Blog

Author Archive


Mayor of Techville 2011

Posted by: bforeman  /  Tags:

March Madness is the time of year when final buzzers never seem to be heard fast enough; when there is always a Cinderella story; the excitement of winners and disappointment of losers can be heard around the world; and here at the Nashville Technology Council, the 2011 Techville Mayor is revealed.

The 2011 NCAA men’s tournament has been so unpredictable, ESPN has only 2 people of the 5.9 million plus with the correct Final Four teams. Who would have ever thought that 8-seed Butler, 11-seed Virginia Commonwealth, 3-seed Connecticut, and 4-seed Kentucky would be in the Final Four? Well, this blogger believed in her Big Blue team meeting UConn and has KY cutting down the nets in Houston. As far as Techville is concerned, even though Chris Hohl does not have KY as the Champion, right now he is definitely leading the Mayor race.

So, whether your team is staying on the bus to Houston or has packed up and gone home – be sure to return here next Tuesday as the 2011 Techville Mayor will be revealed.

Is your company on the map? Click here to register.

Say It So They Will Listen

Posted by: bforeman  /  Tags:

Schatzie Brunner, keynote speaker, columnist, and coach expertly combines a wealth of warmth, humor, tools, and tips to help anyone Say It So they Listen. For nearly a decade she honed and tested her skills at CNN in Atlanta where she produced programming, booked and interviewed celebrities, wrote and anchored daily news. Schatzie brings her in-demand, do-or-die communication success system to the front lines of today’s businesses. Among the global clients she has served are: Siemens, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, Fireman’s Fund Insurance, CHUBB Insurance, Dollar General Corporation, Southern Company, GE, and Georgia Power.

This 2-day seminar consists of a tutorial following “The Mental Map” concept, video taping at the beginning of the seminar and again at the end to critique and evalute, and practice techniques. Along with the detailed curriculum, the participant will receive Schatzie’s book, “Say It So They Listen,” the “Mental Map,” and a DVD with the presentations.

Click here to register

Applying SharePoint 2007

Posted by: bforeman

Applying SharePoint 2007 – MOSS Core Features (4-Day)

Register Here

The goal of this 4 day, instructor-led training course is to provide students with the knowledge and skills necessary to begin planning and designing portals and collaboration sites using Microsoft SharePoint 2007.

The course will focus on the core features and functionality included in SharePoint 2007, how to use them, and how to plan and design for them.

This course is the first course in a two part series. This course covers the core features that are common to both Windows SharePoint Services v3 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007. The second course in the series, Applying SharePoint 2007 – MOSS Advanced Features, covers the additional features that MOSS 2007 brings to SharePoint 2007 deployments.

Student learning will be facilitated through a combination of instructor presentations and hands-on lab exercises. A sample company will be used in the labs to teach students how to apply SharePoint 2007 from concept to implementation in a typical environment.

Audience

This course is intended for:

  • Enterprise Planners and Teams
  • Portal and Site Designers
  • Webmasters
  • Project Managers
  • Application Designers
  • Portal and Site Development Teams
  • Systems Analysts
  • Power Users
  • Help-desk and End-User Support Professionals
  • Trainers
  • IT Pros who are interested in out-of-the-box functionality and features

The typical environments that these professionals work in are medium to large organizations that have multiple locations, significant document management requirements, and the need to enable functional teams to easily and effectively collaborate.

More Information

SharePoint 2010 Skills

Posted by: bforeman

SharePoint 2010 Skills Upgrade and Planning (4-Day)

Register Here

Introduction

You are an early adopter.  You’ve implemented Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007) and love how it has changed the way the people in your organization collaborate and share information. You’ve witnessed the incredible gains in productivity as employees have utilized the features in SharePoint to streamline their day-to-day tasks.  Now, you and your organization are ready to upgrade your SharePoint skills to the next level, upgrade you SharePoint server farm and get started planning for deploying Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 throughout your organization.

With the barrage of new features and enhanced productivity tools in the new SharePoint 2010, there are compelling reasons to upgrade your current installation, and a host of advantages to drive enthusiastic company-wide adoption.  We want to help you prepare to accomplish both.

This four-day course is designed to provide the hands-on experience that you need to upgrade SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint 2010 and develop a strategy for deploying it in your organization. 

It’s impossible to effectively participate in a project to plan your company’s SharePoint 2010 upgrade and adoption without understanding what your users can do with it and how they do it.  So, you’ll begin the class by working in the roles of both End User and Power User/No-code Application Developer to learn what’s new for each of them from a technical perspective. 

