For the past few months myself and a few other Local Developer Event Activists (hey, I like the sound of that title!) have been secretly working on some interesting new ideas.

Well, the proverbial cat is now out of the bag as we have opened up registration to the Sharepoint 1, 2, 3! series of events. These are a totally new concept in regional developer events. Inspired by the recent popularity of the many "Code Camp" events that have been popping up all over the east coast, we wondered "well, instead of a huge swathe of topics, how about we try delivering very tightly focused training events on hot but neglected subjects?". Well, Sharepoint is definately one of those HOT topics - just ask any recruiter these days, or surf over to Monster.com or ComputerJobs.com. EVERYONE wants to hire Sharepoint experts, but NOBODY is helping developers to learn those skills. Same thing goes for BizTalk, and various other hot technologies.

With these ideas in mind, myself, Matt Ranlett, Dan Attis, and Brendon Schwartz have teamed up and formed the Atlanta MS Professionals User Group. This "User Group" is unlike any other. We plan on providing high-quality training sessions to the community, with a 3-month focus on each technology. By concentrating on specific technology areas over several consecutive months, we feel that a superior level of learning and understanding can be accomplished. And this is how the Sharepoint 1, 2, 3! series came about.

So by now if you are still reading, you probably want to know what this is all about. You want details such as topic coverage, number of events and dates, target audiences, difficulty level, and cost. You might even be wondering how to go about reserving your spot...

• Topic Coverage: Sharepoint from a user's perspective, Installing configuring and deploying, basic portal concepts, site customization, enterprise integration, and webpart development.
• Number of Events: 3 Seminars (Level 100, 200, and 300), and 3 follow-up Hands-On Labs, spread over the course of three months.
• Target Audiences: Primarily web developers who are curious about the whole "sharepoint thing". But also administrators, end users, and IT managers might find value as well from the level 100 session.
• Difficulty Level: We are trying our best to make the difficulty level progressive - this is to encourage individual attendee's growth as the series progresses. The first session is Level 100, and is intended for technically-savvy people who are just getting their feet wet with Sharepoint. Level 200 builds upon the core concepts, and adds Customization and simple Webpart Development among other things. Level 300 goes deeper into complex Webparts, and touches on more advanced issues such as deployment and recovery.
• Cost: FREE! Totally, completely FREE!! We are doing this as an INVESTMENT into the local developer community, hoping to build up a stronger skillbase here.
• How to reserve a place: Please use on of the registration links on the event's website at http://www.sharepoint123.com. PLEASE do not sign up your entire development staff! We have limited space (especially for the HOLs), so be thoughtful of your peers and only register places for folks on your team who are truly interested in learning these skills.

Please refer to the event's website via any of the above hyperlinks for even more details about this fantastic series.

We are really excited to be providing this kind of event to the Atlanta developer community. This is something we had been talking about doing for a very long time - and now we have finally gotten off our tails and put it all together!