So if you watch one web cast this year…it has to be the MVP Panel Discussion SharePoint Development recorded at TechEd in LA (#TeLA09). It included Rob Bogue (@RobBogue), Matthew McDermott (@MatthewMcD), Todd Bleeker (@ToddBleeker), Eric Shupps, Andrew Connell (@AndrewConnell), Todd Baginksi (@ToddBaginski), Maurice Prather and Scott Hillier. Some crazy pictures of the crew can be found on Rob’s blog ;-)

Productivity Tools

It was interesting hearing that a lot of them use different tools: VSeWSS (Rob Bogue), Eric Schupps (WSPBuilder), Andrew Connell (STSDev) and a lot admitted writing them from scratch so that it encourages learning the principles.

For more on comparisons on these productivity tools see wiki page.

Other tools

They also mentioned AC’s content type tool, SharePoint Manager 2007, SharePoint Designer (SPD). Interesting to see AC pitching SPD for prototyping stuff…bit disappointed they didn’t mention SPSource, as a way to make these prototypes reality. Oh well…maybe next year!

For more tools check out the Other SharePoint Dev Tools on @SPDevWiki.

Upgrading Artefacts and Updating Servers

Rob Bogue also talks briefly near the end on upgrading artefacts….hoping his presentation is put online to watch! Rob has been very prominent with the P&P Contoso stuff too.
Andrew also discussed about Site Definitions on upgrades and ghosted items.

Heroes

These guys are my heroes and cannot stress enough how much all SharePoint Devs new and old should watch this!

ASP.NET Developers and SharePoint

Based on discussions and post yesterday I have posted a new page on the wiki to start pitching pros and cons of SharePoint as a platform to be leveraged by ASP.NET developers.