Kudos to Gary Blatt, and his staff, of the SharePoint User Group of Washington DC. He put on a great two-day SharePoint conference (Second Annual Regional SharePoint Conference). It was attended by over 180 practitioners, developers, managers, designers, implementers, speakers, and sponsors. The sponsor/vendor attendance was quite impressive.

 

I particularly enjoyed the presentations by (in no particular order) Sahil Malik, Melvin Brown and Kevin Hans, Vanessa Williams, Ed Hild, and Greg Galipeau. And, of course, Gary. He's the only speaker that did not need a microphone.

 

Besides the technical presentations, I was particularly interested in what speakers as Melvin Brown, the KSN Program Manager at FAA, which received Excellence.Gov awards for demonstrating excellence in leveraging technology to enhance collaboration.

 

Many SharePoint implementers and practioners commented on the fact that SharePoint is much more than a technology, it is an enabler for collaboration. Several tips were suggested for getting users to participate, some quite ingenious, such as:

• Not allowing users to attach documents to emails
• Not allowing users to use email (radical)
• Turning off the corporate shared drive

 

The conference was Not-For-Profit, and Gary used the proceeds to donate a sizeable check to the Children's Miracle Network! Good job Gary.

 

Guess what? Software jobs are still very much in demand in the Washington DC. Microsoft SharePoint 2007 MOSS Developers and Architects are hot in the DC area. Recruiters and high-tech companies cannot find enough of them. This information was recently announced and discussed by top tech company representatives and recruiters at the SUGDC SharePoint conference (June 27-28).

So, if you are a top flight developer for SharePoint, what should you be getting for a salary in the DC area? Of course, many will tell you that you should get what ever the market will bare based on your skills - but that does not give most people a framework to base their compensation request on. If you are into SharePoint development and implementation, then now is your time and you should seize the moment.

But be aware that most companies have managers and administrators that not only do not have a clue as to what it takes to be a software architect or sharepoint developer, but they also do not have the slightest clue what they should be paying someone with the skills they typically ask their recruiters to find and hire.

So, let me try in my way to educate those that are looking and those that are hiring.

First, forget the average salaries hiring managers. As I said, these skills are hot. If managers are offering average compensation, my advice is to the qualified job seeker is to walk away - because they are either cheap bastards, or not smart enough to know that there is a tremendous shortage of skilled SharePoint developers, and either way you don't want to work for them.

Anyone getting hired based on or below the average salaries for 2007 is one of the following:

• Not aware of what their skills are worth.
• Not really skilled in the area of MOSS SharePoint development but willing to get their foot in the door based on some skill set which is either not development or not SharePoint development. Good luck.

Now - if you can justify your skill set, then you should be getting the best salary you can because companies are going begging for software developers. And, another interesting trend is that this demand is not (nor cannot) be satisfied by off-shore development companies. To do the best job of developing and implementing SharePoint, companies need their developers on site and/or in town. So, this demand cannot be satisfied by outsourcing. That is another good trend for local developers.

I based the below salaries using the indeed.com's salary search for the Reston, Washington DC, and Vienna areas (enter SharePoint Moss and a Zipcode to find a range). In addition, I have projected what jobs with clearances should go for based on an increase in compensation for the clearance type (5% for Secret, and 20% for TS) using relationships and information from ClearanceJobs.com's white paper on salaries.

 

Job Position and Projected Salaries

Experienced SharePoint MOSS 2007 Architect with .NET Framework 3.5 (should be $10k more than base developer):	$145,000.00
Experienced SharePoint 2007 Developer with 2 years SharePoint development and 5 years or more of .Net 2.0 Development:	$135,000.00
Experienced SharePoint Developer with SECRET Clearance (worth 5% more than base):	$142,000.00
Experienced SharePoint Developer with TOP SECRET Clearance (20% over base):	$162,000.00

 

SUGDC Summer Regional SharePoint Conference will be held on June 27-28 (Friday-Saturday) in Dulles Virginia at the Dulles Airport Holiday Inn.

If the atmosphere was the like a football field, then carbon dioxide would only be an inch, and man's contribution would measure the size of a dime standing on edge. Still scared?

We have Chris Hammond coming to talk with us at the Capital Area DotNetNuke User Group (http://www.capitaldug.org) meeting this coming Wednesday, May 21st. Chris is a core team member of the DotNetNuke development team.

This will be a great meeting for those interested in developing DotNetNuke Modules!

The meeting starts at 7pm at the ATT offices in Tysons Corner, in Vienna, Virginia.

 

Scientific method says that if your observations do not support your hypothesis, then your theory is probably wrong.

I need to have access to the Microsoft Office Interop files which are typically installed in the GAC. You cannot just reach in and copy these out like normal files, but look down at Matthew Cosier's entry on this site for a workable solution.

SharePoint Tip: Where to find the SharePoint Assemblies for development

Thanks to Kim at JHHC for suggesting that it could be done fairly easily. As ususal, she was right.

For those that are interested, I have a zip file that contains the presentation and project files from my SSIS tutorial presentation.

SSISPresent_NovaCodeCampSouthMar2008.zip (1.77 MB)

I was shocked....SHOCKED...to realize that an hour and 15 minutes is not enough time to cover this material. Seriously, a minimum of 2 hours is required to get a good understanding of the basics of SSIS. A good understanding of SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005 is recommended.

Learning Tree uses an entire week to cover the material, but the end result of their hands on training is that you walk out being able to practically apply SSIS immediately on the job.