![\"SharePoint24](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/SharePoint24-1.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nBy October 2013, we had built SPCOM to nearly 4000 members, and the LinkedIn group which I moderate contained around 29,000. We knew we had a good reach to tell people about SP24, but we had no accurate way of saying how many of these would attend. We began to mention the conference in a\u00a0few posts\u00a0in October and received favourable responses, so we knew we would generate some interest, but how much? We had to guess, albeit an educated one, but still a guess.<\/p>\n
The virtual doors opened on Christmas Eve 2013<\/strong><\/h2>\nRegistration opened on Christmas Eve 2013. We had opted for a \u2018soft\u2019 launch over the Christmas period just to make sure we the registration process was all working well. However, we were pleasantly surprised \u2013 I was automatically emailed when someone registered and my phone began to ping at a satisfying steady rate (I was soon told in no uncertain terms to silence my phone and concentrate on my family instead!).<\/p>\n
We need more power Scotty!<\/strong><\/h2>\nAs people began to register all through the start of 2014 we knew that the idea was taking off and we would need to go back to Fpweb again, \u201ccap in hand\u201d to ask for more servers. After a couple more meetings, we ended up with a platform that was really well scaled and had some impressive CPU and memory \u2018Grunt\u2019 behind it. Fpweb.net gave us 2 WFE\u2019s, 1 SQL Server which works well for their larger customers.<\/p>\n
If you are interested in the platform, please click the link below to see what we ended up with.<\/p>\n
![\"sp24-farm-design\"](\"https:\/\/www.collaboris.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/sp24-farm-design.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nSoftware that we used to build the SP24 Conference Site<\/strong><\/h2>\nTo create the conference platform we had a strict \u2018beg not build\u2019 policy. The theory being that if we could license some software in return for some promotion, then this would save us having to write even more code.<\/p>\n
Sponsors to the rescue!<\/strong><\/h2>\nOur need for sponsors arose when we realised that there was not a hope in hell that we could manage the logistics of the conference remotely. We had team members located around the world and managing the live conference with us all on our own in different locations was going to be too difficult. A centralised location would make things easier, and also provide comfort in numbers. We decided to create a \u201cwar room\u201d in Leeds, UK with a stable ultra-fast network connection. As we needed help to fund this, our \u201cVladministrator\u201d (Vlad Catrinescu) put together a sponsor\u2019s package and ran a \u2018call for sponsors\u2019. As we didn\u2019t expect a great uptake (new conference, new format, crazy idea, etc.), we were once again blown away by the willingness for certain companies to \u201ctake a punt\u201d.\u00a0Metalogix<\/a>, Riolinx, Rencore<\/a>,\u00a0Penthara,\u00a0Collaboris<\/a>, Fpweb.net,\u00a0SPDockit<\/a>,\u00a0Axioworks<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0SharePoint-Videos.com<\/a>, thank you so much and please give yourself a big pat on the back! You also made this happen and believed in us. Seriously, thank you! (Same again next time?)<\/p>\nYou can\u2019t have a conference without speakers – lots of them :<\/strong>)<\/strong><\/h2>\nAs the organization evolved by the end of January – I wasn\u2019t massively involved in Speaker management. I left all that to our Speaker chaperones Matthias and Paul. The \u201cCall for speakers\u201d was done by creating 2 List.ly lists – One for the \u2018business track\u2019, and one for the \u2018technical track\u2019. We were also able to embed and host them on SP24Conf.com which worked pretty nicely! As List.ly has all of the goodies you need (such as voting, sharing, photos and different views) it is very flexible.<\/p>\n
![\"listly-technical-track\"](\"https:\/\/www.collaboris.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/listly-technical-track.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nList.ly was cool for the voting process, but we did find it tricky getting all of the selected speakers\u2019 details into SharePoint for Speaker, Sessions, Sponsor, etc. To solve this problem, I used DocRead and DocSurvey. \u00a0To achieve this we added all of the Speakers into a SharePoint Group, called \u2018Speakers\u2019 and then assigned the \u2018Speakers Guide\u2019 to them (which also contained some information that we needed the Speaker to agree to). We then created a SharePoint Survey with DocSurvey that asked the Speaker about their session experience and other information that we needed for the conference! The last part was to configure the survey against the \u2018Speakers Guide\u2019 and also require that the speakers completed it, for which we used DocRead. Once this was checked in and published, all that Matt and Paul had to do was add the speakers to the group and then view the responses as they came in. On the whole this worked well – and it was a great \u2018dogfooding\u2019 exercise for me as we have now improved both products as a result of it!<\/p>\n
On the whole, I think the Speakers enjoyed being slapped about by DocRead:<\/p>\n