Then you’ll work as a Server Administrator to learn how to properly install and configure SharePoint 2010. Finally you’ll learn about the improvements in SharePoint 2010 server farm administration and some of the most important new SharePoint 2010 service applications that you must configure and manage.

For a detailed list of the topics covered in the course, review the detailed course outline below. 

Audience

This course is intended for:

  • IT Professionals (Administrators, Developers, Managers, etc.)
  • non-IT Professionals who will be participating in SharePoint 2010 Planning and Deployment project(s) in their organization.
At Course Completion

After completing this course, students will be able to:

  • Understand the concepts and terminologies that are unique to SharePoint 2010
  • Install and configure SharePoint 2010
  • Upgrade existing SharePoint 2007 sites to SharePoint 2010 sites
  • Understand the changes to the end-user’s day-to-day experience after upgrading to SharePoint 2010
  • Understand the benefits and uses of many of the new features in SharePoint 2010


Prerequisites

The skill level and experience that is required to take this course are as follows:

  • Must have at least 6 months experience with MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0
  • Must have intermediate to advanced skill with MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0


Course Materials and Lab Environment


Students will receive a comprehensive course manual, which will include all presentation materials and lab exercises. The lab exercises are step-by-step and fully documented in the student workbook. To view sample modules of our courseware click here.

Each student will be given access to their own SharePoint 2007 environment on the classroom hardware. In essence, students will be attending a class where a fully functional SharePoint 2007 environment has been set up for their use in learning the product. No pre-installation of SharePoint 2007 software is required for this class.

Each student will need to bring a qualifying laptop to the class. Click here to verify that your laptop meets the minimum requirements.

More Information


Mission: Automation

Posted by: bforeman

Mission:  Automation – SharePoint Workflow and InfoPath

Register Here

The goal of this 4 day, instructor-led InfoPath training course is to provide students with the knowledge and skills necessary to take advantage of InfoPath, Forms Server, and Workflows in SharePoint Designer 2007 for the purpose of automating business processes.  In addition, e-mail enabled lists and the Data View web part will be explored, along with other technologies related to process automation.

Student learning will be facilitated through a combination of instructor presentations and hands-on lab exercises.  A sample company will be used in the labs to teach students how to integrate these technologies to automate business processes.

Audience

This InfoPath training course teaches the out-of-the-box functionality and is not intended for those who are primarily interested in using Visual Studio and .NET development to create workflow solutions in SharePoint.  The course is intended for:

  • Information Workers who want to learn how to use SharePoint to automate common business processes
  • Power Users
  • Enterprise Planners and Teams
  • Webmasters
  • Application Designers
  • Systems Analysts
  • Help-desk and end-user support professionals
  • Trainers
  • IT Pros and Developers who are primarily interested in out-of-the-box functionality and features (note: this course does not teach workflow development using Visual Studio and .NET)

The typical environments that these professionals work in are medium–to-large organizations that desire to use MOSS Enterprise Edition to improve and automate business processes.

Companies that will only be using WSS or MOSS Standard Edition will benefit from much of the course, but some functionality (Forms Server and the built-in MOSS Enterprise workflows) are only available in MOSS Enterprise Edition.


At Course Completion

After completing this course, students will be able to:

  • Use InfoPath 2007 to create business forms.
  • Publish InfoPath forms to a SharePoint Server with Forms Server.
  • Write complex workflows using SharePoint Designer 2007.
  • Include external data in InfoPath forms.
  • Convert existing Word and Excel forms to InfoPath forms.
  • Work with Digital Signatures.
  • Work with e-mail enabled InfoPath forms.
  • Configure and work with e-mail enabled SharePoint libraries.
  • Submit InfoPath data to an external database for reporting.
  • Create InfoPath forms for mobile devices.
Prerequisites

Ideally, students will have previously completed the Applying SharePoint 2007 – MOSS Core Features course or the SharePoint 2007 Jumpstart.  These students will be well-prepared for this class.

Students who cannot attend Applying SharePoint 2007 – MOSS Core Features or SharePoint 2007 Jumpstart first, at a minimum should already be familiar with creating sites and workspaces, creating libraries and lists, working in document libraries, establishing security, editing pages, working with web parts, and working with content types and site columns.  It is critical that students have a solid foundational knowledge of SharePoint 2007 before attending this course.

