Demoing SharePoint… how do you do it?

Ivory Tower (Redmond) to all earth bound SharePoint peeps.  I need some info on your l33t SharePoint skillz.

I am doing some research into how you, as SharePoint evangelists, demo SharePoint to others.  This could be as part of a sales pitch or just a regular Thu night demo to the SharePoint Users Group.  Anything really.

Some common methods include:

- Locally installed on my laptop (duel boot for example)

- In a Virtual Machine.  For this one i would like to know if you use a Microsoft Provided one or build your own.

- Remote Desktop into a machine somewhere back in your office?

- Use a SharePoint site you have on the net somewhere that you use to demo?

You can either reply with a comment here.  Or tweet/DM me here https://twitter.com/LoungeFlyZ

We are looking at how best to serve our customers/partners and would like to make sure we are providing the right material to help you do your best work.

-CJ.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    February 07, 2009
    PingBack from http://www.clickandsolve.com/?p=4637

  • Anonymous
    February 07, 2009
    a virtual machine I built myself.

  • Anonymous
    February 07, 2009
    I have used the VMs in the past. It is really easy to demo with the VPC.

  • Anonymous
    February 08, 2009
    I'm running windows server 2008 64bit with 8GB RAM on my laptop, have a single server instance running on my laptop which I use for development, also I built medium server farm (hyper-v) for testing production like scenarios ex DR & HA

  • Anonymous
    February 08, 2009
    We had been using our Intranet to show off SharePoint, but have since converted to the Demo Showcase VM provided by MS (with some minor tweaks and add-ons from codeplex). It was much better having a VM that had some content and branding on it to show off some of the cooler things you can do with SP.

  • Anonymous
    February 08, 2009
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    February 08, 2009
    I use all three.  For user group presentations I like to use our user group's site that is hosted on a public server so the members can refer back to it.  When demoing for clients I prefer to use a MOSS installation at our office if I have web access.  I use a virtual machine as a last resort...and I build my own. Ideally I would like to see a SharePoint test server built into SPD and/or VS...that would make development and testing much easier also.  Thanks for asking!

  • Anonymous
    February 08, 2009
    I run Windows 2008 x64 as my only Operating System. I have MOSS 2007 installed directly on the laptop. I also run Hyper-V images, but find it easier to use the host image. I have put together a Powershell script to start and stop the various MOSS and SQL services so that I can free up some resources on my laptop when I need to.

  • Anonymous
    February 10, 2009
    I used to use a MS image, but it expired in Oct. 2008. I have since built my own image. I documented the process both in a video and written format and posted it on my blog at http://www.shareesblog.com/?p=248

  • Anonymous
    February 13, 2009
    Everything except dual boot (that option's just annoying). On the virtual machine side, external presentations are usually done on a MS VM on VPC 2007 while internal presentations are on a custom-built dev VM on VPC 2007. Like Sharee, I've also posted a Server 2008 small farm step-by-step on my blog: http://blog.mediawhole.com/2008/09/how-to-create-stand-alone-small-farm.html The lack of 64-bit guest support on the VPC platform will soon be forcing us to VMware--installing Server 2008 and hyper-v is not currently an option. Will Windows 7 give us something like this built in?? --michhes

  • Anonymous
    February 18, 2009
    I only use VMs and I use a mix of Microsoft built VMs and our own VMs. The Microsoft VMs are very useful because they are populated with content and users, include a good breadth of general SharePoint areas that can be demonstrated with little investment and I use them most heavily early in a product release cycle. Over time however we build up our own with more specific demos, particular covering the WCM internet space and if we're demonstrating development activities.

  • Anonymous
    February 20, 2009
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    February 23, 2009
    It depends on what I need to show but for most of my demos I'm able to use my Vista laptop that is running Search Server Express (thanks to bamboo solutions).

  • Anonymous
    March 20, 2009
    Hi, Chris, I use the Virtual PC available via mssharepointdeveloper.com to demo on my laptop and a HyperV VM on the premise. Some demos are simple enough to be shown off right on the Intranet portal. For development I build my own VM with a localized setup (1049). Thanks for blogging, speaking, showing and working for us.