It's hard for me to believe that a year ago we were closing down the Beijing Olympics. Although we're already preparing for the Vancouver Olympics, my summer was all about working to provide an exciting new service for the SharePoint community. I'm beyond thrilled to announce that SharePoint Connections Online is now live at http://videos.devconnections.com/catalog/SharePoint-IT-Pro,391.aspx! SharePoint Connections Online is a virtual edition of the SharePoint Connections event, which provides the best independent, in-depth sessions for developers and IT professionals. The event gives you the ability to tune in to one session, multiple sessions, or the entire event at your time, at your place, on your pace.

The drive for SharePoint Connections Online came from the reality that, in today's economy, it's impossible to reach all IT professionals and developers in a live event. Travel, logistics, and cost play a factor in preventing everyone from being able to attend. The event organizers and speakers came together and put in a herculean effort to record sessions both live during the event and offline in their own labs and studios. Those sessions have been made available in a video-on-demand format, and you can download the videos to watch offline. All you need is Windows Media Player (WMP).

I'm thrilled to be able to reach out to the global SharePoint community with this tremendous resource, and I look forward to your feedback.

For those of you who DO like to attend and CAN attend live events, let me remind you one more time about the "live" version of SharePoint Connections in Las Vegas on November 9-12. The event will be the best place to learn about SharePoint 2010 and the current versions of SharePoint, because we know you're interested in the incredible new products and features that will be announced in October and that you need to continue deploying and supporting Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007) and Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 3.0. I look forward to welcoming you in Vegas, baby!