There’s been a lot of talk, and no small amount of anticipation, over the past year-plus leading up to the release of SharePoint 2010. Yesterday, the big day finally arrived, and while I had hopes of covering the “virtual keynote” event for our 2010 blog, apparently Microsoft didn’t adequately anticipate demand and, along with what I can only imagine were thousands of others worldwide, I was unable to access the live keynote video stream. Incredibly, even now I’m still unable to access the archived version of the keynote! Which is incredibly frustrating, but at the same time it serves as yet another example of just how hotly anticipated the release of SharePoint (and, OK, also Office) 2010 has been.
Anyway, while I’ve authored tens of thousands of words of SharePoint 2010-related content over the past year (mostly on Bamboo Nation’s aforementioned SharePoint 2010 blog), I have actually done my best to remain “pure” in terms of actually beginning to work with 2010. Why? Because I wanted to approach the new platform at the time of its release in as close a state of “blankness” as possible from a beginning end user standpoint. I figured that doing so would be the best way to preserve the “voice” of SharePoint Blank, especially given that the quest for knowledge and the thrill of discovery are (to me, anyway) hallmarks of this blog. Ultimately, of course, SharePoint Blank is all about sharing that earned knowledge for the benefit of my fellow end users, but I like to think that the telling of the story of the knowledge acquisition makes for a more inviting, and at least occasionally entertaining, experience. Such an approach certainly makes SharePoint Blank more fun to write, and I’m grateful for your indulgence in what has evolved as the “voice” of this blog.
So, we’re at the beginning of a new adventure here with SharePoint Blank. In movie parlance, it might be called SharePoint 2010: The SharePoint Blank Adventure Continues. I’ll still be tackling WSS/MOSS issues and concerns, of course (because let’s face it, it’s not as if I’ve exactly mastered the previous version of SharePoint), but since I’m as guilty of anyone in succumbing to the “thrill of the new,” the majority of the content here is going to be SharePoint 2010-related for at least a little while. Even if your organization isn’t going to be upgrading to 2010 in the near future though, I hope that you’ll join me for my own 2010 adventure in the coming weeks and months. After all, just think of all the mistakes I can make so that you won’t have to by the time you’re handed the keys to your own brand new, precision-tuned SharePoint 2010 machine?
And so it begins, appropriately enough, with a SharePoint 2010 portal, fresh from the showroom floor. Don’t you just love that new SharePoint smell?
