For those of you who are confused by the title, Robert, our MD complained bitterly that the SharePoint Conference 2009 in Las Vegas only had Pepsi. I don’t know any geeks who like Pepsi, and a quick poll on twitter seemed to suggest that Robert and I aren’t alone. I just want to report that Berlin has restored my faith and has large fridges full of bottles of Coke. No Cherry Coke, however, so they don’t quite make a gold star.
As you may know, TechE d 2009 EMEA is in Berlin this year. You may also know that this year is the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. I’m here in Berlin, which means that I’ll try to blog what’s going on at TechEd. However, this post is all about the really cool idea Berlin has for the celebrations!
We encountered a problem recently with a two server farm. One server was configured as index and query server. Both servers were delivering pages to users. If a user executed a search on the server which did not run the search services, the Search page returned an error, and we saw the following in the application log and SharePoint logs:
UPDATE: Spence posted a great comment pointing out some issues with this post. Richard then restored our Community Server DB to a point in time before the post, so it’s been wiped. Post again, Spence, please, as I didn’t get chance to copy the text of the comment, I’m afraid.
A set of conference posts wouldn’t be complete without a run down of the local culinary delights. We haven’t strayed far from the South Bank Centre for the past few days, but we’ve had a great variety of meals.
One of the reasons I enjoy conferences like @media is that I can be persuaded to change my mind on things. After a persuasive argument from Nick I’ve decided to alter my stance on twitter and give it a go for a while.
It’s a muggy day today. With thunderstorms expected, the morning air was thick as we walked over to the South Bank Centre.
I found Douglas Crockford’s opening session thoughtful. It wasn’t what I was expecting – I had anticipated a focus more on methodologies and approaches to improving quality. instead, it was an interesting and sometimes humorous examination as to why quality in software is such a difficult area, with an informative walk through the history of software thrown in.
I hadn’t really thought about it before, but Andy Budd has a very similar presentation style to my own. He’s incredibly enthusiastic and passionate about what he’s speaking about, and he wanders around waving his arms in an extremely animated way. Snap!
It’s good to see familiar faces once again here at @media. This year’s conference is around the same size as the first one in 2005 and it has a strangely familial feeling. Nick’s here as a volunteer ‘@mediator’ so he was manning the desk as we registered.
Not providing lunch at the conference was perhaps a bit of a double edged sword. On the one hand, Wagamamas is just so close (mmm… chicken katsu curry); on the other hand, lots of people were nodding off in the warmth of the first session.
Lauren and I set off for London later to today. It’s @media time again and I’ve been looking forward to this for a while. As usual Patrick Griffiths has lined up a fantastic group of really inspirational speakers and, whilst smaller in the light of the current climate, I have no doubts that it will be useful.
Andy Westgarth and the guys at VBUG Newcastle very kindly invited me to speak about and demo some of what I consider to be key features in Windows 7 and Server 2008. If you read the blog and would like to see what I really look like, are interested in the topic of the talk or interested in VBUG in general, come along!
As you probably guess, Richard and myself were in Seattle for a short conference last week. The evening entertainment on one night was a trip to Gameworks. If you like playing video games with your mates, going head-to-head at things like Sega Rally, then you’ll have a good time in Gameworks.
Tonight we ate in a place we’d seen recommended by Sara Ford in her blog: Marcella’s Cookery. A fantastic little New Orleans-style eatery run by the eponymous (and very friendly) Marcella and her husband, Anthony. The food was fabulous, well cooked and happily discussed by the chef himself. Between us we tried a number of dishes and all were excellent. Anthony (the chef) told us that he moved to Seattle after Hurricane Katrina and I think it’s Seattle’s gain – we had a great time and I can wholeheartedly recommend the place.
On our arrival in Seattle, Richard and I had a great meal in Etta’s Seafood, which is not far along the road from Pike’s Market, heading out with the bay on your left. The food was excellent – fantastic chowder and a burger cooked just to your taste. A warning though – if you’re a wee slip of a lad like I am you may find the portions daunting. It was a friendly, charming place and great welcome to the city.
Seattle 2009 008 We had a great night tonight. Our visit to Seattle coincided with three home games for the Mariners, and I went to my first baseball game tonight. Not only was it a fantastic match, going right down to the last pitch, but one of the batters obviously realised I was a baseball newbie and kindly hit me a ball as keepsake!
slide1 Richard’s an old hand in Seattle, so he suggested we ate breakfast at Lowell’s down at the Pike Place Market. I’m really glad he did – the eggs benedict were fantastic. We ate great food with a fantastic view of the bay. If you’re ever in Seattle I can wholeheartedly recommend that you try Lowell’s while you’re here.
I’m in Seattle this week (just as a big heatwave has rolled in). As I type this I’m looking out from my room at the Westin over a great view of the bay. In the corner I hear my coffee brewing. None of your little kettles and sachets of instant coffee here. Look what I got:
I finally bit the bullet and decided to upgrade our SharePoint farm yesterday. I’d been holding off for a while because of time constraints and because of a known issue with Project Server, also part of our farm.
I’ve been meaning to write this up for a while, simply because it’s not quite as straightforward as with Server 2005.
To configure incoming email on SharePoint when running on Server 2008 you’ll need to run through the following steps:
