Alpesh Nakar's Blog » Announcement

SharePoint Book Giveaway #1

Alpesh — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 14:00:00 +0000

Hey All!

Back in June I kind of re-launched this blog and had promised to giveaway a book back then! Duh! Never happened… no excuses…. I just could not do it….

So here I am again

I am going to be giving away a book by way of draw on September 15 2010. This will be a SharePoint 2010 book for sure! All I ask of you to make it easier for me to draw your name is sign up for the newsletter here – that’s it!

Leaving your name in comments will not suffice or qualify you. If it fancies you, you can join us on the facebook as well . That’s optional and again does not qualify you for the draw

So sign up and don’t worry about spam. I hate spam and won’t let you down.

Look forward to seeing your name in there At present 150 subscribers are already in… so you do have competition since these post will be emailed to the already loyal subscribers who don’t have to do anything for now…

Important Clause: If Amazon cannot deliver the book to your country, you will automatically not qualify, since I will be shipping this book direct from Amazon. Sorry!

Good luck and let the games begin…

SharePoint Book Giveaway #1 was published on Alpesh Nakar's Blog

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Social Media Fallout

Alpesh — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 02:42:54 +0000

Hola! I seemed to have disappeared! Well, to be honest I am very active on the Social Network (Twitter, Facebook) interacting with friends and followers and sharing links and resources. However, I have come to realize that not everyone is on Twitter just yet, similar to not everyone subscribe to/read RSS Feeds just like people were not into email newsletters or rather emails few years ago.

So, I have decided to make a come back with blogging, because I enjoy sharing my resources and learning’s right here on this blog.

To kick off the re-launch, I will be posting my links from twitter and other feeds that I come across – which just fly by in twitter and the retention ratio is next to zero as far as I am concerned. Plus, you may be on twitter but not all the time… no one can be. So it’s back to the basics.

In addition to my links posting, I am currently working on a plan to post few series in the coming months, plus post some slide decks and demo’s from my speaking engagements at SharePoint Saturday India and SharePoint Saturday Brisbane.

So to sign off for now and a big thank you for subscription to rss feeds and your support. I would like to ask you to sign up for the email newsletter, because in the coming months, I do plan to send out exclusives via newsletters.

Stay tuned and sign up for the newsletter, because next month (July 2010) I will be picking up a random winner to win a SharePoint Book. Since you are already reading this, you know it – sign up now for the email newsletter. I will select the winner on July 31, 2010. Next week I will email the subscribers on which book it is going to be!

Social Media Fallout was published on Alpesh Nakar's Blog

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Bangalore SharePoint Ignite

Alpesh — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 15:00:00 +0000

At the time of writing this post day 4 of Bangalore Ignite had concluded and I had finished writing some PowerShell posts. These will go live in the days to come, when I will be on holidays with my family.

Earlier this week I had indicated on twitter, that Ignite training is not under NDA and it was great to share the information with everyone. Having said that I started taking notes and some intermittent tweets went out, however there was an information overload (for good) that I ended up with shorthand notes that I only can understand! I am hoping that I will remember these when I start compiling them and publish them early next year (given that this is the last month of the year and I am going to be on holidays).

I wasn’t planning on writing any of these PowerShell posts until next year, however Todd Klindt’s upgrade session really got me working on PowerShell scripts and since then I have been using some simple PowerShell scripts to do what you would normally do using stsadm or gui.

What we should note is that there are some tasks that you simply cannot do using Central Admin gui and you need to use PowerShell scripts to get them done. This will be obvious when I start publishing my notes from ignite.

If you are not familiar with PowerShell, now is the time to get started. SharePoint 2010 ships with an Administrator SharePoint 2010 Management Shell. From this shell you can do all the cool stuff pertaining to SharePoint!

I have extracted SharePoint cmdlets into an excel file for quick reference. Link at the bottom of the post.

I am going to be very honest, I have never worked in PowerShell and I strongly believe that now is the time to get started! So join me in the learning … I hope that you will benefit from the short posts that will be published in days to come. If you are a PowerShell expert and if you have suggestions for me, I am all ears!