Course Materials and Lab Environment


Students will receive a comprehensive course manual, which will include all presentation materials and lab exercises. The lab exercises are step-by-step and fully documented in the student workbook. To view sample modules of our courseware click here.

Each student will be given access to their own SharePoint 2007 environment on the classroom hardware. In essence, students will be attending a class where a fully functional SharePoint 2007 environment has been set up for their use in learning the product. No pre-installation of SharePoint 2007 software is required for this class.

Each student will need to bring a qualifying laptop to the class. Click here to verify that your laptop meets the minimum requirements.

More Information

PMI Project Management One

Posted by: bforeman

PMI Project Management One: Essential Principles and Tools (Three Days — 24 PDU)

Register Here

A wonderful experience…gives me a much deeper insight into Project Management and responsibilities of a Project Manager.’ Seminar Evaluation

Teaches the principles, methods, tools and terminology of project management, using the Project Management Institute Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide) as a benchmark that can be adapted and applied as needed. Students bring in a current or upcoming project and, led by a senior instructor who has extensive experience in the field, students apply PMI principles and tools that position their project for success. This is not a break from work. It is working on an active project with a ‘learn by doing’ approach.

No prior experience required.

Geared to project managers, technical resources, management personnel, and business professionals who want to become grounded in the professional standards of project management. Effective as an introduction or a high-impact refresher

Topics include:The Outset Group – A Registered Education Provider (Global) with the Project Management Institute

Orientation and Overview
+ Key Principles and Terminology of Project Management
+ Accountability in the Project Context
+ Quality in the Project Context

Project Initiation
+ Establishing Clear Goals and Success Criteria
+ Creating a Project Charter
+ Identifying Stakeholders
+ The Project Life Cycle
+ Phase Management
+ Transition Planning

Project Planning
+ How to Get Organized as a Project
+ Establishing Baselines for Scope, Cost, and Schedule
+ Scope Definition and Management
+ Scope Statement
+ The Work Breakdown Structure
+ Activity Definition
+ Activity Sequencing
+ Duration Estimates
+ Creating and Maintaining a Master Project Schedule
+ Cost Estimates
+ Procurement Planning
+ Communication Planning
+ Risk Planning
+ Documenting Roles and Accountability in a Responsibility Assignment Matrix
+ Team-Building

Project Execution and Control
+ Four-Point Status Report
+ Baselines and Variance Analysis
+ Change Control
+ Phase-end Review
+ Contract Administration

Project Closing and Transition
+ Acceptance and Sign Off
+ Transitioning a project
+ Lessons learned
+ Creating historical records and archives


’Extremely informative. Increased my tools and skills…Real-life issues…love the dialogue, communication, role play’ Seminar Evaluation

’I appreciated the way we were brought into the discussions using real projects as examples’ Seminar Evaluation

Extreme Makeover SharePoint 2007 Edition

Posted by: bforeman

Extreme Makeover SharePoint 2007 Edition – Branding and Customization (3-Day)

Register Here

The goal of this 3 day, instructor-led training course is to provide students with the knowledge and skills necessary to complete branding projects and make functional customizations to Windows SharePoint Services v3 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.

The course will focus on branding SharePoint sites and portals. You will also learn how to create custom themes, custom site templates and custom site definitions. You will learn how to use XSLT to customize the search results and the results returned by the content query web part.

Student learning will be facilitated through a combination of instructor presentations and hands-on lab exercises. A sample company will be used in the labs to teach students how to apply SharePoint 2007 branding from concept to implementation in a typical environment

Audience

This InfoPath training course teaches the out-of-the-box functionality and is not intended for those who are primarily interested in using Visual Studio and .NET development to create workflow solutions in SharePoint.  The course is intended for:

  • Information Workers who want to learn how to use SharePoint to automate common business processes
  • Power Users
  • Enterprise Planners and Teams
  • Webmasters
  • Application Designers
  • Systems Analysts
  • Help-desk and end-user support professionals
  • Trainers
  • IT Pros and Developers who are primarily interested in out-of-the-box functionality and features (note: this course does not teach workflow development using Visual Studio and .NET)

The typical environments that these professionals work in are medium–to-large organizations that desire to use MOSS Enterprise Edition to improve and automate business processes.

Companies that will only be using WSS or MOSS Standard Edition will benefit from much of the course, but some functionality (Forms Server and the built-in MOSS Enterprise workflows) are only available in MOSS Enterprise Edition.

