The Seattle conference looks like one of those “All You Can Eat” smorgasboards: you are going to get stuffed, there’s no way around it, so sit back and enjoy the gluttony. Here’s my list of preferred sessions to attend:

Buzz: Build End-User Excitement and Proficiency
Bob Sutton; Suzanne Ross; Ryan Gachet; Dave Page
Getting your end-users to understand and use Microsoft Office SharePoint Server can make or break your deployment effort. This session and lab gives you step-by-step tools to drive adoption within your company at each stage of deployment. See specific examples that you can use for your organization. E-mails, posters, templates, and training will make your deployment a success.

A Roll-Up of Fun & Lessons Learned Using the Content Query Web Part (CQWP)
Sean Squires
Exploiting and configuring the MOSS content query roll-up web part (CQWP) remains a challenging hurdle, especially with custom list data. The focus of this session is on how to effectively configure the out-of-box CQWP, how to leverage custom styles, and how to apply it to various content scenarios. Additionally, this session focuses on extensions our team and others have made to the CQWP to extend its application to other dynamic content scenarios.

SharePoint Content Integration and Migration Solutions: Without Programming
Harry Wong
This session is driven totally through real customer situations and demos of how integration, synchronization, and migration solutions between SharePoint and external systems can be achieved without programming or XML. In particular, we demonstrate the following situations: SharePoint – File Systems integration – SharePoint – LOB integration, complementary to BDC – SharePoint – SharePoint synchronization – Lotus Notes application migration to SharePoint and InfoPath – Public Folder migration to SharePoint

SharePoint Workflows Out-of-the Box
Thomas Rizzo
SharePoint 2007 provides many pre-built workflow solutions directly out-of-the-box. Learn what you can do with SharePoint and workflow, without being a developer. In this session, explore what options you have if you don’t like braces, brackets, and semicolons. MOSS includes workflows that may fit your needs and, even if they don’t, you might be able to create your own with SharePoint Designer.

SharePoint As a BI Platform
Peter Petesch
Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007 delivers a number of new capabilities for Business Intelligence including KPI support, Reporting Services integration, Excel Services, Scorecarding, Performance Point, and many other capabitilies. This session covers the breadth of BI integration abilities, and provides real world examples and demonstrations.

From Chaos to Corporate Governance, 10 Steps for Success with Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies
Joel Oleson; Brian Cook
Learn from mistakes, and avoid the pitfalls. Find out what comes out of the box and what you’ll need to create a successful deployment. In addition to architecture, we explore the roles, responsibilities, and what you need for a successful deployment, and consolidated managed deployment.

Chesapeake Energy: Making Information So Easy to Find, it’s Impossible NOT to Use It!
Lori Garcia
How do you make your SharePoint Portal the heart of your organization’s information delivery platform? It’s simple—make information SO easy to find that it’s impossible not to use it. This session highlights a business-driven approach to making information accessible throughout the enterprise. In addition, we share how we leveraged the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server technology stack to make this all possible.

Structured Approach to Building MOSS 2007 Publishing Sites
Andrew Connell
“SharePoint doesn’t support source control.” “SharePoint doesn’t follow good SDL or change control processes.” “Developers have to use SharePoint Designer to create Publishing sites.” Heard these before? Guess what? All these myths are completely untrue. Unlike many traditional SharePoint projects, Publishing sites frequently require following an organization’s change control process, software development lifecycle processes, and integration within source control. Not only is it possible to follow all of these common development guidelines in SharePoint, it is a lot easier than you may think. In this session take a look at how this is possible by obtaining a better grasp of the inner workings of SharePoint, how you can make sure your development team leverages this, as well as some tips and tricks in how to achieve it.

Bayer Business Services: Using SharePoint Wikis in the Enterprise
Thorsten Firzlaff; Gunter Reitberger
Web 2.0 is a topic that we hear about often in the news. But how can an enterprise take advantage of this technology? In enterprises the group of users is much smaller and so the usage must be different. This session gives you an overview of application areas where it makes sense, and where these technologies can support you in your daily work. We give examples of where we use Wikis and Blogs and how you can use the SharePoint advantages of having more than a standalone Wiki or Blog system.