Excel File for SharePoint PowerShell

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Safe Travels, God Bless.

Bangalore SharePoint Ignite was published on Alpesh Nakar's Blog

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SharePoint Conference 2009: Recap

Alpesh — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 10:49:13 +0000

Wow! What a conference it has been. I am was at Las Vegas airport, returning back to Brisbane from Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2009, when I started writing this post. It has taken me a while to get it done.

It has been a great conference with around 8000 people at the conference from over 43 countries! The main focus of this conference was the next version of SharePoint – 2010. It was finally showcased with the Beta2 build at the keynote and subsequent sessions. This post marks the beginning of a series of recap posts of my time at the conference, which far by was the best one I have attended till date.

I did intend to write this as days went by during the conference, but the evening events and networking with other SharePoint geeks took precedence. This series, although, quite late, means a lot to mean, personally, since I will relive the experience again whilst writing. It is going to be a long one, but I want to put down my experience in black and white, as it means a lot to me having self funded this complete trip! Read on … it gets personal …

Logistics

I am very committed to SharePoint (ask my family) and this was going to be my chance to reach out and meet fellow SharePoint Nation citizens, with whom I have been communicating in SharePoint space and only avatars to go by.

So, I bit the bullet, postponed my Lasik Eye Surgery trading it for SharePoint Conference 2009 pass and the works to be in Las Vegas.

Let me tell you, it was more then worth my Lasik Eye Surgery!

I woke up at 0300 hours on Oct 18 2009 (Australian Eastern Standard Time), to catch the 0700 hours flight to Sydney from Brisbane Domestic Terminal. I could hardly sleep that night! Excitement or the fear of missing my flight – don’t know. Your guess is as good as mine on that! Last minute packing of my gear for the conference included the following

Business Cards
Laptop with travel adaptor
iPhone
Zune
Windows Mobile
USB extensions
Nikon D-40 SLR
Passport

At 0400 hours I called for the cab, expecting that due to shift change of the cabbies at that hour on Sunday A.M, there will be some waiting for me. That was not to be. The cab arrived in 5 minutes! Cool! I was on my way to the airport!

Bags checked in, pulled up for (random) security check – nothing new there. Happens all the time! On board Virgin Blue flight, all I did was sleep with Zune music overriding any other news, announcements and the usual chatter you would expect to here on the flights! Safe landings in Sydney, transfer to International Terminal, bags checked in again and then nothing to do as such for next 5 hours other then have lunch and wait to board the flight to Los Angeles. Fast forward 5 hours … now on board the United Airlines flight to Los Angles. I knew lunch would not be edible and how right I was! Why did I even bother disturbing my own slumber! Any ways, it was a long flight and I didn’t sleep well. Again I suppose this was more so the excitement to get to the conference, then all the noise around me.

Day 0

Safe landings in Los Angeles, but the queue at the immigration counters was devastating, especially after 14 hours non-stop flight. I was out of immigration in under an hour! Since this was the first port of entry into United States, I (and other pax) had to collect our bags, go through Customs and then hand over our bags to United Airlines again. All done and dusted, back in queue for security check. Thankfully I did not have to go through the hassles of terminal transfers here, unlike Sydney. Queue at security check point was no consolation though, took me an hour to get past and make my way to the boarding gate. All done and on board the flight to Las Vegas. I did manage to sleep all the way through to Las Vegas, no surprises there!

(iPhone Photo)

At Las Vegas airport, they had free Wi-Fi (thank you Google), that was so much appreciated since I could call up my family using Skype whilst waiting for fellow SharePoint Tweeps – Mark Rackley (@mrackley), Isaac Stith (@MrIsaac) and Kanwal Khipple (@sharepointbuzz) This was the start of SharePoint Conference for me! Meeting fellow SharePoint Tweeps for the first time in person.

