Guest Author: Mohamed Yehia

SPSEMEA was a fantastic event. No, it was phenomenal. No, it was perfect. I could not have imagined it better.

Everything was taken into consideration starting with the chat rooms, the different channels, the log in info, support of moderators, the schedule, diversity of topics and speakers. It was global.

The day was exciting from the beginning. Starting off with the Keynote speech, where Joel Oleson was conferenced in via a black berry attached to a microphone. He could not log in because of a firewall issue in MS. Everybody was moving in and out of the channels, logging in to different chat rooms. Ayman and I had two computers running two different channels watching them as the same time!!. Our Hyper-V server restarted twice for 10 minutes before each of our sessions. We had to move quickly and found a blank spot where we rescheduled Ayman’s session. I was going live without the demos but that was saved as the server went live again

The feedback and buzz around SPSEMEA in the SharePoint community is amazing. I am not sure Microsoft would have done it better. This was definitely a job well done.

I had to stop and think for a while, what does this really mean? I had a big smile on my face not only because I attended the event but also was able to participate and it made me proud. I considered the power and momentum of the community. What can the community really do? What is it capable of? The SharePoint community is not only getting bigger but also more mature, responsive and agile. Everybody is communicating together. Everybody is sharing their knowledge. This definitely raises the bar for the rest of the SharePoint events, online or offline. I think this should be a continuing event, for example every quarter. I will definitely attend.

I just wonder, what’s after SPSEMEA? How will the rest of the events be? How will the community react?

Special thanks goes to Mark Miller, the moderators, the rest of the SharePoint Saturday team and the sponsors for settings up such an event.

Guest Author: Mohamed Yehia

Mohamed is a Technical Architect  working in the development of enterprise solutions using Microsoft SharePoint technologies.  As a co-founder of SharePoint4Arabs.com and Egypt SharePoint User Group lead efforts, Mohamed dedicates his time to share his expertise with the community.

Stay tuned to his blog (www.mohamedyehia.net) and on Twitter @mohdyehia