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The next three days, I’m attending the SharePoint Evolution Conference in London. After a very unpleasant check in at the Eurostar terminal in Brussels, I managed to get to the conference center safely. Some speakers and probably also some attendees did not make it here due to the volcano eruption in Iceland.

I’m looking forward to the various Information Worker sessions. If you want to know more, check http://www.sharepointevolutionconference.com/ or check Twitter: http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23spevo.

How do you follow the SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas if your boss didn’t want to pay your ticket?

• You watch the keynote from your desk on http://www.mssharepointconference.com.
• You follow the twitter stream. Hash tag: #SPC09.
• You watch the live stream of Endusersharepoint.com.

Today, I attended a seminar organised by BE-ODL about the use of a Learning Management System. Lots of interesting presentations and a good discussion. One of the returning topics was the contradiction between the upcoming usage of social learning tools (“Learning 2.0″) versus the formal aspect of a LMS (reporting, tracking…)

In my opinion, this will always remain a contradiction (that’s why one is called “informal” and the other “formal” ) but if you do not provide your learners the possibility to use the newer tools on your own network, then be prepared to find your company content open and freely available on YouTube, Twitter, Delicious, Google Docs and others… Learners will find a way.

I stumbled upon an interesting presentation … on SlideShare. And if you wander off to other similar presentations (is that so bad?), you will find even more…

For those who followed my SharePoint introduction session on the Microsoft SMB Roadshow, here are some links that will help you evaluate Microsoft Office SharePoint Server or Windows SharePoint Services:

• the Microsoft “Fabulous 40″ templates
• the Microsoft SharePoint Techcenter on Technet
• a comparison of the different versions of SharePoint
• a trial download of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server
• a planning guide for your first SharePoint site

It is an amazing experience to attend the SharePoint Best Practices Conference in San Diego. MVP speakers, a beautiful location, and very interesting content.

It’s impossible to summarize what I learned until now in a blog post, but these quotes will give you an idea of what’s happening:

• SharePoint is not about building software, it’s about building services.
• The most difficult thing about SharePoint is the people thing.
• Information that is hard to find, is hardly ever used.
• Vista is Microsoft’s gift to Apple.

To avoid that some people lose their MVP status, I will not tell anybody who made the last statement.  :-)