The four of us headed to the car rentals, where Mark Rackley hired a car and then I suggested that we do the Conference registration first before the hotel check-in. It so happens that we were wise in doing so, because at 5:30 PM when we reached the conference venue, it was shockers! I have never seen such a long queue for registration at any event!

See for your self!

(iPhone Photo)

(Nikon D-40)

We met @jthake and few other Aussies – @mrhodes, Peter Sullivan, James Milne. I also met Joel Oleson at the registration desk. Once the meet and greet was done, we headed to the Welcome Reception where we met quite a few people.

We exited the welcome reception to go to #ShareIndian – which was jointly organised by @meetdux, myself and @eusp. Dinner was ok at Origin India, but the get together with fellow SharePoint tweeps (friends on Twitter) that mattered. I met Michael Noel(@michaeltnoel), Joel Oleson(@joeloleson), Mike Watson(@mikewat), Nick Hadlee(@nickhadlee), MO(@muhanado), Hersh Ajgaonkar, Kanwal Khipple, Meet Dux, Mike Herrity and few others. In all we were about
50, which in my opinion is a great number!

After dinner it was time to go back and catch up on some sleep!

Jet Lag? What’s that!

I don’t travel a lot so not sure if this will suit everyone or not; but I tune my mind that controls the body that it’s time to sleep Damn that jet lag! As soon as the flight takes off, I change the time on my wrist watch and I am very excited to get to the destination and visualize what it must be like there at that time! That’s just me and it helps since I don’t sleep before my flights or if it’s early morning flight, I make sure I am exhausted by the time I am seated! Eat well before the flight (since being a vegetarian, food is always an issue when not at home) and then have a wine and zzzz. Ensures that when I have reached my destination, I am ready

That’s my theory.

In days to follow, I will continue my SharePoint Conference experience!

SharePoint Conference 2009: Recap was published on Alpesh Nakar's Blog

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Blog Posting Hiccups

Alpesh — Wed, 27 May 2009 23:14:44 +0000

Last night I could not post on this blog using Windows Live Writer. Now trying to post using ScribeFire.

Initially I could not post using ScribeFire either. So I did the same hack to .htaccess file as blogged earlier.

I can now post using ScribeFire. Tonight will check if WLW works

Once this issue is sorted, I will start posting Office 2010 Technical Preview posts. Stay tuned.

Blog Posting Hiccups was published on Alpesh Nakar's Blog

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Blog Hiccups!

Alpesh — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 11:59:44 +0000

If you experienced issues viewing this blog today, I did too! Infact, I could not access my admin pages!

Error in Firefox

Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete

Error in IE7

Site timed out

What happened overnight? It was working well until last night! Duh!

Resolution

Download .htaccess file
Removed this extra code,
Removed

Options +FollowSymlinks
Options +Indexes
Options +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch

All good now!

Blog Hiccups! was published on Alpesh Nakar's Blog

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What a Start!

Alpesh — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 13:11:36 +0000

I know it’s been more then a month to the year 2008, but I just have to wish you all Happy New Year of 2008.

I have been away for more then 6 weeks now. First 5 weeks of my absence – blame it on US! Literally! I was away on holidays to the US of A and I enjoyed every bit of it! I even spoke to a long time supporter of this blog, Prashanth Palakollu! We could not meet, but atleast we spoke!

I resumed work in the last week of January and what a start! I got a promotion and am now a team leader – developing what could be Australia’s biggest SharePoint Portal project. I can’t give you any details at this stage, but to be honest – I could turn on a live web cast on all day for all SharePoint geeks and enthusiasts to tune in to our daily head banging, battering and conversations as we hum along… It is almost impossible to blog every bit of information or development – which is kind of super exciting.

My long due post on unattended installation of MOSS is still pending in draft. I will try to get it out of door this weekend. I am making some notes as our development progresses. Stay signed on and most importantly, convert your RSS subscription to email subscription. This year, I am going to run lots of contests for email subscribers. Stay tuned for details coming this weekend.

What a Start! was published on Alpesh Nakar's Blog

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