administration. In his session, Gia provided the Windows PowerShell basics, and explained how to create PowerShell scripts to manage SharePoint 2010 sites.

1:00 PM: The event drew to a close. We hope to see you at the next SharePoint Saturday Vietnam, and will be keeping you posted as to the details. Thanks to everyone for coming and making the event such a success, and extra thanks to Officience and KMS for joining Bamboo as sponsors of the event!

For the speakers’ slide decks, sample code, and additional event photos, please visit the SharePoint Saturday Vietnam homepage or the event’s Facebook page.

See you at the third SharePoint Saturday Vietnam!