SharePoint fest touts collaboration.

• Author: Peterson, Eric
• Position: TECHNOLOGY

THE SECOND ANNUAL SHAREPOINT FEST DENVER at the Colorado Convention Center in May attracted about 500 attendees, 30 exhibitors and a who's who of Microsoft SharePoint gurus from all over the country.

Released last year, SharePoint 2010 is the latest iteration of Microsoft's collaborative enterprise content-management software, and it was the buzz of the conference a year after its debut. More specifically, the hottest topics were the expansion of the SharePoint feature set and issues relating to its implementation and integration.

"Now it's not, 'Should we do SharePoint?' - it's 'How are we going to do it?'" said David Wilhelm, the event's organizer. "The title level of the attendees has increased drastically from last year. You can see the buy-in for the product."

Describing SharePoint 2010 as a "huge, robust, platform," Wilhelm added, "This is no longer just a replacement for a file server. It's so much more."

Echoing Wilhelm was Ira Fuchs, a SharePoint technical specialist with Microsoft and author of the book "Enterprise Application Development in SharePoint 2010." "The biggest trend is using SharePoint. as an application-development, platform," he said. "You can write applications without code."

Fuchs said applications developed in SharePoint are easier to integrate, modify...