Mark Rackley, The SharePoint Hillbilly, not only put on a great SharePoint Saturday Ozarks event, but has written a blog post to let everyone know what you should consider if you are thinking about putting on an event like this. The great thing is that what he discusses could apply to any regional event.
He has great advice on recruiting speakers, sponsors, selecting the venue, website, and day of venue organization.
Mark thanks for putting on a great event and sharing your experience with the community.
Check out the full article here: Organizing a SharePoint Event: What You Need To Know
In my previous post I mentioned I install the BlogEngine.net Akisment Extension written by Justin Etheredge. Today Justin Chase, a member of the Microsoft Expression team, has posted great step by step instructions showing how to get it, install it, get a WordPress API key, and configure it.
Resource: Installing the Akismet Extension for BlogEngine.NET by Justin Chase
Akismet: Comment Spam filtering
Recently I have been getting unwanted spam comments to my blog post, so I went looking for an Akismet extension for BlogEngine. When I had a WordPress blog it was there by default you just had to get a API Key form WordPress. It works by checking comments against a centeralized black list, if it is ok the comment goes through, if not, squash!!!! I love it.
Thankfully Justin Etheredge created the BlogEngine.net Akisment Extension, I highly recommend you make this addition to your blog to stop unwanted comments.
skribit: Blog Idea suggestion service
Added a new service to the blog called skribit, it is very similar to user voice, it allows you to suggest topics you would like to see blogged about. So if you have an idea of something you would like to see covered in this blog give it a try.
Adding it to BlogEngine was a snap, just used the skribit widget creator and then copied the generated code and added it in the Settings page of you BlogEngine admin, scroll to the bottom and paste the widget code into the HTML head section. Voila, you are done!
My good friend Zach Young has been doing a lot of great work with using Live Meeting to enhance the user group and event experience over the last year. He has even been part of the Virtual Alt .Net (VAN) calls that have grown like crazy and are completely virtual!
I had the chance to corner him the other night after our Arkansas User Group Leadership call and interview him on the subject for User Group Radio, so head on over and check out this great interview and the awesome resources Zach has put together to make getting off the ground with Live Meeting a lot easier on the rest of us!
Zach thanks for the interview it was a great time.