 At Course Completion

After completing this course, students will be able to:

  • Use InfoPath 2007 to create business forms.
  • Publish InfoPath forms to a SharePoint Server with Forms Server.
  • Write complex workflows using SharePoint Designer 2007.
  • Include external data in InfoPath forms.
  • Convert existing Word and Excel forms to InfoPath forms.
  • Work with Digital Signatures.
  • Work with e-mail enabled InfoPath forms.
  • Configure and work with e-mail enabled SharePoint libraries.
  • Submit InfoPath data to an external database for reporting.
  • Create InfoPath forms for mobile devices.
Prerequisites

Ideally, students will have previously completed the Applying SharePoint 2007 – MOSS Core Features course or the SharePoint 2007 Jumpstart.  These students will be well-prepared for this class.

Students who cannot attend Applying SharePoint 2007 – MOSS Core Features or SharePoint 2007 Jumpstart first, at a minimum should already be familiar with creating sites and workspaces, creating libraries and lists, working in document libraries, establishing security, editing pages, working with web parts, and working with content types and site columns.  It is critical that students have a solid foundational knowledge of SharePoint 2007 before attending this course.

Course Materials and Lab Environment

Students will receive a comprehensive course manual, which will include all presentation materials and lab exercises. The lab exercises are step-by-step and fully documented in the student workbook. To view sample modules of our courseware click here.

Each student will be given access to their own SharePoint 2007 environment on the classroom hardware. In essence, students will be attending a class where a fully functional SharePoint 2007 environment has been set up for their use in learning the product. No pre-installation of SharePoint 2007 software is required for this class.

Each student will need to bring a qualifying laptop to the class. Click here to verify that your laptop meets the minimum requirements.

Technology Nashville – Friday, May 21st

Posted by: bforeman

Nashville Technology Blog (5/20/10)

One more day until Technology Nashville!  Over the past couple of days, we have added even more speakers, including Mike McWherter, Tennessee Gubernatorial candidate.  The luncheon keynote is Music Mash-Up – Artists, Writers, Media & Digital discussing new opportunities for growth in Nashville’s Music Business, which will include Cory Gierman, Founder of MusizMafia; Mark Montgomery, Entrepreneur, Founder Echo Music; and David Mead, Professional Writer, Recording Artist, and Music Journalist.  Along with the panelists and break-out sessions, this conference will definitely celebrate the thriving technology industry in Tennessee.  If you have not yet registered, tickets can be purchased at the door of the Belmont Curb Center.  Breakfast will be available beginning at 7:00 am and the welcome/announcements at 7:50 am.  We hope to see you all there!

Detailed Agenda

Sponsors

Technology Nashville

Posted by: bforeman

Nashville Technology Blog (5/18/10)

The flood may have postponed the conference, but it could not shut us down.  Friday, May 21st, Technology Nashville will be held at the Belmont Curb Center in Nashville.  There will be keynote speakers, CEO and Higher Education panels, break-out sessions, and exhibitors.  We will not only hear from the State of Tennessee CIO, Mark Bengel, but also US Congressman and Gubernatorial candidate, Zach Wamp.  While many will be teeing off at the Vanderbilt Legends Club, the remaining attendees will board a party bus destined for a reception at Cha Chas.  Technology Nashville is definitely an event that you must not miss.

Detailed Agenda

Registration

Sponsors

Recent Council’s Golf Outing

Posted by: bforeman

Fore!

The Nashville Technology Council took over Legends Golf Course on Thursday for a great day of golf, connecting, and good times. It was an enjoyable day with the rain departing in the morning. The recent rains left the greens very receptive. The scores were slightly higher than the Spring scores.

The winning teams were as follow:

1st Place (56)
David Wesch
Jason Thompson
Dewyne Collier
Phillip Hammer

2nd Place (57)
Dennis Waggoner
Jim Powlus
Pat Blair
Cary Sutinis

3rd Place (58)
Scott Erby
Drew Fassett
Paul Kleine-Kracht
Charlie Turri

Long Drive was won by Peyton Gibbs and Closest to the Pin was Brandon Guy. Thanks to everyone who played.

We would like to thank our sponsors for their generous support.

Emids Platinum Sponsor

Ciber Gold Sponsor

Brandon Technology
Brooksource
C3 Consulting
Comframe
KPMG
Nexus Group
Otterbase
Peak 10
Vaco Technology
Walick-Kemp
XO Communications
Zycron

Page 1 of 212