Information Architecture for MOSS 2007
Jonathan Stynder
This session covers product components involved in an Information Architecture/Taxonomy for various industries, focusing on a few industries such as legal and financial services. The session walks through mapping of business requirements to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 features and infrastructure impact for implementing Taxonomy and Information Architecture.

Manage the Data in Your Database Using Data View Web Part… No Code Needed!
Asif Rehmani
Managing content in the enterprise is one of the most crucial needs of a business. Until now, if you wanted to edit your data in the database through a web front end, it usually meant developing a solution using some sort of programming language. Not any more! Now if you are a power user who has access to Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007, you can tap into your data by implementing the Data View web part. This session focuses on how a knowledge worker can be empowered to create data management solutions using SharePoint Designer and Data View web part.

SharePoint Designer: I Didn’t Know You Could Do That!
Dustin Miller
In this Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer session, learn how easy it is to create custom views of your data using the Data View / Form Web Part, even if it is in an external database or accessible only by Web services, without writing any code. See a rapid-fire demo designed to show how this powerful component can display data from Microsoft SQL Server and render relational data in “sub views”. Then, settle in to your chairs for one demo after another: First, learn some creative applications for conditional formatting. Then, watch as this so-called “Swiss Army Knife” of Web parts slices across multiple sites to roll up list data. Finally, this session includes two amazing demonstrations of no-code connections to Web services, including an exclusive demo, created just for the this conference. You won’t want to miss it! This session is designed for anyone who wants to get a taste of the hidden power of SharePoint Designer!

Don’t Just Move It, Make Sure You Can Use It: Planning Process Development in MOSS 2007
Virgil Carroll
With today’s capabilities of the SharePoint collaboration platform, moving business and its processes into the Web world has become a reality for many. The issue lies in whether the move of a process actually made it more useful and efficient. Is this new procedure saving your users time? Does it take the busy work out of their day? Is the workflow more efficient or does it actually take more time. Attend this session to explore the best practices around planning your business process move and listen to real-world examples of both successes to follow and failures to learn from.

Delivering Real-Time, Context-Sensitive Line-of-Business Data with SharePoint and Office
Todd Ravenholt
Hooking up SharePoint to LOB data, while critical, is mostly a matter of plumbing. The real value is when the data take on meaning, when the elements of information have semantic value to users. Delivering such data in real-time and imbued with vital context information enhances the investment in the technology by directly impacting user productivity and decision-making power. This session shows how to leverage SharePoint and Office client technologies to enable this kind of productivity.

Implementing SharePoint Collaboration As a Shared Corporate Service
Matt Russell; Matthew Roberts
SharePoint technologies have the potential of being a business enabler, across a unified and connected repository of information, capabilities, and productivity. With all of this potential, why are many organizations unable to harness this power, continuing to operate SharePoint in “pockets”? This session provides a strategic deep-dive into the world of organizational alignment, user adoption, and governance, and offers examples of companies that have successfully adopted SharePoint as a shared corporate service.

Supporting Business-Owned Applications with MOSS 2007
Scott Jamison
Are you trying to find a good way to support your business users with a rapid application platform? Trying to get a handle on Access databases and Excel spreadsheets? Office SharePoint Server 2007 is a tremendous platform that supports industry standards and provides key application and integration services.  Learn how the features in MOSS 2007 enable great solutions as part of an overall composite application architecture.

I will be arriving for the conference in Seattle on Sunday night and am looking forward to putting faces with names. There has been so much activity on the blogs and forums, it’s hard to keep up with everything.  I will be posting here daily with my experiences at the conference. If there is power and wireless, I’ll pull a Tech Crunch and blog live from the conference rooms.

Pull up to the table, tuck in your napkin and keep in touch… it’s going to be a busy week.