Welcome to the Hawaii SharePoint User Group 

In early September we welcomed home Dan Holme from Beijing.  Dan was back in town speaking at the Hawaii SharePoint Users Group which I help run with close friend Wen He.  We were lucky to get the fellow Hawaii-based and SharePoint MVP as he did a fantastic talk on the use of SharePoint technology at the NBCOlympics.  As many of you know, Microsoft was very much involved with the broadcast with a beta version of Silverlight v2.  Some of the numbers that Dan provided were simply staggering.  These include:

• > 3600 hours of content on multiple networks
• ­> 2200 hours of web content
• ­> 210 million unique TV viewers which was the most watched event in television history (although I just read yesterday that the Republican and National conventions may have scored higher in the Nielson’s)
• Millions of page hits & streams

Last month, various outlets had posted that SharePoint was also the platform portal of choice for a kiosk called Info 2008.  This provided info on athletes, officials, and partners that tourists and fellow athletes could easily browse.  For some reason, however, the online case study that Microsoft has posted has been taken down. 

In addition, Dan and his team used MOSS 2007 in some clever ways to quickly solve some sticky problems that would have otherwise taken much longer if a custom solution was developed. Some of these “quick wins” included:

• Using Forms Services along with an InfoPath form to help tag video content.  The output XML which was stored in a document library was then consumed by external systems that streamed the content. 
• Using MS Access and Excel as a front end to SharePoint.  The integration with Office 2007 is quite good, and I do have to admit, I often forget the power these thick clients have when integrating with SharePoint. 
• Using WebDav to quickly publish documents into SharePoint.  I’ve been meaning to to a blog on this, and this reminded me of the value here.  Expect one shortly.
• Developing declarative workflows using SharePoint Designer.  Yes, many know the limitations that SPD-based workflows have, but let’s face it, for a single list or library, they can provide a fast solution to many workflow needs.

So, welcome home Dan, and great job helping the NBC and its partners put on a great event.  You can find Dan’s presentation deck here.

Posted by: Randy Williams