If you want to attend the SharePoint Connect conference this November in Amsterdam, there are just ten days left to qualify for the Early Bird discount.

This year’s SharePoint Connect has a strong focus on making use of the cloud and how to best use the social features in SharePoint. Chris Johnson, Group Product Manager on the Office 365 team at Microsoft, is opening the conference with a keynote on the road to Office 365 and the future of cloud development. It’s obvious that the cloud will increasingly be the natural home of SharePoint systems, but it will be interesting to hear what Johnson has to say about the Microsoft view of how cloud development is going to pan out with SharePoint going forward. 

Day two’s keynote is from SharePoint MVP and evangelist Christian Buckley, on SharePoint Social Integration: Good, Better, Best. Buckley says that while everyone claims to have the inside track on the social movement, few people really understand how social will improve team collaboration in a meaningful and measurable way. He says there are five primary business benefits to using the social features in SharePoint, and they can help build context, let users share data and knowledge, identify expertise, extend search, and improve collaboration.

There are some useful sounding developer sessions ranging from how to develop Windows Phone Apps for SharePoint, a deep dive into Search Queries, and building your own REST Service with WebAPI 2.

As pointed out in this short promo video by Seb Matthews, who is presenting sessions on PowerShall and Azure at this year's event, SharePoint Connect has been voted best European SharePoint conference, and is also rated as the third best worldwide. The voters said one reason they placed it so highly is the networking opportunities with other delegates and speakers during sessions and throughout the conference.  The popular SharePint evening after the first day’s sessions will again provide an opportunity to socialize with other SharePoint enthusiasts. 

The conference will be held at the Meervaart Theatre in Amsterdam on November 18th & 19th.   
Prices for the two-day conference include all refreshments and lunches plus a SharePoint social evening. The price until August 31st taking advantage of the Early Bird discount of €100 is €499 (excl. VAT), after which it rises to €599 (excl. VAT). You can also take advantage of the exclusive I Programmer code TN322  to get a further 10% saving.

For the full SharePoint Connect agenda and booking details visit the conference website.

Beginning SharePoint 2013 Development (book review)

Microsoft SharePoint 2013 Developer Reference (book review)