![\"jeremy-thake-docread\"](\"https:\/\/www.collaboris.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/jeremy-thake-docread.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nThe Anchors were amazing!<\/h2>\n
We managed to bribe 8 Anchors to introduce the live sessions in the original SP24 event and they all did a fantastic job. They were terrific, really natural and at ease, they asked great questions and made the Speakers feel at ease despite some of them not having either used the technology before or having performed this type of role before. We can\u2019t thank them enough! This format is something we would like to use again for SP24 2015!<\/p>\n
![\"melanie-sp24\"](\"https:\/\/www.collaboris.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/melanie-sp24.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nSpecial thanks to all these Anchors who were a massive help:<\/h3>\n
As people began to register all through the start of 2014 we knew that the idea was taking off and we would need to go back to Fpweb again, \u201ccap in hand\u201d to ask for more servers. After a couple more meetings, we ended up with a platform that was really well scaled and had some impressive CPU and memory \u2018Grunt\u2019 behind it. Fpweb.net gave us 2 WFE\u2019s, 1 SQL Server which works well for their larger customers.<\/p>\n
If you are interested in the platform, please click the link below to see what we ended up with.<\/p>\n
To create the conference platform we had a strict \u2018beg not build\u2019 policy. The theory being that if we could license some software in return for some promotion, then this would save us having to write even more code.<\/p>\n Our need for sponsors arose when we realised that there was not a hope in hell that we could manage the logistics of the conference remotely. We had team members located around the world and managing the live conference with us all on our own in different locations was going to be too difficult. A centralised location would make things easier, and also provide comfort in numbers. We decided to create a \u201cwar room\u201d in Leeds, UK with a stable ultra-fast network connection. As we needed help to fund this, our \u201cVladministrator\u201d (Vlad Catrinescu) put together a sponsor\u2019s package and ran a \u2018call for sponsors\u2019. As we didn\u2019t expect a great uptake (new conference, new format, crazy idea, etc.), we were once again blown away by the willingness for certain companies to \u201ctake a punt\u201d.\u00a0Metalogix<\/a>, Riolinx, Rencore<\/a>,\u00a0Penthara,\u00a0Collaboris<\/a>, Fpweb.net,\u00a0SPDockit<\/a>,\u00a0Axioworks<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0SharePoint-Videos.com<\/a>, thank you so much and please give yourself a big pat on the back! You also made this happen and believed in us. Seriously, thank you! (Same again next time?)<\/p>\n As the organization evolved by the end of January – I wasn\u2019t massively involved in Speaker management. I left all that to our Speaker chaperones Matthias and Paul. The \u201cCall for speakers\u201d was done by creating 2 List.ly lists – One for the \u2018business track\u2019, and one for the \u2018technical track\u2019. We were also able to embed and host them on SP24Conf.com which worked pretty nicely! As List.ly has all of the goodies you need (such as voting, sharing, photos and different views) it is very flexible.<\/p>\n List.ly was cool for the voting process, but we did find it tricky getting all of the selected speakers\u2019 details into SharePoint for Speaker, Sessions, Sponsor, etc. To solve this problem, I used DocRead and DocSurvey. \u00a0To achieve this we added all of the Speakers into a SharePoint Group, called \u2018Speakers\u2019 and then assigned the \u2018Speakers Guide\u2019 to them (which also contained some information that we needed the Speaker to agree to). We then created a SharePoint Survey with DocSurvey that asked the Speaker about their session experience and other information that we needed for the conference! The last part was to configure the survey against the \u2018Speakers Guide\u2019 and also require that the speakers completed it, for which we used DocRead. Once this was checked in and published, all that Matt and Paul had to do was add the speakers to the group and then view the responses as they came in. On the whole this worked well – and it was a great \u2018dogfooding\u2019 exercise for me as we have now improved both products as a result of it!<\/p>\n On the whole, I think the Speakers enjoyed being slapped about by DocRead:<\/p>\n We managed to bribe 8 Anchors to introduce the live sessions in the original SP24 event and they all did a fantastic job. They were terrific, really natural and at ease, they asked great questions and made the Speakers feel at ease despite some of them not having either used the technology before or having performed this type of role before. We can\u2019t thank them enough! This format is something we would like to use again for SP24 2015!<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\nSoftware that we used to build the SP24 Conference Site<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Sponsors to the rescue!<\/strong><\/h2>\n
You can\u2019t have a conference without speakers – lots of them :<\/strong>)<\/strong><\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\nThe Anchors were amazing!<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nSpecial thanks to all these Anchors who were a massive help:<\/h3>\n